FULL 200 AMP SERVICE UPGRADE | CLARK, NJ

hey welcome back to the channel so today I'm in Clark New Jersey it's Thursday March 30th uh it's just about 34 degrees temperatures supposed to go up to around 50 today should be good but right now I'm in the shade and it's really cold so that's why I'm wearing a hat obviously uh but we'll be changing this meter that you see in the background here and the Riser and then of course the load side of the meter down into the panel it's just down the basement which you get through this afternoon first we want to start by cleaning up the old service equipment so that we get the new service equipment installed so thanks for coming back if you haven't already like this video And subscribe please do that that helps a lot so thank you so take notice here as I'm taking this cover off of the meter how the whole enclosure is just moving around when I see when I pull the meter out there the home closures kind of just flap it in the breeze right there that's because there's no screws holding that meter enclosure to the house and the reason why that happens is when the vinyl siding was installed the vinyl siding installers decided to remove the electric themselves without calling a licensed electrician as they're supposed to do anything in New Jersey you got to have a license if you're working over 10 volts this is obviously a 240 volt nominal service and so they decided to do it themselves put the straps on randomly and of course no screws in the meter because who wants to take the meter out there and risk getting blown Sky High by live electricity so they never bother to call an electrician and uh that whole meter enclosure will just flap it into Breeze and you'll see here at a moment when I take off this final strap here with the uh with that cable just flapping the debris like that that the whole meter just falls to the ground definitely not safe so if you're considering doing some siding get in touch with your electrician and uh have him remove it from the side so the ciders can do their job properly and you won't have your meter flap it in the breeze also while I was here there was this old telephone line that was down in the front yard just kind of sitting there in the shrubs in the front so I decided to go ahead and just remove that it's an old telephone landline so uh no longer being used and that's why I got rid of it [Music] foreign you can see here all the insulation that was up in the free air if you can see that right there just that comes in contact with that and you're gonna have a lot of Arc and definitely so far with that long pass dude have this Dart work done all right foreign so now that all my tools and ladders and garbage cans are in place here I'm going to start working on the service Riser and what I'm doing here is I'm peeling away the sheathing from the service entrance cable here so I can expose my conductors and you'll see once I get them undone here the grounded neutral conductor from the service utility is wrapped around this particular cable here and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to peel away the sheeting and then I'm going to peel away the white taping that's around it for lack of a better term and then we'll fully assemble the weather head here or the service head and uh prepare our conductors and you'll see once I get the sheathing off I'll remove the grounded neutral conductor here from the ungrounded conductors and then what I'll do is I'll spin them around and tighten them up forming a more solid conductor to attach up there at the service head foreign what you want to do here is you want to pop off this head so that you're able to slide the conductors through the opening and then once the conductors are in there you'll fold them over so you're able to put this cap back on so be careful here not to bust this cap especially when it's cold it wasn't that cold it was about it wasn't freezing but it was cold it was about 35 degrees as I'm doing this uh and obviously I can't do it with my gloves on so it was pretty cold but if it's really really cold you could break that plastic and now you have to get a new service head to finish this job and if you got to run to the supply house that really could be a pain in the ass in your day so instead of moving out of there at six o'clock you'll be moving out of there at seven or even worse eight or even nine o'clock so be careful taking this head off as you can see I'm struggling there I finally get it now some utilities are going to be different uh but here in PSEG country they recommend that you leave them three feet of open conductor from the service head for uh PSE and G the utility company here to connect uh the service uh you'll see when I get up on top of the ladder here that the um I imagine at some point it was cut because it was they were really really short leads from the street I didn't have a lot to work with so uh something like that I can call if it's a dire emergency I would call PSEG directly and tell them that there's an emergency and these conductors are too short or there's something wrong or some kind of danger but there's really no danger that I saw so over the course of events uh once this work gets inspected and approved the electrical inspector in this town will send in what's known as a cut in card to the utility company to let them know that the service has been upgraded and they could either change the meter or do what they got to do as far as the new upgrade is concerned so just remember three feet of conductors coming out of that service head and you're good to go so here I'm just forming my grounded neutral conductor here to form one big conductor and I think I went the wrong way I don't know how that happened but I did so I had to go first if I was a little stumped here for a moment but basically if you do something like I'm doing here you'll you'll have all those single stranded conductors all this they're solid conductors but it actually forms a stranded conductor um to form them as a solid conductor so I could fit my butt splice in later and attach it to the utility ground to neutral up at the service head The Next Step here is to fold over these conductors so I'm able to get the service cap the top on to the service head here and this is really important to keep any precipitation rain snow from getting inside the cable here if it gets inside the cable I have seen evidence of the water getting inside the cable to making its way down from the service head to the meter inside the meter and then eventually down into the main electrical panel now you think that's a little far-fetched but I've seen it more than once so it's real important to learn how to install service entrance cable properly and uh definitely you want to be alerted to um installing the service set and the drip Loop more importantly one of the little codes here that you might not know is that this service head has to be above the service Hook from the utility and the main reason for that is to form that drip Loop so the water does not get in the cable and inside to your service okay so once I have my Riser assembly all put together here I carry it up the ladder it is kind of heavy not super heavy I would say it's probably maybe 30 or 40 pounds this is a 30 foot length of service entrance cable here for 200 amp uh so the first thing you do is you put a screw in that fascia that's behind the vinyl siding right there which is uh a part of the framing of one of the rafters on the end there on the Gable end here and you drive a screw in there and use the service head to attach it there's a keyhole in that service head that holds it up to temporarily and then you want to get a strap I think the code calls for within 12 inches of that service that I usually get it as close as I can to that service head when I'm using the service entrance cable here uh that just makes for a sturdier positioning and I know it's not going to fall down so get that strap as close as you can to that service head and then very delicately work your way down I got to make a sharp turn here to get closer to the fascia again but I need to be above the hook that you see right by my left hand there that's attached also to the fascia the service head needs to be above that service hook that's a code regulation right there for sure so make sure you do that and I'm using two inch I'm sorry I'm using two and a half inch galvanized screws here core screws to attach the service head and my straps all the way down while I'm up on the ladder attaching the straps I'm eyeballing the cable to make sure it's going to come straight into the meter when I get down onto the ground I use this four foot level to draw a Plumb line in a couple of spots where I know that the cable is going to lay on top of that pencil line and this way that serve Essentials cable is going to come right down in the center right into the center of the meter and I want to put the meter back where it was before you can see that little shaded section right there um because if that's damaged or the sun's been beaten down on it's different color you want to put the meat on top of that so when you're done it doesn't look like hell so this is what's known as a PSEG fifth jaw meter enclosure uh what PSEG does that's unique and I don't know what they do around the rest of the country but here in New Jersey and psang Country we have the fifth draw so we can so they can monitor the neutral current being used and I believe they had an issue many many years ago in the Toms River area where some of the grounded neutral current returning back to the source as electricity does was actually flowing through the ground and it was actually injuring people people were getting hurt by it straight voltage was detected so I believe that's why we have that fifth jaw now I could be totally wrong but I know that JCP L doesn't require it whereas PSEG does so all of your meter enclosures in PSEG country better have that fifth jaw or you could fail your inspection and if you do service upgrades and you got to change that meter after putting the meter in that's going to be a pain in the butt to do so if you're not sure what type of meter to use call the building department and ask to speak with the electrical inspector he should have all that information for you so what I'm doing here is I'm taking out all these Knockouts and there's six of them in this can here where um you have to use all six that's so I've been told that's what it's back to use and that's what I've always done and I'll take two and a half inch screws here and I'll put a washer a fender washer on them with duct seal behind that washer so when I screw it to the house here that duct seal is actually forced up against that opening that I just made right there so that no water can enter this enclosure oh [Music] so I'm taking this knockout out this is actually the load side of the meter here and I'm going to put in a two inch offset adapter here and I'm going to use PVC to protect my cable actually to protect the cable that's one thing but really what I'm going for here is Aesthetics bending that service entrance cable to a 90 degree Bend is difficult and I don't want water to go into the hole that goes from the outside into to the inside for my cable so what I do is I sleeve the service entrance cable in some two inch PVC and I use an lb and you'll see that later in the video but right here I'm just prepping for that before I attach the service entrance connector on the top of this meter here and then instead of trying to get that wire into the meter I'm going to use the meter and feed it up onto the wire onto the onto the service entrance cable and then attach my meter to the enclosed to the house doing it that way is a lot easier than trying to bend that service entrance cable to get it inside that meter it goes a lot uh goes a lot smoother and then once I have the meter attached to the house I'll put my final strap coming down the side of the house to that service entrance cable I have found this way to be the simplest way and the neatest way the most efficient way to get this job done thank you this here is the Hub it's a two inch Hub and the Hub comes with the meter enclosure when you buy it for PSE and G this is a Milbank meter enclosure I'm not sure the model number I just asked for the PSE and G Style with the fifth jaw but this gets attached to the top side and this Hub is a Myers Hub is what it's called it um prevents water from getting inside there uh what we'll you'll see in a moment here we'll use some irreversible screws to attach it to the meter and this right here is the service entrance cable connector I get a couple of extra grommets I don't know why they give me different grommets here usually The Grommet that comes with it is just the right size to Snug around that service entrance cable when you use some large channel locks to make that connection tight and then of course use some duct seal just like how we do it here in the Northeast we put some duct seal at the top of that service entrance connector to prevent any water from getting inside this meter enclosure you'll see what I'm talking about shortly now these screws that I'm about to put in to attach this Hub to the meter here these are irreversible screws so if you look at it closely you can only tighten them I don't know if you can see that but that little cutout on the one side so you can only left the Lefty Loosely righty tighty you can only righty tidy these you can't back them out so make sure you get them in I usually like to start them by hand and then finish them off and get them all started all at the same time so the thing goes in there straight foreign what you want to do once you get that meter in place is just set one screw in to hold it there until you can put your level on top and make sure you're putting it in straight and then we're going to use those special screws I was telling you about with the uh the fender washer and then the duct seal behind the fender washer so that when you tighten down these screws inside this meter you can prevent any water from entering from behind this is pretty important it's not required but it's important actually keeping water out of the meter probably is required and if it's not required it's definitely good practice these Cutters that you always see me using these are Klein ratchet cutters so I use these to cut large conductors like like the service entrance cable for instance I think it cuts up to 350 KC mil so uh I don't ever use that really so I'm mostly doing these residential services but it's a ratchet cutter it's about 200 it's a nice tool to have this is a two inch pvc male offset adapter basically it's a it's a short little Bend like a box offset PVC so because that knockout's about a half inch off of the wall so this uh offset adapter makes up for that difference and it allows me to have the PVC sit on the wall uh nice and tight to the wall I had one person that I worked with show me how to use a level and I was this guy Jason probably about 15 or 16 maybe even 18 years ago and I use the level all the time to draw straight lines to draw Plumb lines so that the work looks good so Jason if you're watching this thank you you showed me how to do this I never even thought of doing this until you showed me so uh thanks [Music] what I'm looking to do right now is I'm looking to drill a pilot hole to see where I'm going to make my hole saw so I can fit the back side of this lb into the hole alrighty and what I'm doing is I'm using this lb in this PVC just to safeguard The Wire and it looks neater going inside the house so I know this is the old service entrance cable and I know just for being here the other day that the the wiring goes into the back of the panel but with the new 200 amp panel we're going to come into the top right into the breaker instead of coming into the behind of it so what I'm going to do is I'll rip out this old piece of service entrance cable here and I will uh patch it up with hydraulic concrete and then what I want to do is I want to come in around the rim joist right here as you can see I've drawn the straight lines I'm going to be somewhere in here but I just want to go downstairs to the basement right now and just verify where I'm going to make that hole [Music] okay so I'm standing here at the panel and if you can see the big thick red and black wire up there and then nipple that goes to the outside you can see where the service entrance comes in I hope you can see that it's got a big thick red wire anyway it goes through and that's what's sticking out of the foundation outside it should be easy but we'll see you never know [Music] oh all right so back in the basement after drilling that hole the pilot bit through the rim joist and I want to show you where it came through I hope you can see it alrighty so that's coming in just above that sill plate so when I make my hole I want to come up maybe like a half an inch and I'm reading the spot where I want to be which is right and center of this area right here where the board's gonna go and where the panel go and then that surface entrance cable that'll come right to the top of the panel right in the middle it's going to look beautiful that's a Milwaukee big hog hole saw and I'm not sure of the size but it's just a little bit bigger than the PVC LB that I'm about to put in its place it worked out great you got to go slow through the vinyl siding and then you can go a little more aggressive once it gets going all right sorry about this horrible camera angle here so if you've never used the hole saw before you need to take it out as you can see I've taken out all that material and I need to take out more so you need to take the time to clear it out before you can go drilling again foreign foreign [Music] foreign [Applause] now we're really cooking with gas I got this 18 inch 7 16 extension bit so I can go all the way through the rim joist here [Applause] [Music] okay truth be told the first time I did this I took a wrong measurement and I was about an inch and a half short and so I had to add a coupling uh to this length here without having to go out and buy another half inch or two inch PVC LB which is like over thirty dollars these days so uh that's why you see a coupling on there going into the male adapter it worked out in the end [Music] you should never ever ever hit that cable directly with the hammer all right you could damage the conductors and then when you're going to put that meter on in when you're done it could be the fireworks like the Fourth of July right in front of your face and blow your face off because there's a dead short with no over current protection so use a piece of uh use a piece of wood or something dense like that and then bang that with the hammer not the cable directly and as you can see by doing that it actually works very very well what also works well is a second person on the other side pulling but I don't have that so fortunately I've been working by myself for a long time and uh I've learned how to do this without help the idea here is to get this work done in the first half of the day so the second half of the day I get spent down on the basement putting in the new 200 amp main breaker panel so obviously a strip away the conductors using that special tool by Klein that I use plenty of antioxidant penetrux and tighten my lugs nowadays when I do these service upgrades they usually show up a day or two ahead of the schedule upgrade to drive a couple of ground rods and get the water ground main ground electrode installed ahead of the service so when I come back to do this work the upgrade I only have to do a couple of the connections some of the work has already been done so I'm just setting up my wiring here for my two ground rods and then later on in the afternoon I will set up the uh I'll complete the granial electro conductor for the water main foreign was overloaded with circuits what a big giant mess that is right there there are a couple of cables in this assembly here that um will no longer being used you can see the wire nuts on those wires so what we wound up doing was just putting those two cables into a junction box beside the panel and if we find where they go to later on we want to energize them we can do that since they're in place but I saw no need to put them back inside the panel at this time so here I'm just obviously just taking uh I'm unwiring this box or de-wiring it whatever you want to call that I don't know if there's a real name for that but I got to remove all these circuit breakers and then I'll remove the bus bar and then start taking the old cables out of this enclosure so that we can make room for the new panel once I take out the old panel here and the footage I think the battery went dead uh I was able to take this old panel enclosure out and put the new mounting board in and I mounted it directly to the old existing panel board which was previously connected to the concrete foundation and it was stable so I put my new mounting board right on top of the old mounting board and it was Secure so just like I did with the meter on the outside is I'll slide the equipment up onto the onto the cable here and it's important to not tighten down the screws on the connector so that when I go to terminate my conductors inside the main breaker in the neutral lug I have some play with that cable and you'll see shortly that once I've got the conductor's stripped back or ready to go into their terminals I'm able to push up and back so that I'm able to push the conductor up and then slide it into the terminal you'll see in a moment what I'm talking about but this is the way I have found the easiest way to manipulate these conductors to go where they want to go remember it's a four out conductor so it's not going to be very easily moved there's not a lot of play in a four hour conductor so you need to have some tricks and I'll show those to you and momentarily okay so now that the cable's inside the enclosure and the panels mounted to the mounting board I'm able to strip back the sheathing on the service entrance cable and start preparing my conductors for termination so there's a 200 amp main breaker panel and like I said earlier these are four odd conductors so I'm going to uh twist my grounds together as you see right there and prepare them I'm just going to give a slight Little Bend right there in that conductor and I'm going to Mark where I'm going to cut it and I'm going to put my ratchet Cutters over them and cut away now notice that the connector at the top has not been tightened down because what I'm going to do is I'm going to strip back these conductors and then I'm going to put on Plenty of antioxidant conductors even though I know they're not required I always get that in the comments then it's not required that's fine I still like to put it in there I think it's a good product and it serves a purpose from oxidation so once the conductors are prepared I'm going to show you a little trick here see how the cable still can move up and down and around if you had that if you tighten down that connector you wouldn't be able to do that and so once I strip back and expose the conductors to the terminals I'm going to push that cable up slightly so that I'm able to land both of my ungrounded hot conductors on top of that main breaker I wouldn't exactly say it's groundbreaking trickery here but it is a skill because moving this moving this conductor and this cable assembly not the easiest thing to do and if you've ever worked with it you would understand that here you go super slow motion plenty of antioxidant on those conductors I like to dip it right into the can and my can is actually almost empty right there I got a new one the other day so the conductors are prepared Now watch how how I just push the cable up just a little bit just high enough to get those term get the conductors inside the lugs yeah that's the big secret of how to do that and once that's done we'll start tightening up these lugs and and start entering the branch circuits into the enclosure [Music] thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign foreign [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] foreign [Music] okay so sometimes I do get asked this question I'm tying in these services so make sure you're not grounded or completing a part of the circuit obviously the way you do that is by not touching two wires together whether the two legs or the ground or any combination of the two as long as you stay clear of touching either one together at the same time you'll be good to go okay there's no path for the current the electrons to flow if you're not grounded or connected to the other leg it's as simple as that um so these are the we call these butt splices so it's got a little I think it's a 5 16th it's all rubbed off on my tool usually says what it is right there um it's a 5 16 hex head and so I just loosened these up like this okay and you can see the opening in there is where the wire goes and then when I do it on this side and it's open I tighten them down and then it becomes one connector it's a butt spice then of course I take this thick two inch rubber tape and I wrap it around and then I'll take the vinyl tape and put it around the rubber tape so there's two layers of protection with these hex head butt splices and that's how I tie in the overhead surfaces obviously I love doing these service upgrades I wish I could do two or three of these a week and that's all I'd have to worry about doing but it's not a perfect world so I got to do other jobs as well as an electrician but while I'm up here on the ladder I have my 5 16 t-handle allen wrench I have the two inch rubber tape sitting on top of the ladder there you can see in the upper part of the the ladder there I have those guards on my ladder so I don't accidentally scratch any siding the vinyl siding I probably wouldn't scratch anything but you never know so I keep those on there year round and it's made out of rubber I think they're like 30 or 40 dollars I think that's a wise investment so you don't ruin your customers property while you're up there on the ladder or have it leaned up against the house here and the way you want to tie in the service is one conductor at a time I always do the system ground first and then I push that out of the way so I don't accidentally make contact with that because that would not be good that could be the firecracks like firecracker is like the Fourth of July and then I do one service conductor at a time and uh make sure my make sure I'm comfortable doing what I'm doing here and I'm on a fiberglass ladder that does not conduct electricity that's why electricians use um fiberglass ladders and just like that power has been restored to the line side of the meter which is at the top all right so the load side and the power to the house doesn't come on until I install or reinstall the meter and then of course I take a measurement there to make sure I have my proper voltage on the load side and then I'll come back downstairs to the panel and turn on the main breaker and then turn on the individual Breakers and I'm able at that point to start cleaning up and get ready to end my day the only thing you missed was me checking the voltage and verifying that there's no shorts just did that and I'm putting the meter in because I'm putting the meter in I Veer off to my left right there to align the pins on the meter to the female end on the meter enclosure and then I just bang it in but make sure your line of sight is good before you push that in and make sure it goes in just right 12 46 22. 122. is that hope foreign so typically in a basement like this in this area we have a copper water main so we got to run our wiring from the panel here all right and what I did was I fished it across the ceiling right here which is open on the other side this is typical of an old basement already you can't see it but the wires up in this Bay and [Music] comes over here to where the water main enters the house so for it to be considered a grounding electrode that needs to be connected to the electrical system you got to have at least 10 feet of copper buried in the Earth that's what the code calls for so if you have that and you need to bond that and here's how we did it we need to make sure that our straps are attached to the wall here not to the pipe all right that's definitely a violation is that I used to do it with a piece of furring strip now we have hammer drills so use these plastic anchors with these straps and come down to the water main here we got one spot here on the load side the customer side and then the supply side over here has jumped out as well and the intent of that is so if this meter's ever pulled for whatever reason the copper water pipes are still bonded to the system I'd like to say to all my fans that if you're still watching this video it's almost an hour long I really sincerely appreciate you doing that when I started this YouTube channel I didn't think it would ever grow as fast as it has and it's all because you guys coming back and watching this content and I hope that you learned something from this 200 amp upgrade if you have do me a favor leave me a message in the comments and as always thank you for being here thank you for subscribing and liking these videos thank you for all your comments and thank you for making this channel become successful we'll see on the next one and thank you for watching all the way to the end thanks for watching this video be sure to subscribe and we'll see on the next one [Music] foreign [Applause]

Channel: Electrician Ron

Views: 76,199

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Id: JGxFeGVTAAk

Length: 51min 14sec (3074 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 01 2023