How to Upgrade an Electric Meter to 200-Amp Service (Part 1) | This Old House

[Music] so upgrading your electrical service is a big project and it should not be done by a homeowner needs to be done by a licensed electrician so what i've done is called the utility company and i've had them come in and disconnect their wires from your home where they tie in and energize your home okay so that's why they look like they've been cut that's correct each one of these wires carries 120 volts to your house and we can reuse them so there's no power to the house right now that's correct i have a portable generator that i've hooked up which will allow me to run some lights and some small power tools while i upgrade your service okay power company owns this glass meter and also the wires coming in from the street everything else is your responsibility as the homeowner which is this cable providing power to this metal enclosure here which holds the meter called a meter socket now with the power off i'm going to go ahead and remove this glass meter from the meter socket okay now everything else left on the side house is going to be replaced nice job now this is your new meter socket it's rated for 200 amps the power comes in through the top ties onto these two terminals goes through the meter comes out on the bottom two terminals and then goes through this hole on the back as you can see there's a connector that holds the wire that goes into your house now the existing hole is too small for the new 200 amp wire so i need to go ahead and drill a new hole okay at this point we've gone through the outside vinyl siding and the sheathing we're going to go ahead and use this smaller diameter hole saw which has an extension that will get us the rest of the way through the house perfect through the house so what we have here is 200 amp rated se cable the se stands for service entrance what the cable does it brings power from the meter socket inside your home to the electrical panel now i've gone ahead already and put the cable through the connector here i'm going to flip this over you can see that the connector has a plastic bushing which prevents any of the wires from getting chaffed and we have two wires the conductors they're 120 volts each and then we have a neutral conductor which brings the power back to the pole gently pull it all the way in and that's good ken so now what i'm going to do is put this lever on here and make sure that it's level we're going to use these stainless steel screws that are prepared by putting a little more of the duct seal on it and that prevents any moisture from getting inside the meter this is how the power used to travel into your home through these three cables we have a weather head which prevents water from entering the cable and the cable goes to the top of the meter socket here's your new service entrance it's got the same three wires heavier gauge though and we have a weather head inside i've added this duct seal which prevents any water from entering the pipe and now we have this really rigid pvc conduit and the conduit offers the wires inside a lot more protection let's go ahead and put it in place very good so we have one final glue connection here that i need to make and also we're going to take the clips we're going to put them on the house to secure the pipe every couple of feet so the most important part of every electrical system is proper ground these carpet ground rods will ensure that the electricity always has a safe path to ground which prevents electrocution so i'll push this in as far as it'll go by hand and then i'll finish it off with a sledgehammer all right you do the next one six feet away it's important to have all underground utilities marked before any ground rods are driven into the ground you don't want to hit a water line or a gas line so we've completed burying the wire underground which connects this ground rod to this ground rod the cable travels underground up this conduit to this inter-system bonding termination this bonding termination it allows the cable internet and phone companies to tie in safely to your system you can see the cable's already been installed the wire runs up into the meter socket now i'm ready to connect the power wires into the meter socket [Music] [Music] now i've gone ahead and torqued the connections properly the power travels down these wires to these terminals through the meter comes out the bottom terminals goes inside your house the neutral conductor feeds straight through and goes inside your house let's go ahead and install the meter now and the cover now let's go ahead and start our work inside [Music]

Channel: This Old House

Views: 2,951,890

Keywords: Ampere (Unit Of Electric Current), Electricity Meter (Literature Subject), Electrician (Profession), Electricity (Industry), electrical system, How-to (Website Category), Do It Yourself (Hobby), DIY, Home Improvement (Interest), Home Repair (Interest), This Old House (TV Program), scott caron, replacement, installation, episode part

Id: LuEAVdpny2U

Length: 5min 41sec (341 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 03 2014