Posted: 9/13/2016 8:50:43 AM EDT
| I need to replace a 100a breaker off my mainline, ideally I would like to pull the meter to cut power off to do it. Is it a big deal to cut the power companies anti tamper tag to pull the meter, will the next meter reader just replace it without issue? I know the power company wants me to pay for an inspection but I'm not about to pay someone $100 to come out and say yep it looks good, not really an option. |
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Well if it's not an option than what do you care? I don't understand why you are even asking because it sounds like you're just gonna do what you want anyways.
I'd call them and let them know you're (or that your qualified electrician) is cutting the tag and pulling the meter to upgrade the service panel. In CT I have to call the utility and get a work order number, and use that work order number to pull a permit with my local building department. The utility does not charge anything, and my permit costs like $30. There is also no utility inspection if a Master Electrician uses his license number to pull the work order number. A homeowner can also get the work order number, but there will then be a utility inspection (as there should be) to be sure the unlicensed electrician didn't haji-fy his service. There is still a local electrical inspection required, regardless. Every utility is going to be different. Call from a non-landline and ask them what their protocol/procedure is and if there is any penalty for what you're trying to do and proceed accordingly with whatever you discover. |
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Ya, I probably will do what I need to to get the job done right myself.
My intent was to gauge just how pissed off I'll make the power company when they come out and see their tag gone. If it's going to be a huge pain in my ass with fines or disconnects, I'd rather pay someone to do it. |
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I have a couple 100a breakers branching off my main line. This one is the main breaker for my barn. If I understand what you are saying, then just turn off the main breaker and then the entire panel is dead. Swap and then turn back on. I have changed many breakers without cutting power to the panel. I prefer to cut the power because it is safer but replacing an existing breaker in a panel can be done safely as long as you are careful. |
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'No load' aleterations do not prodce problems if handled corect;y.
Shot off ALL loads on rteh breaker. set the breaker to off. It can get a little touch to NOW the output side of the braer is off and not an issue. The input side can be a PITA. The lines are how (even if unloaded at this point). The current available is almost unlimited. It may have a final number on it (10,0000 or 20,0000 amps) but even these are more theoretical limits than practicably ones. They are based on source impedance and line transmission characteristics that are far from exact. You are taking your life in your hands to work on these. Even at a POCO 'hot workers' get a LOT of extra pay. You need insulating mats and equipment (gloves, mats, sticks, tools, etc.) that is PERFECT. It starts to make permits and fees look pretty insignificant. |
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There is no single main breaker unfortunately, no idea why they wouldn't put one in though. Thanks for your input, I'm gonna take the cover off and look at it. If I have enough wire to work safely I'll just do it that way. There should be a main shutoff somewhere. Are you sure that isn't a subpanel? |
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There should be a main shutoff somewhere. Are you sure that isn't a subpanel? Quoted:
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There is no single main breaker unfortunately, no idea why they wouldn't put one in though. Thanks for your input, I'm gonna take the cover off and look at it. If I have enough wire to work safely I'll just do it that way. There should be a main shutoff somewhere. Are you sure that isn't a subpanel? Main panels connected to a meter in many places have no disconnect before them. Pull the meter or cut the feeds at the weather head. Meter bases are NOT designed to be opened (or closed) under load. |
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There should be a main shutoff somewhere. Are you sure that isn't a subpanel? Quoted:
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There is no single main breaker unfortunately, no idea why they wouldn't put one in though. Thanks for your input, I'm gonna take the cover off and look at it. If I have enough wire to work safely I'll just do it that way. There should be a main shutoff somewhere. Are you sure that isn't a subpanel? It could be an older panel, or there could be a disconnecting means uphill of the panel he's talking about, like directly under the meter or something. OP needs to get a licensed electrician involved, even if just for consultation. I'm refraining from answering a lot of this just because there isn't anywhere near enough information to make any type of a call here. I don't have much doubt he can replace a breaker without killing himself, but I'd hate to give poor advice that results in burning his house or barn down. We have virtually no info on his electrical system or what he is trying to do, or why. "I have a couple 100a breakers branching off my main line. This one is the main breaker for my barn" -Are you just replacing a breaker that is dead or something? If so, how do you know it's dead? Are you upsizing the breaker, if so why? Have you ever done a load calculation on your service? Can it take upsizing? I'm just guessing on the very small amount of information given, but it sounds like OP wants to replace a breaker in his main panel that feeds a subpanel. If there is no Main Breaker in that panel it makes you wonder if there is a subpanel feeding another sub panel. Etc |
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Cut the tag, pull the meter and do your work. They probably won't say anything about it but if they do just say that you don't know anything about it.
Some places replace them so rarely that it's very plausible that it broke off on its own. Make sure it's not obvious that work was done. I have pulled the meter on two occasions and they never said anything about it. |
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It could be an older panel, or there could be a disconnecting means uphill of the panel he's talking about, like directly under the meter or something. Quoted:
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There is no single main breaker unfortunately, no idea why they wouldn't put one in though. Thanks for your input, I'm gonna take the cover off and look at it. If I have enough wire to work safely I'll just do it that way. There should be a main shutoff somewhere. Are you sure that isn't a subpanel? It could be an older panel, or there could be a disconnecting means uphill of the panel he's talking about, like directly under the meter or something. This was an older house that received periodic upgrades. At one point there was only the main 100a breaker then someone added a well pump breaker and a 220v camper outlet breaker then they built a barn an added a dedicated 100a breaker off the main for it. I would post a picture to explain but its dark out. Anyways it first acted up when i was playing with different settings on a welder. All of a sudden I had no barn power and non of my barn sub panel breakers were tripped. I then went out to my mainline house breaker and the shop 100a. Was also not tripped. I thought it pretty odd so I flipped it off and on and heard an erry electrical buzzing. Called it a day after that and left it off. Next day a coworker told me to turn all my breakers off in the barn then turn on my mainline breaker on. That worked for about 5 minutes and then my barn ceiling lights flickered and went out. Same deal, no breakers tripped, I said f it and turned the barn mainline off again after that. I'm 99% curtain it's that breaker that has gone bad. I plan to replace it with an identical 100a breaker. I made a couple more price quote calls, so far I'm still waiting on return calls. The first place quoted me at $150 breaker included. I'm not too excited about that, not that i can't afford it but because of how simple it will be. |
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This was an older house that received periodic upgrades. At one point there was only the main 100a breaker then someone added a well pump breaker and a 220v camper outlet breaker then they built a barn an added a dedicated 100a breaker off the main for it. I would post a picture to explain but its dark out. Anyways it first acted up when i was playing with different settings on a welder. All of a sudden I had no barn power and non of my barn sub panel breakers were tripped. I then went out to my mainline house breaker and the shop 100a. Was also not tripped. I thought it pretty odd so I flipped it off and on and heard an erry electrical buzzing. Called it a day after that and left it off. Next day a coworker told me to turn all my breakers off in the barn then turn on my mainline breaker on. That worked for about 5 minutes and then my barn ceiling lights flickered and went out. Same deal, no breakers tripped, I said f it and turned the barn mainline off again after that. I'm 99% curtain it's that breaker that has gone bad. I plan to replace it with an identical 100a breaker. I made a couple more price quote calls, so far I'm still waiting on return calls. The first place quoted me at $150 breaker included. I'm not too excited about that, not that i can't afford it but because of how simple it will be. Quoted:
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There is no single main breaker unfortunately, no idea why they wouldn't put one in though. Thanks for your input, I'm gonna take the cover off and look at it. If I have enough wire to work safely I'll just do it that way. There should be a main shutoff somewhere. Are you sure that isn't a subpanel? It could be an older panel, or there could be a disconnecting means uphill of the panel he's talking about, like directly under the meter or something. This was an older house that received periodic upgrades. At one point there was only the main 100a breaker then someone added a well pump breaker and a 220v camper outlet breaker then they built a barn an added a dedicated 100a breaker off the main for it. I would post a picture to explain but its dark out. Anyways it first acted up when i was playing with different settings on a welder. All of a sudden I had no barn power and non of my barn sub panel breakers were tripped. I then went out to my mainline house breaker and the shop 100a. Was also not tripped. I thought it pretty odd so I flipped it off and on and heard an erry electrical buzzing. Called it a day after that and left it off. Next day a coworker told me to turn all my breakers off in the barn then turn on my mainline breaker on. That worked for about 5 minutes and then my barn ceiling lights flickered and went out. Same deal, no breakers tripped, I said f it and turned the barn mainline off again after that. I'm 99% curtain it's that breaker that has gone bad. I plan to replace it with an identical 100a breaker. I made a couple more price quote calls, so far I'm still waiting on return calls. The first place quoted me at $150 breaker included. I'm not too excited about that, not that i can't afford it but because of how simple it will be. 10 min job at most. No cutting power needed. Just work slowly and deliberately. |
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You said older service.
If the meter base has Bakelite unsulation around the lugs, definitely hire it out. My electrician had a hot swap go wrong when one of the line side wire mounts broke when the meter was removed, welded itself to the side of the meter box and started a fire. Fire department had to kill the power at the pole. |
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Old meter bases are scary. Turn off ALL load if you do pull meter. Replace meter and then turn loads on.
The way you described the barn problem makes me think of bad feeder. Usually when a customer runs power to a barn, with triplex and does not pipe all the way. Triplex has a nick in jacket. Triplex developed short over time. During high loads or rainy days breaker trips. Is your barn feeder triplex or is it in pipe the whole way? Pictures of the meter and sub panels would help. And Arc flash does kill people. It is not to be taken lightly. |
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Old meter bases are scary. Turn off ALL load if you do pull meter. Replace meter and then turn loads on. The way you described the barn problem makes me think of bad feeder. Usually when a customer runs power to a barn, with triplex and does not pipe all the way. Triplex has a nick in jacket. Triplex developed short over time. During high loads or rainy days breaker trips. Is your barn feeder triplex or is it in pipe the whole way? Pictures of the meter and sub panels would help. And Arc flash does kill people. It is not to be taken lightly. Nothing hearing the bang of a 1/2 inch thick screwdriver shaft get between a 440 V panel lug and the grounded metal panel-board case. About 1 inch of the shaft was gone. Major portions of the sheet metal enclosure (and commercial 440 ones are thick metal). Everything did the dimming number for about 4-5 seconds as the arcing continued till it was longer than could sustain. Once it gets going the plasma of air and vaporized metal can keep it going till it 'blows' itself out. Even a new house in Virginia is not likely to have a disconnect between the meter base and the main panel. We do not use outdoor main disconnects. The breakers at the top of the panel do the job. Very large houses can even have double tapped meter bases and feed two main panels. Still passes the '6-hand rule.' Two panels, two mains, done. |
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Nothing hearing the bang of a 1/2 inch thick screwdriver shaft get between a 440 V panel lug and the grounded metal panel-board case. About 1 inch of the shaft was gone. Major portions of the sheet metal enclosure (and commercial 440 ones are thick metal). Everything did the dimming number for about 4-5 seconds as the arcing continued till it was longer than could sustain. Once it gets going the plasma of air and vaporized metal can keep it going till it 'blows' itself out. Even a new house in Virginia is not likely to have a disconnect between the meter base and the main panel. We do not use outdoor main disconnects. The breakers at the top of the panel do the job. Very large houses can even have double tapped meter bases and feed two main panels. Still passes the '6-hand rule.' Two panels, two mains, done. Quoted:
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Old meter bases are scary. Turn off ALL load if you do pull meter. Replace meter and then turn loads on. The way you described the barn problem makes me think of bad feeder. Usually when a customer runs power to a barn, with triplex and does not pipe all the way. Triplex has a nick in jacket. Triplex developed short over time. During high loads or rainy days breaker trips. Is your barn feeder triplex or is it in pipe the whole way? Pictures of the meter and sub panels would help. And Arc flash does kill people. It is not to be taken lightly. Nothing hearing the bang of a 1/2 inch thick screwdriver shaft get between a 440 V panel lug and the grounded metal panel-board case. About 1 inch of the shaft was gone. Major portions of the sheet metal enclosure (and commercial 440 ones are thick metal). Everything did the dimming number for about 4-5 seconds as the arcing continued till it was longer than could sustain. Once it gets going the plasma of air and vaporized metal can keep it going till it 'blows' itself out. Even a new house in Virginia is not likely to have a disconnect between the meter base and the main panel. We do not use outdoor main disconnects. The breakers at the top of the panel do the job. Very large houses can even have double tapped meter bases and feed two main panels. Still passes the '6-hand rule.' Two panels, two mains, done. BTDT. I was more surprised by how quickly the processing plant operator ran up 2 flights of stairs to ask me what the fuck I did to his plant. I had tripped half of the 1200 TPH coal cleaning process. Luckily everything reset fine and he was back online within a couple of minutes. 
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The nuetral/grounded conductor for the shop looks burned at the bus in your photos. Is it burnt or dirty? Do you have a ground/grounding conductor in shop feed?
If just me I would pull out breaker and replace and not pull meter, but I have done that thousands of time. |
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"Next day a coworker told me to turn all my breakers off in the barn then turn on my mainline breaker on. That worked for about 5 minutes and then my barn ceiling lights flickered and went out."
Doesn't make sense. How could the barn ceiling lights flicker after you had turned off all the breakers in the barn and turned on mainline breaker? Also, you say there are 2-100 amp breakers. I see 1 in the pic. Is there another 100 amp breaker somewhere in this lash up? "erry electrical buzzing" That's more than likely a burned buss. A simple breaker change won't fix that. |
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After looking at the pictures good. I would pull the meter. Meter base does not look too old. Once meter is pulled you can examine the connections, the buss, and see if anything has been hot.
Do you have thermal? Anyone at work have a fluke thermal meter? A thermal snapshot would tell me a great deal if I could get the pic under load. Do you have a ground rod driven at the shop? Picture of shop panel? |
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That is a less than quality clamp design for stranded cable.
Post the breaker type. You want to avoid that brand of panel and breaker. ETAa: At least some breakers look like they have a GE logo on them. That would explain a lot if it is a GE panel. Never thought their design or engineering was that good. |
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That is a less than quality clamp design for stranded cable. Post the breaker type. You want to avoid that brand of panel and breaker. ETAa: At least some breakers look like they have a GE logo on them. That would explain a lot if it is a GE panel. Never thought their design or engineering was that good. That was a GE breaker. Replaced it with the same brand. The screws on the old one weren't very tight when i took it off. |
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You said older service. If the meter base has Bakelite unsulation around the lugs, definitely hire it out. My electrician had a hot swap go wrong when one of the line side wire mounts broke when the meter was removed, welded itself to the side of the meter box and started a fire. Fire department had to kill the power at the pole. Hugh pucker factor when I pulled the meter from its Bakelite base and discovered this. 
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| Poor connection created more resistance. Resistance creates heat and you see the results. Connections on appliances, outlets, switches heat up like that. The results are usually fire flying. This is why you always check and recheck torque even more so with Aluminum conductors. |
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Poor connection created more resistance. Resistance creates heat and you see the results. Connections on appliances, outlets, switches heat up like that. The results are usually fire flying. This is why you always check and recheck torque even more so with Aluminum conductors. And stranded aluminum gets each strand lightly sanded and protected by oxidation grease coating (no-corrode oxidation inhibitor, etc.) As soon as you sand the aluminum clean you grease each strand. Even waiting to do more than one strand is long enough for aluminum oxide to form again. When you form back the strands smear another layer on the bundle. A light sanding inside the lug and grease. Removing the screw and lightly greasing the threads produces a better torque reading. Insert cable and tighten the screw down then torque it to spec. A torque wrench with a short drive extension and adapters works well. You need enough extension to at least get the wrench to clear the panel-box and other equipment in the panel-board. Torque screwdrivers do not always have a high enough range (and require very high hand strength) for larger size lugs. |
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Quoted: And stranded aluminum gets each strand lightly sanded and protected by oxidation grease coating (no-corrode oxidation inhibitor, etc.) As soon as you sand the aluminum clean you grease each strand. Even waiting to do more than one strand is long enough for aluminum oxide to form again. When you form back the strands smear another layer on the bundle. A light sanding inside the lug and grease. Removing the screw and lightly greasing the threads produces a better torque reading. Insert cable and tighten the screw down then torque it to spec. A torque wrench with a short drive extension and adapters works well. You need enough extension to at least get the wrench to clear the panel-box and other equipment in the panel-board. Torque screwdrivers do not always have a high enough range (and require very high hand strength) for larger size lugs. Quoted: Quoted: Poor connection created more resistance. Resistance creates heat and you see the results. Connections on appliances, outlets, switches heat up like that. The results are usually fire flying. This is why you always check and recheck torque even more so with Aluminum conductors. And stranded aluminum gets each strand lightly sanded and protected by oxidation grease coating (no-corrode oxidation inhibitor, etc.) As soon as you sand the aluminum clean you grease each strand. Even waiting to do more than one strand is long enough for aluminum oxide to form again. When you form back the strands smear another layer on the bundle. A light sanding inside the lug and grease. Removing the screw and lightly greasing the threads produces a better torque reading. Insert cable and tighten the screw down then torque it to spec. A torque wrench with a short drive extension and adapters works well. You need enough extension to at least get the wrench to clear the panel-box and other equipment in the panel-board. Torque screwdrivers do not always have a high enough range (and require very high hand strength) for larger size lugs. |
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Stranded copper in very large sizes needs inhibitor also but it is not as critical as aluminum.
Most corrosion products of copper are still decent conductors. Incorrect termination of stranded aluminum is all to common. It is a PITA to do it right but a decent sign of someone that knows what they are doing. I have a very old bottle that has a nice nozzle on it and has been refilled for years. I actually clean it out whenever it needs a new fill and then keep it on the shelf with the half-gallon so I know what it is on the smaller one. When the half runs and the smaller bottle time for a new half and a clean out of the small. Eventually the small one will probably crack. |