Two Service Drops On One Lot.

Bkessler

This is in orange california, I am rewiring a small house thats still knob and tube, and called for a meter spot yesterday. The Edison guy comes out and says since there are two meters on the same property they have to be combined to a double meter in one location. The back house is a rental unit was built with permits 15 years ago has it's own panel and meter with an overhead service. To accomplish this I will have to install a double meter on the front house and go underground for 30' then sawcut the patio for 20' then an additional 20' underground to the panel location and rip out a meter main and install a sub panel. which will add about 4k to the cost of a 7k job. I can understand this being required on new work but it's simply not in their budget they may cancel the work which is not only a bummer for me but this house is a fire waiting to happen, when I got there there were single pole 50's running all the 12 awg knob and tube. The edison guy seemed happy to tell me the bad news and if we do any work the property has to be brought up to todays standards. Any thoughts would be appreciated. I would think there would be some exceptions or some kind of wiggle room.

Forry

Doesn't sound right to me. In my area, you only need the shut-offs together if the units are connected, for fire safety(firefighter safety). Is this a poco requirement, or a city/county requirement? There's probably a way around it in either case.
Just my thoughts.

wireless

LADWP will only make one drop to the property as well. They want all disconnects in one area. I had a similar situation awhile back with a duplex on a corner property. The The two units were separate buildings with addresses on different streets. I could not get them to allow it.

GSE

"will add about 4k to the cost of a 7k job"

It sounds like the real problem here is not the job, but your fear to show the customer the increased cost.

As a customer I would want to know why you din't know this, before giving me a price.
We usually get the utility to look it over before pricing.

wireless

When you look at the job and see a free standing structure with an existing service you don't expect to hear you can only have one service. By the job I did they had already started the framing when DWP came out for a meterspot and surprised the GC and myself that they considered it a duplex and it can only have one drop. It added about 6k to that job.

Bkessler

Sorry gse I am not as great as you, and is my fear so great you can sense it. There is nothing in the nec to that disallows this. So you kinda have to learn it from experience. And so we all know the customer is fine with the extra costs.

neolitic

I need to save this so I can re-read it
every time I start to get misty-eyed
and nostalgic about California.

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Celtic

How's this sound....put the metering and disconnects in as the POCO requires...come off that one meter/disco and run you line to the out building...aerial, basically the same route it has now, but with the metering/disco in between.

(I might need a visual aid here)

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neolitic

Here's the visual...
Barn to milk house.
Farmers do it all the time!

HOORAY for Hooollywood

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mickeyco

I have a situation similar but different, I'd be curious if any one knows what the POCO in Illinois has to say about two drops to one building. I have a 4-unit brick building, 2 units on each side, one above the other and a firewall in between the two on each side. Each unit has its own meter plus one for utilities, there are two drops, one for each set of two. Now here's the odd part the building is in the middle of two lots (I get 2 separate tax bills) and each drop is on its own lot. We're converting to condos so we'll have to do a bit of electrical work. Does anyone know if I?m going to run into the same problem as the OP?

.

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neolitic

Tell me that you just
made that up for us, right?

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mickeyco

No, I didn't make it up, we have converted other ones, the exact same thing, but it was years ago and there were no problems (should have done this one at the same time), but now there are quite a few more regulations, like off-street parking , etc. I'd be intersted in knowing without asking and raising flags before hand.

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Bkessler

I thought about that but ho is going to have her friend dig the trench for me and just pay for it no problem. Although I could leave the original meter because it's the old edison base that is just sitting there by its self and put a new main breaker panel in underneath it instead of the standard california all in one. But oh well.