No weather head, no conduit. I have been writing them up, but getting a lot of flak for it. I know this is done by the power company, but I still don't think it's right. What do you all think?
-- Bradley S. Gentry
Superior Home Inspection, LLC
Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, &
Elkton, VA
www.superiorllc.net
Originally Posted By: Greg Fretwell This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Carla is right. As long as they maintain the height above grade there is no need for a mast or weather head. You might have a “drip loop” concern but I can’t tell from the picture. If the brown box is sealed around the conductors to prevent water intrusion into the SEU that may not be an issue either.
Originally Posted By: Greg Fretwell This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
I am guessing that brown box is the raintight service head. When I was in Md the SEU just terminated in a downward orientation with a glob of monkey spit on the end. That went to a drip loop and the POCO crimps.
Here in Florida most of the older houses are too short to get the ground clearance so they poke a mast up through the roof. Virtually every new house I see uses an underground lateral.
Originally Posted By: bgentry This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Actually, the brown box is not raintight (wish I had a better picture). The box is oriented differently than most are here. It is more like a rain shield that is normally open to the bottom, but this one is oriented so that the opening is to the side that you cannot see (turned 90 deg. CCW from most installations).
BTW, I did write it up for it's proximity to the window and did emphasize that to be the major issue with the drop.
-- Bradley S. Gentry
Superior Home Inspection, LLC
Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, &
Elkton, VA
www.superiorllc.net
Originally Posted By: jtedesco This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Quote:
230.9 Clearances on Buildings. Service conductors and
final spans shall comply with 230.9(A), (B), and (C).
(A) Clearances. Service conductors installed as open conductors
or multiconductor cable without an overall outer
jacket shall have a clearance of not less than 900 mm (3 ft)
from windows that are designed to be opened, doors, porches,
balconies, ladders, stairs, fire escapes, or similar locations.
Exception: Conductors run above the top level of a window
shall be permitted to be less than the 900-mm (3-ft)
requirement.
Quote:
Service Conductors. The conductors from the service point
to the service disconnecting means.
Originally Posted By: jkormos This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Greg Fretwell wrote:
BTW the real issue might be the proximity to the window.
I agree with Greg, the proximity to the window would be my concern, it seems to be less than 36 inches,  although it makes for a great clothes line 
Originally Posted By: bbadger This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
jtroth wrote:
describe please looking at the "entire service"
I will give it a try.
In a perfect world if you saw that the customer owned service conductors (forget about the power company's wires) where rated 200 amps you could say that the service is 200 amps.
However....imany times it is not like that.
You need to figure out the conductor rating, the meter socket rating, the service disconnect rating and perhaps the the panel rating.
Whichever one of these has the lowest rating would determine the service size.
Here is a typical scenario.
Someone has a 100 amp service and either pays someone or takes it upon themselves to change it to a 200 amp service. But, they do not want to pull permits or get the power company involved.
So they just change the old 100 amp panel to a new 200 amp panel leaving the 100 amp meter socket and service conductors.
In this case even though they have installed a 200 amp panel the service capacity is still limited by the meter socket and conductors to 100 amps.
It gets more complicated.
What is the service size if they have two 200 amp service panels?
How can you tell?
Take a look at this picture
What is the service size here, we have five 100 amp meters, one 200 amp meter, inside there are six 100 amp breakers and the service conductors in the PVC from the service point to the meters are rated 200 amps?
-- Bob Badger
Electrical Construction & Maintenance
Moderator at ECN
Originally Posted By: dedwards This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
I explained to one woman like this. If you had the fastest computer on planet earth but only had a 33 K bps modem, than that would be the maximum speed of the computer on the internet. It is based on the smallest or in this case the slowest component.
