I am working my around my house replacing the trim and siding. My service drop is bolted into the side of my house into the trim I need to replace. I called the local utility and they want $469 up front and then they will pick the day they will come and temporarily shut it off. I also called an electcian I know and he told me OSHA won’t let anyone but the utiltiy move the drop. There has to be a better way. Ideas?
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Replies
Another query where if you have to ask you'd be afeared of DIY anyway.
osha is inapplicable for diy
tie a nylon rope to the service head and up oner the top of the house, unbolt, replace trim, pull back with rope, reclamp
what's the big deal with that
post a pic for better advise
I've moved a few services, even cut the lines and respliced. Heck, even restrung downed lines from ice storm.
Good knowledge, no fear, good insulation, and the correct tools.
Being careful, 2000 mi from home, even moved brothers service for him once, in the rain, on aluminum ladder, barehanded - just gotta know what you are doing
which gets back to 'if ya gotta ask, just work around it' whats so hard about that, or are ya afeared of getting witih 2 feet of the service wires??
Call another electrician. There are plenty of guys who will handle service conductors, even splicing into them hot. They will unbolt the hanger, drop it down a foot or so until you replace the facia then bolt it back. You should have an insulating blanket over the conductors while you are working. (this is not grandma's comforter)
I agree this is not a job for the homeowner. There are essentually unfused conductors and they will arc and spark until the primary protection on the transformer opens. That might not ever happen if the fault is on the load side of a 2 ga drop..
you da man junkhound
I move a service with a rope once. hikes! Three stories up!
Depends on how the service drop is connected. I replaced the siding behind our meter and disconnect panel, without killing the power (though I did pull the disconnect for part of it). But we have a weather head that terminates above the roof, so I didn't have to touch the main lines.
A little tricker if you have an old fashioned entry with wires coming to insulators attached to the house. But might be a good time to go ahead and get that updated to a modern weather head/mast setup.
All utilities have their own rules about what they "own", what the customer "owns", and where the two meet. In general the utility owns the wires up to the point of attachment. From there they often claim ownership down to the meter, though the customer's sparky will generally be responsible for physically installing meter base, conduit, and wiring up to the point of attachment.
Some utilities insist that only their own guys can touch the overhead wires, others certify sparkys to do the work. Many variations.
resolved
Thanks for all the comments. I stated calling other electricans until I found one more than happy to do the job. it wil cost around $100, but even my cheap rear end is willing to pay that to not touch the service drops. The best part is that instead of trying to schedule this with a utility known for terrible customer service, I get to deal with a far more reasonable electrican.
resolved
Thanks for all the comments. I stated calling other electricans until I found one more than happy to do the job. it wil cost around $100, but even my cheap rear end is willing to pay that to not touch the service drops. The best part is that instead of trying to schedule this with a utility known for terrible customer service, I get to deal with a far more reasonable electrican.
Move it
I helped, sort of, my electrician move the service off the house and onto a temporary pole. He tied a rope to the top, unscrewed the mast and box from the wall, and the two of us moved it to the temp pole. Took maybe 15 minutes. No big deal to him, scared me to death.
Its done, but it was ugly
So the electrician showed up this morning. He went up my aluminum ladder (he had a fiberglass ladder on top of his truck) and started to unscrew the carriage bolts. I asked him what his plan was. He said he would just walk the lines down the ladder, but I suggested that might be a problem with trucks and buses on my street hitting the lines. When he got to the last bolt it was under a lot of pressure and he had a hard time unscrewing it. I then suggested he tie rope to the service drop and he agreed. When he finally got the bolt out, it slammed hard to the end of the rope. There was no way in hell he was going to have held on to that without it being tied off.
It took me minutes 5 minutes to get the new trim board up. I tried to pull the rope from my other ladder to let him drive the bolts back in. I could barely budge it. So I got on the roof and tied a second rope to it . With much better leverage, I could pull the lines back to the house. He then insisted on untying the original rope thinking it was in his way of bolting the service drop back onto the house. I was pessimistic and suggested he just start driving in the first bolt, then untie the second rope. He did it his way and that meant I held the rope which was holding the entire live line over the street for 10 minutes while he figured out how drive in a bolt.
The sad thing is this adventure still cost me just under $300 for 2.5 hours of time. That $200 less than the utility and a lot easier to schedule, but it was not safe. This guy had no idea what he was doing.
You should have suspected...
that he was an idiot when he quoted you $100 to do the job. That's way too cheap.
Cliff
At last! Someone doing a siding job who cares!
Just how involved the job can be depends on exactly how the service was installed.
In a perfect world, the PoCo would cut the wires, tie them back to the pole, and the electrician would remove, then re-mount, the service equipment for you.
Some PoCo's will let the electrician cut the wires, and content themselves with breaking the meter seal. Others will insist on doing the cut (and reconnect) themselves.
Depending on the specific arrangement, re-mounting the service equipment can be a dream - or a nightmare. In either case, it's best to have the electrician do it.
The term 'electrician' covers a lot of ground. Especially in residential remodels, a lot of the 'electricians' have limited experience, limited equipment, and are probably wise to limit their activities to replacing light switches. Others make service-related work their bread & butter. I think this job is outside the experience -and comfort factor- of the guy you spoke to.
As for the 'git 'er dun' attitudes expressed by some siding crews, the web is full of pictures of services that were butchered by them. Most common is where they simply pry the stuff off the wall, do their siding work, and leave it hanging in the breeze. I compliment you for attempting to have it done right.