Nosparxsse

Residential setting


House with basement.

200 amp meter socket on outside.
Used knockout in back of meter socket.
sch 40 PVC 90 down to basement with approx 24 in. of pipe between 90 from Meter socket and panel. total distance on wire, 55" long.

Code violation or ok?

no disconnect on outside, but within 5 ' of panel???

480sparky

What's your POCO rule?

It's 10' for me, and that only starts once you get inside the house. You can legally go 'round the house 5 times without a disco if you wanted to.

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chenley

10' feet in the county and 36" in the city. <-- Two different POCO's

The way the OP stated I would not see it needing a disconnect. Althought, it is up to the POCO there.

Nosparxsse

picture

5 feet

done this for years like this, but an inspector questioned me on it the other day..

pvc pipe is ok right???



code reference??

230.70 A (1) Everything is good there....



note: the pipe is passing through wood just above the basement wall plate, not concrete.

Attached Images

Basement panel 218x196.jpg (8.9 KB, 285 views)

kbsparky

I'd say from your description that you have installed the Service Disconnect as soon as practical after the conductors have entered the building.

Acceptable to me and the inspectors around here. We've done this type of installation many times.

gilbequick

Here it's 6' total wire length, and I've never run it in PVC or any kind of pipe, I've just used 4/0 AL SE. But to have 6' end to end you've got to be pretty much back to back on your meter and panel.

Effectively Grounded

Unless your Poco has their own rules for what happens AFTER the meter then it is subject to your inspectors opinion.

It sounds reasonable to me. General rule of thumb was always within 5' around these here parts

frenchelectrican

I only have one queston in case I did miss it or not.,,

Did you have LB inside or just a 90° sweep ell ?

However in my area 6 feet is tyical limit but per POCO and Comm 16 { wisconsin state code } it stated 8 feet.

Merci,Marc

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Bkessler

not.

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frenchelectrican

Quoi ??? { What ?? }

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Bleu est beau.

Bkessler

My answer to the original question in the subject line.

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Nosparxsse

meter,
pvc male adapter,
sweep 90,
coupling ,
18" of pvc,
male adapter,
panel.

in that order.....

The inspector DID finally agree that I was in the right, by the way... at least this time....

ralph

You dont have any sch 40 exposed to physical damage, so that looks like a pretty good installation to me.

KayJay

No LB, at least as far as I can tell from the picture anyway… Hopefully the conduit is plugged with duct seal where it leaves the back of the meter enclosure to prevent condensation and moisture accumulation in the panel below.

jrclen

8' here in state code like Marc said. Last summer I had to install a meter main and eat the cost because the power company said 80 feet was to far from the meter to the panel. On a job in spring with the same power company (different lineman) I was able to run around the house 80' before entering with no problem. So the POCO rules can change from one location to another.

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John

nap

POCO rules? Not around here. This is an AHJ situation and the POCO is not the AHJ.

sorry to hear about your grief from yet another entity. The inspectors can generally cause enough on their own.


and; no disco unless AHJ interprets this distance as too far.

jrclen

In this case the POCO just refuses to connect if they don't like something. And code has nothing to do with it. My problem is that the rules change from one neighborhood to another within the same POCO. What it amounted to in this case was a lineman with a big ego. And a supervisor back at the office who blindly backed him up.

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John

rbic102

You should be okay because of the 25 ft tap rule

MDShunk

There's probably not an AHJ in this land that's going to let you run 25 feet of unprotected service conductors indoors.

In the original case, I'd call it fine. You installed that disconnect as close as practical after entering the basement. I get 3 feet here, but they'd pass that install too. I'm not sure how you'd even make that any more compact without mounting the panel crazy high (creating another violation).

Seems like the interpretation of how short "short" really is varies a lot. I've heard talk of AHJ's who want an outdoor disconnect for anything longer than a nipple indoors. If I have a case I think is borderline, I'll either install an outdoor disconnect anyhow, or see if I can get the inspector to swing by and look at it if the budget is a concern.

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rbic102

I beg to differ with you. Where a panel cannot be placed directly behind the meter serving it you are allowed to run ser cable up to 25 feet without any protection . Been doing it for years and the code hasnt changed that. It is called a 25 foot tap rule where no protection is required on the service entrance conductors that can be no longer than twenty five feet from point of service attachment.