classic electric is a licensed and insured electrical contractor welcome back to the channel in today's video we're going to be upgrading this old 100 amp service to 200 amps are going to be answering specific questions that I've seen in the comments let's get to it so the one violation we see here right away is this is the main breaker and so it's in the down position when it's on that right there is a code violation I'll post that code section you see on the screen now I got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 so this is a Murray load Center probably 1980s I'm imagining look the cover comes right off let's see but obviously you can't put in a squd home line circuit breaker and a Murray panel that's a violation 11 10 Tac 3 Examination identification installation use and listing product certification of equipment 110 teac 3B installation and use equipment that is listed labeled or both sh be installed and used in accordance with any of the instructions included in the listing or labeling uh this looks like it's something else maybe that's a seam is maybe that's okay believe this is old school meray this is a GE this is a GE and this is a GE so you always want to make sure when you're putting Breakers into your panel that they match the manufacturer of the panel otherwise it's not going to sit properly on the bus bar and you could have some problems so they've upgraded the meter but when I say meter I meant the enclosure you see how it's buried into the siding right here the new 200 amp meter is much bigger than this one and so what we're going to do is we're going to put the 200 M meter right over this opening and make it watertight up on the top I don't have any PVC board today cuz I didn't think it was necessary uh because the cutout here doesn't have J channel like some of the other ones we have where the new meter will not cover that up so we're going to go right over this opening once we get it done now as you can see the Riser is pretty high and long that's where it's got to be it's got to be above the window I don't think it necessarily has to be that high but we're going to put it back exactly way it was and as you can see there there's the service head and the weather head or the service point I should say and then this overhead goes right to this Pole right out on the street okay so as you can see I got everything disconnected now pretty easy here these cables they come through the seal we're going to do the same thing um I might have to get some blocks here to build this out because of the depth I didn't bring any the 2x4s with me that's a shame so uh these are the main circuits obviously this was added later this was added later and this was added later but these up here I could just tell that these are the original with the home and it's not a huge house but I think think we're going to go up a little higher and bring them out a little higher uh this is still going to be a a surface mounted panel uh but we got to build this out a little bit 2x4s right so here this is called a 2-in hub I call this a hub sits on top of the meter for the overhead service which is what I have right here and these are irreversible screws if you don't know what those are they look like this if you see the edge right there I cannot once they go in you can't reverse because there's nowhere to put your screwdriver I mean I guess you could take them out with a pair of pliers but that's not what they're designed for they're designed to go in and not come out so when you're putting them when you're attaching The Hub to the meter be very careful that they go in just right cuz if you cross thread them you're going to have a hard time uh getting them out and redoing them I just like to start them by hand here like I said there should be no resistance of them going in so make sure you only get one shot at this not to screw it up so there you go and I usually leave them just hand tightened or just not super tight until I get all four screws started and I know I don't have any issues it should go in nice and easy I think they're quarter 20s so now it's nice and tight in there so once you get The Hub on that's where your 2-in mail adapter gets attached to the meter and then you sleeve your PVC into to the mail adapter and that's how you make the connection at the meter now this is an a PSG 200 amp 5 jaw overhead approved meter I say approved because jcpnl and PSA they do have some differences on what they allow from what I understand well I know for sure that for jcpnl I can use the meter Main and I think I saw a recent video where I put the meter Main in uh but this one here I don't believe PSG has approved that although I'm hearing things that it's okay to do that now um I'm not 100% certain I will have to get back to you on that and uh I have a meeting coming up soon on a project I'm doing in Westfield on a new Mass service and I will ask the psng inspector while I'm working on another job this is a service disconnect it's rated for service work it's a 200 amp disconnect on off on off good for 200 amps but this number right here 25k what that means is 25,000 available interrup current I'm sorry this is the short circuit current rating this 25k right here whereas the Transformer out of the street provides 10,000 available interrupt current so as long as this number is higher then the available interrupt current from the service then everything will be safe and there'll be no issues if this number is lower than your available interrupt current then that available interrupt current could essentially blow up this circuit breaker inside the house so you not so much in residential do I run into that but if you run into some Commercial Services most electrical inspectors or building inspectors will require that you prove to them you know what the short circuit current rating and the available interrupt current is before for the issue a permit okay so now I've prepped the meter and I'm going to attach it to the house and obviously I just want to go over the cutout from the old fan from the old ex meter enclosure that was there uh I did some duct seal over that existing hole um where the meter fed into the back of the electrical panel of the first installation I'm always trying out new magnetic bits to Drive fasteners like I am here but here I just have a 2-in bit with a number two Phillips which is what I enjoy using and uh that's why I was struggling to get the screws in so here I have my 6in extension and as you can see there's plenty of room for my impact driver to be on the outside of that enclosure without interfering from interfering with me installing the screws to the house uh definitely a hobby of mine of trying new stuff for my drill uh new tool belt setups I'm I'm always changing I find out things that I like I want to improve upon them so I'm always trying new things as far as tools and uh ways to get work done what I'm doing here now is um I've discovered that I can't come into the back of the disconnect into the back of the panel cuz it'll just be too high so I wind up putting a 2in c seal in there as you can see right beneath the breaker on that side of the of the enclosure here and I'm going to come out of the bottom straight out of the bottom I guess I could have used a offset mail adapter there I didn't think it was that necessary and I didn't have one um but I'm just reviewing this video now thinking I probably could have used a mail adapter anyhow I'm going to go straight down with a 2-in mail adapter out of the bottom and I'm going to attach this lb before gluing it so I can get a nice air area for where I need to make my hole so that I could come into the back of the panel inside the garage and so I just take a big thick Sharpie here and draw it and then I'll take the lb out of there and I'm going to make a 2 and 3/4 in hole using a 2 and 3/4 in hole saw [Music] [Music] I should have definitely used my M18 drill rather than the M12 the M12 was getting heated real quick and I couldn't get through this hole I couldn't make the hole fast quickly with the m 12 it eventually got through but the m8's much more uh worthy of this job okay so you saw what I just did right there so I originally wanted to come out of the back of the service disconnect right here okay and into the back of the panel but that just wasn't going to happen there's not enough room inside the enclosure of the panel to come in on the side I mean I've done that before but it's tight it's not easy to do and this was a better way and a more efficient way so we plugged this in with the KO seal all righty and then we came out of the bottom with an lb and then we boarded out the hole for the conduit to fit into there and now we're down low here with this condo coming through the wall we're going to put this plywood over the the uh PVC right here and we're going to come into the bottom corner of our panel right there and that's how this service will live for the next 6 years any questions okay so this is the service disconnect on the exterior and what I'm doing is I am attaching my main bonding jumper which in this case are these two copper straps and what it does is it bonds between the enclosure and the grounded neutral coming from the utility the three wire that comes down from the service at one of those wires is uninsulated that's the grounded leg and it's also connected to ground back at the Transformer and it's Center tapped at this Transformer it brings the ground to the system and this is where we connect our grounding electrodes and we bond this case to the grounded neutral lug and that's what these two little jumpers are doing here once I attach them to this neutral bar prepping the panel here to make sure that the surface mounted 200 main breaker panel here is actually centered on my uh mounting board this definitely goes a long way into doing a nice quality job as far as I'm concerned okay so I just put the board up after doing the whole saw to get into place see what it looks like looks good it's going to look beautiful when it's done trouble is there's just a little bit of space behind this board because of this uh this seal plate here on top of the foundation limited there so fortunately I keep some spare plywood on here and I'm going to rip a couple pieces and I think that's going to do the trick let's do it was excited when I can use my circular saw on a job so I have a few of these M18 circular saws but this one is an M18 from probably 5 or 6 years ago with a 6 and 1/2 in uh blade on it [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so I didn't know it but the camera shut down cuz it was too hot and it's a hot day today it's upper 990s today it's cool breeze and I'm in the shade here in the garage but um we're still working so we're able to attach this as you can see put on my light here see how it just comes in from the back there all right so we padded this out with some plywood you can tell this thing's in there really really solid and it's centered right on the board and so uh we're going to finish wiring it up and then we can do the outside I'm going to finish the inside first then go outside wire it up if you're planning on putting a 200 amp service in your house make sure when you go to get the 200 amp main breaker panel you actually get a minimum 40 circuits this particular panel is rated for full 40 full circuit breakers and up to 40 twin circuit breakers so the maximum amount of power I can get out of this panel is actually 80 circuits which is way more um than you'll ever need in inside this house but with electrical demand for electric vehicles and whatever else is in our future uh getting a 200 amp service is going to allow you enough power at least for the next 20 years I guess uh I I know I'm doing some getting some quotes now putting out some quotes for 400 amp Services which is really crazy in a small residential house but if you've got four zones of air conditioning and two electric vehicle Chargers you'll need a 400 amp service without question and a 400 amp service is actually 320 amps continuous that's the uh the meter that jcpnl and psng will will require for a 400 amp service and at that point you're talking about parallel conductors on your Riser from the meter up to the service entrance and then into your panel so there's a lot of planning that goes on on that but if you were supposed to if you were just going to be doing a 200 amp service make sure you get a minimum of 40 circuits I uh I cringe when I work inside a new house less than 5 years old and they have a 200 amp service but the contractor put in a 20 circuit panel uh to me that's not good value unfortunately a lot of new building new residential um not that guys are making shortcuts but you tell me if a 20 circuit 200 amp panel is a good value or a 40 circuit panel is a better value I think you understand where I'm going with this so I appreciate when I see at least a 40 circuit minimum 200 amp main breaker panel but the new Builders got to do what they got to do to win the bid and that's why you see those 20 circuit panels for okay so here I'm doing the grounding electrode to the copper water M the copper water man is buried in the earth therefore it's grounded in the Earth right the Earth is as Mike H always says the Earth does not come with terminals to terminate your conductors so stuff that's buried in the earth we connect to that in this case it's the copper water pipe in the earth we're going to come down the wall over here with number two aluminum which is the size grounding electric inductor dictated by the code for a 200 amp residential service like I'm putting in now it's table 250 tax 66 is where we find the size for a grounding electroc conductor if we look at the size of the largest ungrounded conductor or equivalent area for parallel conductors we know for a 200 amp service we're using four o aluminum or two o copper so as we see for Co copper 2 o or three or the size grounding Electro conductor for a 200 amp service is number four copper or number two aluminum now the aluminum if you were doing a 100 amp service most guys they run number six copper or uh number four aluminum for 100 amps but the code says you only need to run a number eight wire for grounding electric conductor eight copper trouble with that is if it's eight copper it's too small and it's subject to physical damage that's what the code tells us so like myself and a lot of other electricians do we'll carry number six with us that doesn't need to be protected it neither does this number two aluminum so that's why we're installing it the other reason why we keep it on the truck the number six copper is the maximum size no matter what size service I'm putting in grounding electric conductor to our ground rods so number six a very common size wire we also use a lot of number six for the electric vehicle circuits so I keep a lot of six in stock now so this is like a split level house uh without a basement it has a crawl space underneath the first floor so the water M here is right inside the garage and so what I'm doing is I'm drilling down as close as I can to that window frame because I know I have a king stud that I can attach my coar screws and attach my straps to the wall in a workmanlike manner so here I am going over the garage door with the number two aluminum for our water main grounding Electro conductor okay so the camera battery died wasn't hot this time was the battery uh I came through with my grounding Electro conductor here uh as you saw we were connecting it over at the water main it's not going to make that connection we're just going to go inside the main disconnect that's right here on the outside and then on the inside it's going to be a four wire system two Hots a neutral and a ground to meet the code the reason why we run four wires and not a three wire into our main lug only panel is because we want to have a separate conductor just for our equipment grounding and the reason why we do that is because we do not want a parallel path which means more than one path for current to flow when trying to clear a fault if we had two paths for the current for the fault current to flow it would actually take twice as long to get back to the source to fac itate the overcurrent protective device the circuit breaker so if we have just one isolated path for the fault current the ground fault current we're able to clear the short we're able to clear the fault faster with one path rather than two the other path of course is our grounded neutral conductor which should not be confused with the equipment grounding conductor the two different functions the main difference between the grounded neutral conductor and the equipment grounding conductor is the grounded neutral conductor is a current carrying conductor the equipment grounding conductor only carries current in a fault condition so here this is uh I believe my grounding my ground rod uh number six Aug to each of my ground rods and what I want to do is I want to put it into this device I'm using to uh for the bonding Bridge that's attached right to the main disconnect there I want to strip away some of the insulation so that when I make the connection to this device it actually makes a solid bonding connection there's a set screw and I'm going to tighten it down and uh get a nice Bond at the connector right there I don't know if this is necessary it probably is so that's why I do it so now there's a connection on the um the ground bar here okay the bonding Bridge we call it and this is where you would attach all the grounding electrodes from maybe your phone system or your internet service provider or a satellite dish all of those things are subject to um to faults I shouldn't say faults to lightning strikes uh when lightning strikes it induces a voltage and what we want to do is we want to channel that voltage that induced voltage right the ground before it goes inside your house so auxiliary grounding conductors to each of our uh devices and then to a common ground to the common grounding system here that I'm installing uh facilitates that this is the main breaker panel uh this is the main breaker rather and those are my main disconnect and so all my grounding Electro conductors and my grounding neutral conductors all meet here and this is is where they're bonded together where any kind of ground fault from the equipment grounding conductor actually go back on the grounded neutral um back to the service in one quick path let me know in the comments you got more questions about that um not an easy subject to uh discuss and have somebody understand for sure uh but I do spend a lot of time in the classroom as a LIC electrician there's 34 hours every 3 years of class time instruction continuing education that's required in order to update my electrical license every three years here in New Jersey in some other states around the country it's different it might be two years I think actually the uh registered journeyman now in New Jersey every two years they got to do 15 hours of continuing education I am a big fan of the continuing education because um the electrical trade is evolving constantly uh we know a lot more than we did say 50 years ago about electrical current and I believe the rules here in New Jersey serves not only the electrician well but our customers as well because we have the knowledge to make proper installations and make your house safe and this is why you should always choose a licensed electrical contractor you're really taking a chance by hiring anybody to do your electrical work that's not licensed that's a big chance and if uh something B were happened to your house the person that installed it would not be on the hook you would be on the hook because the person installed it is not insured so here I'm driving some ground rods uh with the SDS Max M18 tool definitely makes driving ground rods very quick and then this is probably the worst part of the job that I don't like is getting in here in the dirt and um moving away to mulch and burying the grounding electr conductor to each of my two ground rods this was a very very hot day and fortunately I'm in the shade here at the end of part at the last at the last part of the day and um I'm just sweating like mad and uh the dirt the sweat just makes you aggravated at least it makes me aggravated I'm sure nobody likes that and so uh but it's got to get done uh for safety and um it did get done so here if I could do this all over again and I'm actually gluing when I first got to the job in the morning you'll see that piece in my left hand the bent piece there I got no power so the first thing I do when I get there is I get the PVC heater out and I make the bend that I need to do the service Riser ahead of doing the service Riser but what I did was I glued it together and then tried to carry this giant piece up the ladder and that was a mistake I should have just put a straight piece in the top of the meter here and then gone up top and measured where the end of my bent piece of PVC ended up and then made my cut I try to make my straps on my Riser here uh equal distance apart while also as you can see from the old service you have some discoloration on the aluminum siding this isn't vinyl this is aluminum siding on this house so what we want to do is we want to try to cover up the old holes with the new strap so it looks nice and neat that's what I'm trying to do here is for allergies Rhino system director Dr howardv explains if someone's exposed to allergies they can get with younger mens it's different because you're you're you're being turned on to them with their this was a very high Riser it's actually about 25 ft of number two of 2in PVC and the uh copper conductors here and I'm way up at the top there I need a new extension ladder and I'm at the top of this ladder it was kind of dangerous what I was doing here so don't do this at home if you're not trained and uh I'll be getting I just actually ordered the new ladder I got to go pick it up next week anyhow um so here I am on the ground just pushing up the individual service entrance conductors up to the service head or to the weather head I should say and then uh unfortunately I did not record the cameras it was so hot this day uh it was just too hot and I had to get this work done so I went up and I tied in and I actually got a little buzz um while I was up there tying in I had my um I my uninsulated tea handle um to tighten down the butt splice and my arm my other my elbow on my left hand was actually rubbing up against the aluminum side so I got a little little bit of a tinge uh which is kind of a scary Moment On Top of the extension ladder like you see maybe I should get some gloves I see that in the comments section A lot I used to have them I got them from the utility company worker many years ago and I could have sworn they're somewhere in my garage I know they're in my garage someplace I've looked for them a couple times I haven't been able to find them so I hope I didn't accidentally throw those away um but you might see me with new gloves coming up soon especially here with the aluminum siding obviously that aluminum will conduct electricity and it is connected to ground with this equipment right here hey guys so I'm back here the next day on Tuesday finished up last night I pulled out of here around 6:30 7:00ish uh had a couple a loose ends that tightened this morning I did that and I just wanted to show you the final result of the electrical panel first let me show you over here the grounding electrode for the water main which is here so the idea is that you hit this first point the code tells me within the first 5 ft of where it enters the house obviously right my right foot is where it enters okay that was the previous U ground Clump there for the 100 amp surface that was here this is the number two aluminum and it jumps from the one side to the other side even though the meter I think is outside so I'm not sure we really need to do that jump but we did it anyway what I'm talking about is the jump from here to here it looks like the water man used to be in here but it's not anymore but anyway if they decide to put that water man in then the jump will be there so that's why we left the jump as it was uh and I left the old clamps on there down here sometimes when you take those off you unsettle the copper water pipe and now all of a sudden it's dripping it's leaking and you're thinking well what am I going to do I'm not a plumber I don't know how to stop a leak so if I can avoid touching it at all cost that's what I'm going to do to avoid any further interruptions or any interruptions I should say on that water main so that's why I left it in place and just cut off the old groundy Electro conductor here is my new 40 circuit with the capacity for 80 circuits with twin Breakers the new Cutler Hammer BR panel um we have obviously the the whole house surge protection right here we have a 200 amp main breaker we have double pole circuits for the three wires this is also a three wire circuit here I just had to extend them uh up here in the panel I had to put in a few wios could have used wire nuts decid to do the wios a little faster yesterday to get this done like I said I didn't leave until like well after 6:30 last night or 6:00 I should say probably closer to 7:00 and by the time I got home to eat dinner it was close to 8:00 so it was a long day okay so uh today what we're going to do is we're going to label each of these circuit breakers on the um the legend that's inside here as required by the code and um we also got to put in an exhaust fan today in the bathroom and change out about 15 duplex receptacles uh out here to finish the tour of the electric service we have our 200 a meter which is here all right the line side is always on the top the load side's always on the bottom we have our main disconnect right here so the power comes in from up at the service point up there okay and then down this Riser conduit into the meter uh so everything that's being used is metered obviously the load side comes over to here to the line side of our service entrance um main disconnect okay and then the load side of that disconnect is what goes down and into the panel through this lb fitting now I haven't done it yet but I'm going to fill this conduit fitting with some duck seal so that the warm weather doesn't meet the cold weather in the winter time um we also drove a couple ground rods down here and we put our other ground rod over here and that about wraps up this service upgrade pending a final electrical inspection if you like this video do me a favor hit that like button and uh we'll see you on the next one thanks guys thanks for watching this video be sure to subscribe and we'll see you on the next one