When I bought my house about 10 years ago, who knows who owned it before, it had two electric company meters. 1 part of the house was connected to one meter, and one part of the house was connected to the other meter. Since I didn’t know about it, the electrical company cut power, and one part of my house electricity was off, and one part was on.
So, I called the electric company, they explained. They told me that I would need to hire an electrician to change from the two electrical units to just one. I did nothing for ten years, since I never used the one part of the house, and the rates were cheap.
So, last year, I cancelled the one meter’s service. Just used the other part of the house. Now, however, I need all of the house, so, I will need the electrician’s services.
Question/s: What is the succinct way to explain the process to an electrician? e.g., do I ask for a two meter to one meter conversion? Or, do I just explain like I did here?
2. How complicated a process is it anyway? Can he do it in under an hour? Or, will it be a longer process?
3. What can I expect the price to be?
4. Can I save money by using some sort of General Contractor?
An electrician will have to evaluate it to see exactly what is involved. Best case they can run the second panel off of the first which would save a lot of rewiring. That could probably be done in a couple of hours. Worst case you would need to do a lot of rewiring which would cost more and would take more time.
Go straight to an electrician. Do not get a general contractor or anyone else involved.
Possibly the best piece of advice you will get in this thread. Also, I would get a few estimates prior to deciding who to hire. Get a feel for their knowledge and skill. This could be a realatively simple job or a complete nightmare.
Ditto what the others have said. I’m usually the first one to jump in and tell people to call a handyman instead of a tradesman and in theory this is an easy job. But there’s code work involved. Specific gauges of wires. Will the currently unpowered box become a sub panel? If it’s a sub panel that means the ground and neutral wires will have to be on separate bus bars etc etc etc… Will a handyman/contractor disconnect/abandon the meter properly (I assume there’s a proper way to do it)? There’s just too much stuff going on that a handyman/contractor more then likely won’t know. They’ll be able to do it, just not correctly. Like I said, in theory, it’s just a a matter of connecting three wires from one box to the other. But it likely won’t be up to code.
In fact, I’d take it one step further. I’d call in an electrician and then (assuming you don’t have anything else to worry about) I’d have his work inspected by the city afterwords. I’d also pull permits if necessary.
Also, totally random, nothing to base it on guess…$400 assuming nothing major needs to be upgraded (that is, the old box and breakers will continue to work)
Also, as for how to explain it, I think you did just fine. Just tell them you bought a duplex, the electric company removed the meter for half the house and you need other half brought into the current breaker box. I wouldn’t go beyond that. Just let them come out and take a look.
A few other things. Like others said, get some estimates. You didn’t mention how many amps your service is, but if it’s low (say, 100) you might need to upgrade.
Also, whatever you do, find out how much it would be to just have the electric company drop the other meter back in (look at the non-energy type charges on your bill). If it would take more then a few years to over come the cost, it might be a better idea to just do it that way. For example, if the electric company includes $20 a month worth of service charges for your meter and the electrician wants $1000 for the job, that’s over 4 years before it’ll pay for itself. Not only that, you’ll be turning back on a system that you already know works (in theory) rather then trying to decide between your options of making the other panel a subpanel vs moving everything to one box etc etc and hoping you picked the best one and a competent electrician and the work was done correctly.
Does that make sense?
Along with sedtting up the second panel as a sub panel the second meter box should be removed and this will have to be worked out with the utility.
If you go to a single meter. Have all work permited and inspected. And while you are at it upgrade the size of the main. Depending on the house I would go with 150 to 200 amps.
In most jurisdictions, the homeowner owns the meter box (you can buy them at Home Depot). The only thing the Electric Company owns is the meter itself. I would assume the homeowner is free to tear it out on their own. But depending on what’s underneath it, it might be easier just to leave it alone (I assume they put a cover on it when they pulled the meter). For example, if your house is sided and the siding goes around the meter, you’ll have to patch the siding. In that case, it would make more sense to just leave it as is.
Just a word of caution: check this out. In my jurisdiction (Detroit Edison), the meter can is owned by Detroit Edison. You can go pick them up free (not even a question asked!) at Detroit Edison.
I would just like to add that in some places the electric company has the final call on meter location and they may want it relocated. This is called a meter spot and must be done before work is started.
At my house I had to move the meter around the corner from its prior location during an upgrade from 100A to a 200 A panel.
Do you have two breaker or fuse panels? Normally each meter would feed into its own fuse panel.
The advice above is good. Only thing I might add is your eventual plans for resell. A duplex is potentially more valuable because it can be two rental units. Do you want to keep that option? If so, make it known to the electrician. He can do a temporary fix that uses one meter and you can still eventually have it switched back to two meters.
If you never want to sell this as a duplex. Then I’d have a single breaker panel installed and combine the circuits from the two breaker panels. That way you can upgrade the service and have a modern breaker panel.
One thing that has not been brought up is the cost of the power, mainly the baseline. Check your present bill to see if you can tell what the baseline is. The cost per KWH increases in brackets over 100% of base line. You will have to check with the power company to see if you combine meters will your baseline increase by the same factor or will it stay the same?
I am on time of day billing so I pay less on off peak hours. Here are last months off peak brackets.
Baseline $0.07921 per KWH
101-130% of Baseline $0.09737
131-200% of Baseline $0.24695
201-300% of Baseline $0.27695
If you do not get an increase in your baseline and you have a low baseline it could really increase your bill.
Let the power company think its still a duplex. It doesn’t matter to them anyway.