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My wife and I are considering adding a major addition onto the back of our house. When thinking about where to put the door the best location is right where our main underground electrical line enters the house and terminates in the main circuit breaker box (with the meter on outside wall right there). This seems like it would be a big deal to move, but is it really? The cable tv and phone also come into the house in the same area, but these seem relatively easy to move. The electrical has me worried. Has anyone actually had to move the main box? Thanks for your help.
Unless you have a bunch of extra wire in the wall for each run in the house, and I doubt you do. You will have to re route, and/or PROPERLY splice each run to a new location.
You will also have to have each utility company re route their connections, they will charge you for this. You will have to have everything inspected by a master electrician and signed off on as safe. This will take a couple of days to do, provided you can get the utility companies to work with your time frame (good luck) and you'll be without power during that time.
My advice, unless you REALLY have to have it there and have a huge budget, find another location. I don't know where you're at but around here a safe bet is $3K to $5K+ maybe more if the box needs to be updated and replaced to do it.
Thank you guys for your input. I was thinking it would be a lot of trouble (and Davart clearly laid out some of the specific troubles) so we will have to find another place to put the door. Thanks again.
Location: Sometimes Maryland, sometimes NoVA. Depends on the day of the week
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Husband electrician talking:
From the meter on outside of house, will have to dig out the main line (~2 feet down) and have to go out 3-5 feet past where it will come into (or under) the addition. New meter will probably go on the side of the addition with a new panel on the inside of the meter. Then you kind of treat the old panel like a subpanel off the new main. That alone is several days of work for the electrician, plus dealing with the power company.
Now, if I understood you correctly, you want the door to go *through* the current panel. And thats a whole different story, since everything feeds into there, and you probably don't have enough wire to just move the box without junctioning and adding new wire. If you get lucky, and all the wires are coming from the same direction *and* its the direction you want to move it, then it could possibly not require adding wire. But this is *very* unlikely. So, you would have to have a MAJOR junction box/through feeding to the new panel. And that junction box/through will have to be accessible (i.e. not behind drywall without an ugly panel that can be removed). Doing that will add at least two days to the labor.
"Basically, for doing all that, its a major pain in the *** and he is going to pay a ton of money for that." (direct quote from DH)
Thats Davart's answer with far more details that you wanted. LOL
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