electrical service How can you tell what the line capacity is for your house?

Question

would like to upgrade service to 200 amp not sure if it will require fishing through a lower guage wire?

Answer 1

The gauge of the wire is probably visible on the service conductors entering your panel or main breaker.
If coming in overhead:
200A. Requires #1/0 Copper, #2/0 Alum.
!00A. Requires #4 Copper, #2 Alum.
If you can't see the numbers on the insulation of the service wireing, go to a shop and look at the wire of the gauges given.
There is enough difference for visual identification.
Note : A service upgrade must be inspected and approved to be legal.
If you DIY make sure the whole panel is up to the latest code.
Depending on the inspector and local requirements you might have to upgrade some existing circuits to GFI or AFCI breakers.

Answer 2

andy coleman is wrong
if your main is a 2 pole 50 then all you have is a 50 amp single phase service, not 100 amps
the same goes true for a 2 pole 100 amp main breaker
it's just a single phase 100 amp service
you can upgrade to a 200 amp single phase service

you'll need a permit pulled
a qualified electrician to swap out the panel
and the power company, not the city, will determine weather or not if they pull in new new over / under ground feeders
ideally you want the load calcs for the new panel
the load calcs will represent connected load
but the power company goes by demand load ( what you actually draw amperage wise )
they know typically what a 200 amp service draws
and it's not 200 amps
plus on a over head drop the rate the wires differently then for in conduit, not to mention they have their own set of rules and do not follow NEC rules.
the feeders from the masthead to the panel need to be by NEC rules for sizing and ground wire, the drop from the pole to the masthead is not. Only the mast / weather head, the wire and the panel and grounding itself are inspected by the city, then a release is given to the power company to set the meter ( you can reset the meter from the 100 to the 200 amp, but the sea l will be broken ad the power company will come out and pull the meter anyways for final hook up and reseal the meter.
BTW why do you need 200 amps?
many older houses get by fine on 100amp with even a pool, it when you add AC ( and even then todays modern AC unit only draw 30amps at 240 volts ), if you upgrading, try getting a 42 circuit single phase panel ( full size 1" breakers ) verses a 30 circuit or 24 / 30 circuit ( with slims )

Answer 3

In order to upgrade to 200 amps you will need to:

1. Change the entrance conduit including the drip cap, meter base and the wiring and conduit in between.

2. Change the wiring from the meter base to the power panel.

3. Change the power panel, the main breaker and redo all the wiring.

Even if you are handy, it would be unlikely that you can do step 1. Even contractors have the electric company to reconnect after completion and sometime disconnect before starting. There is no safe way for you to kill the power before the meter.

Remember that if you were to try this your self, that the necessary coordination to have a decently short outage would be near impossible.

Answer 4

First of all if you are going to upgrade to 200 amps you must upsize your main feeds. Service for 100 amps is not big enough for 200 amps. Now keep in mind that the maximum you can run on any wire by code is 80% of its rated load carring capacity. So by code a 200 amp service can only use 160 amps max. This is fine as you will never pull 160 amps at one time. This is the reason you have to up size your main feeds. I strongly suggest you hire a electrician. He will do it safely and by code.

Answer 5

Most homes that were originally wired for 100 amps have a heavy enough guage line to carry 200 amps.

But just to be safe, you better call your local utility and have them check this out - otherwise you could conceivably start frying your main feed.

Answer 6

the easiest way is to look in your breaker box and look at the main breaker and see what it is if it's a double 50 then your box is a 100 amp service if it has a double 100 then you have a 200 amp service if it's a 100 amp service then you might have to pull a new larger line from the meter to the base

Answer 7

First stephan is correct, I also would recommend this service change be installed by a competent electrician. There are a lot of things to consider when you do this. Good luck