griffinconst,
We have a main panel, and part of the permanent feed is already installed. It comes out of the ground 25' from the house, to a meter, mounted on a board affixed to a tree that has long since grown and rotted and died in parts. The wiring underground is okay, except for the fact that the original electrician only used #4awg for the neutral, which is insane, when he used 600 amp cables for the hot leads coming from the main breaker to the meter box on the side of the house. I few years ago, I ran an external ground cable to help with that neutral, as load balancing became an issue.
So we've got a 200A Cutler-Hammer main panel, 600A teflon-coated feed wires going through 2" conduit out to the meter box on the exterior wall. There's a couple of metal plates in there to bypass that nonexistent meter, as there's an actual meter on the tree, 25' away. From the meterbox on the house, 2" conduit goes underground, through the foundation wall (foundation wall was poured after the conduit was in place), continues another 13' or so and goes through a 90° bend and exits the ground, to the bottom of a rusted out NEMA box, where a splice is, and then into the utility meter above. Both look like they're falling down, and are lashed to the tree with ropes.
The issues are that 2" conduit does not meet current code.
The existing meter box on the house has less than 36" of work space around it, maybe only 30" in some directions. And it is only 3' off the ground, not the required 5'. I may try to get a variance of some sort, as this isn't really a safety hazard, but a convenience matter for utility meter readers, which are obsolete because the meters are read remotely nowadays.
My desire was to continue underground to the utility pole, 90' away.
My feed has an interesting feature, which is probably the reason why, in 44 years, we have never had any appliances destroyed during a thunderstorm: the excess feed wire is looped 4 times, forming an inductor/choke. While my neighbors report losing a TV, well pump, other appliances about every other summer, we've had nothing ever blow up when lighting hits nearby. We're at a high altitude on a mountaintop, so the homes are constantly getting struck by lightning up here. I've noticed the homes with the overhead wires feeding the house catch on fire when lighting gets drawn in via the overhead wires, igniting the roof on fire. That's why I chose to keep service underground. Other reason is trees are often falling in the woods, and the last several outages were due to large limbs falling on wires. Our area is a dense forest of tall trees. One across the road was struck by lightning last June and a big chunk of it exploded and fell on the road, striking the wires on the way down.
The good news, finally, is an electrician I had out here a couple days ago called me and said he'd talked to the power company and the building inspector about whether a temporary feed replacing the temp I have now, would be acceptable and for how long. The town said indefinately. CL&P said 1-2 years max. We talked about this plan and he told me an estimate of $750 for materials, and he'd donate his labor. He mentioned that a local church might be able to fund the materials, which would reduce the cost considerably, or to none, even. So that's up to CL&P whether they can wait (it's been like this for 44 years, I think another week or two won't be that much worse) until the church decides whether to fund the material cost or not. That would give us to the spring of 2011 to get on our feet financially and put in the underground feed.
Now, I would have dug the trench myself, but we're located on ledge. It's iron-ore-rich, I'm told by one of the civil engineers that looked at my job site and no ordinary backhoe would work. It may require blasting in some cases, but at the very least, large boulders would have to be moved, plus cutting though 4-5 tree roots along the way.
TLS Guy,
The roof is rotted (it's a flat shed roof, fully enclosed). Portions of it collapsed gradually around 1999-2003 and squirrels were nesting inside between rafters at one point. I demolished one room at a time starting in 2003 and rebuilt the roof and exterior walls using pressure-treated lumber. I've been upgrading the insulation and finally putting on siding as well. In 2004, I rebuilt the spare bedroom. Before I started, it was literally like that scene in "A Series of Unfortunate Events", where you could look up through the ceiling and see the sky coming through in parts! In 2005-06, I rebuilt the roof over the kitchen and dining room. These areas were all on the east side, which is the lower end of the roof, the direction in which all the water runs. I rebuilt it with an overhang, so water no longer runs down the ext wall and soaks it, like it used to. The ext walls has to be rebuilt, upper floor, lower floor, all the way to the foundation sill! An enormous amount of repair work has been done already.
At the present, I am halfway done rebuilding the roof and as I move further uphill, the rot is less extensive. Now I no longer have replace entire joists, but simply sister up with PT joists and put in bracing every 24" and insulate to about R70. Once the roof is done, and I've cut away all the 'shack' walls that sit on top of the roof, (think of a 970 sq ft penthouse with a 17' high ceiling and sloping roofs), I'll start demolishing the penthouse structure and remove it. At the moment, it's keeping the majority of the rain and snow from coming through the failing roof it sits upon.
There is no danger from electrical fire hazards within the house. All wiring is BX armoured cable and all junction and outlet/switch boxed are steel. Most of the wiring is #12 and some is #10, except for the range which is #4 and #4 feeding the outlets that feed the 50A dryer-style outlet that feeds the stereo equipment racks. We have been dealing with mold problems from time to time, but the worst of the rotted stuff has been carted away over the last 7 years. We've thrown out about 140 cu yds of debris from the demolition over that time frame--this is a HUGE job! I was quoted $170,000 to do this work by two different contractors in 2003. I kid you not. I've literally rebuilt nearly all of the framing from foundation to roof on 1/3 of the house so far.
Fortunately, the west side was protected by a 3' overhang and is undamaged. I'm surgically repairing roof that is under the walls of the penthouse, by cutting away the bottom 4' of the penthouse walls and putting stilts in after the roof under a given section is rebuilt and watertight. The east half is almost to a point where I can demo that half of the penthouse and continue repairing the west half of the roof.
This project has been a terrifying one, as my legs are not as stable as they used to be when I was younger, and I have an inner ear disorder which affects my balance. I can't walk a straight line so I can't walk near the edge of a roof, as I could fall off for loss of balance. So I have to employ various techniques for working up there, but it's nerve-wracking just the same.
Ares
I've tried getting assistance, but there's no programs for this kind of thing that we qualify for. Habitat for Humanity doesn't work in our area, which is an upscale neighborhood that built up around us in the '90s. When I first moved here, there was nothing else around, except an FM radio tower down the road. It was 7 miles of dirt roads traveled to get to my cow path. We roughed it for a lot of years in the early days before snow plows. Often would park out by the main road and walk through 3' of snow to the house. Glad I don't have to do that anymore, as we don't get much snow since 1980.
Anyhow, I try to avoid government assistance. It's taking gifts from the devil. The less I have to deal with government, the better things go.
