This week we put up the meter base. The power company gives reasonably good instructions. Here's their diagram:
I thought about doing it myself, but decided to expedite things by hiring an electrician. They estimated $900 for the work, of which 4 hours was labor. I figured it would take me 4x as long to do the work, and I wanted to get the job done sooner. They built the service in their shop, and then we installed it on the land. I helped a little, as I'm qualified to wield a shovel.
- A 6" x 6" x 10' pressure treated post. This is set in to a hole at the end of the trench. We shoveled some dirt underneath to get it to the right height, then more dirt around the base to stabilize it, and then braced it with some boards. Luckily I had some extra bits of wood on site.
- A combination meter base / load center. It's a SIEMENS/ITE unit, and looks a lot like this:
It has slots for 4 breakers (8 if they're duplex) and pass-through lugs. It's intended for a mobile home, but is suitable for our purposes. Perhaps I should have asked for a slightly larger panel, as changing it out in the future will be hard. But it should be good enough.
- A 20A circuit to a 15A GFCI receptacle in a waterproof box, about 6" below the breaker panel. I think I should have asked for a 30A circuit as well (for the RV) or at least a double-gang box, so it'd be easy to add one later. Oh, well, I can handle that myself.
- 2 ground rods, galvanized, 8' long. These are supposed to be placed 6' apart. He drove these in with small electric jackhammer. It took a long extension cord to the neighbor's to power it. It had a socket that fit over the end of the rod. He placed the rods in to the bottom of the trench, since once it's filled that will cover the tops of the rods. That saves 3' of driving them in. However, after about a foot the ground got really hard and the rods stopped moving. He said it was rocks in hard-packed dirt that made it so difficult. We tried digging one out to move it to another location, but couldn't get it to budge. He ended up bending the rods over, away from each other to maintain the required 6' gap.
After driving the rods in, the ends mushroomed a bit. On one it was so bad that he couldn't get the ground rod clamp to slide on. So he used a sawsall to cut the end off the rod. Apparently electricians sometimes cut their ground rods short, to avoid the work of driving the full 8' in to the ground, so inspectors look for that. So he taped the cut end on to the rod, for the inspector to see. I read that you can slip the clamp on ahead of time to avoid that problem.
The power company requires 3/4 yard of sand within shoveling distance of the work pit. Most of the wire is in conduit, but there's a couple feet at each end that is buried directly in the ground. They want to cover that bit sand.
The guy who put the trench in was supposed to leave the sand there, but ran out of time that day. He said I should just come by his yard and he'd put a scoop of sand in the back of my truck, and I could wheelbarrow it up to the right spot. Maybe I'm a wimp, but maybe not:
- The ground is muddy.
- It's up a hill.
- The walking space on the edge of the trench is narrow.
- Sand is plenty heavy.
- The sand was wet.
- The wheelbarrow is heavy.
- Pushing a heavy wheelbarrow up a hill of soft ground and roots is really hard.
I ended up backing the truck up the path, straddling the trench. Couldn't have done it without 4WD in LOW and a reliable spotter. I still only got about 1/2-way. Then I carried sand 1 shovelful at a time until I got tired. Today I went back with 5-gallon buckets. I filled 3 of them with sand and left them by the work pit. I hope that's good enough (it seems like plenty). I still have a bunch of sand in the back of the truck that I need to do something with.
I'd like to know when all this work is going to make me strong like bull. Soon, please!
Today I took a bunch of pictures of the trench (which will be hidden when we fill it) and the meter base (which will be locked by the power company soon).
Code doesn't require it here, but I'm going to put a piece of yellow tape down along trench, just under the surface, to help us find this stuff if we ever dig here again. We're going to put a water line through here first, though, so it'll be open for a while more.
I didn't realize this before, but the "call before you dig" thing is only for stuff the utility company owns. They are required by law to mark the positions of their underground whatevers, but only what they know about. I plan to put trenches down with power, telelphone, water, sewer, etc. on my land, that are not owned by a utility company. I can call 811 all day long, but they won't find it. I've also heard stories of them getting the markings wrong, sometimes by 10', so that warning tape seems like a really good idea.
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