Electrical Upgrades, 400 Amps! — Green Building?

A major part of the renovation and “greening” of this 1924 house is upgrading the electrical service and wiring. Of course, these improvements also make the house a safer place to live. The first phase of this work was upgrading the service from a skimpy 100 amps (inside) with a hodgepodge of fuse panels and scary outdated stuff, to a massive 400 amp meter base and two huge 200 amp panels with tons of room for additional circuits.

Adding more electrical capacity may not seem like the green thing to do at first, but in this case it is. We’re in the process now of installing Trane 16 SEER high-efficiency heat pumps for each floor of the house. Because they are zoned and will respond only to their targeted areas, the entire system will be even more efficient. The catch is that under peak demand significant amperage will be required to power each of the systems and their accessories, along with the rest of the house.

After talking to a few electricians we hired Mountain Lights Electric here in Asheville, NC. The cost for all the hardware and the work to upgrade to 400 amps was about $3,600. Their work was excellent and communication with main man Nicky Allen was fantastic. When you jump up to 400 amps all the gear is more expensive and that was a big part of the cost.

While we were at it we decided to get the power run underground. More money. This time it was the power company getting paid. The power line runs behind our house and they treched it all the way up the hill. You can see in the pics below that apparently it takes a village, of electricians, to get it done.

Before: panels everywhere, worn weatherhead with multiple splices, tiny meter and ragged entrance

After: jumbo twin panels, mega meter base, convoy of power co. trucks in front and back, a lovely trench (click for mo’ bigness)