Am looking at a job where there are 2 meters that had feed panels in 1 structure. The building was subdivided a few years ago and the tennant in the rear portion paid to have a seperate meter and UG service lateral run to to their part of the building. That Co. went out of business and the building owner has since taken back the space and is using it as manufacturing space. When the tennant left they stripped all their service equipment out and left nothing but the trough and capped off conductors in it(service disconnect is still outside intact).Is there any violation in installing a panel and running circuitry out of it thru-out the shop? When the Co. in the rear portion did this a few years back building code enforcement made them install a 30 min fire seperation between the two halves. Now the building is once again under single management. thanks
2 meters/ 1 building
- Thread starter nizak
- Start date
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kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
230.2 does not permit more than one service to the building. There are exceptions but none of them apply here.
30 min fire separation is to effectively create two separate buildings. Around here it would be required to be a 2 hour separation to consider it separate buildings.
30 min fire separation is to effectively create two separate buildings. Around here it would be required to be a 2 hour separation to consider it separate buildings.
There is only 1 service feeding the structure. The utility has one underground service from the pole mounted xfmr's to the 2 gang meter base . I may have mispoke myself, the tennant had an underground from the meter base to his portion of the building put in by an EC not the utility.
kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
Is there main disconnects at the meter or grouped in same location eleswhere? If not it is still improper service installation. The service ends at service disconnect enclosure(s).
In OP you indicated this second feed was service equipment.
There is (1) disconnect at the meter base for the UG that runs to the back portion of the building, and the other is a main breaker panel that is located inside directly behind the meter base that served the front of the building.I did screw up in the OP in stating that it was an underground "service".
kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
Disconnects not being grouped together is still improper install of the service. If I was inspector, I would want you to get service disconnects grouped. Either inside or outside is acceptable, but they must be together.
kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
That is my opinion. As I mentioned before, around here a 2 hour fire wall would be enough to consider the space two separate buildings and separate services would be allowed, if that is what was done. But it sounds like that was not exactly what was done. Now that building use has changed again it may no longer be compliant. It also sounds like it would not be too difficult to group service disconnects and make it a feeder.
ksmith846
Senior Member
- Location
- Port St Lucie, Florida
I have a project with a similar issue where we added a 2400 Amp 480 Volt service to the rear a building that already has a 208 Volt service with 5 meters and disconnects on the side of the building for the tenant spaces.
Considering the rule that all service disconnects have to be grouped together and we have services on two ends of the building we had to come to a solution with the AHJ. We decided and they approved a shunt trip button located at the 208 Volt service to trip our newly installed 480V service on the back of the building.
- Location
- Massachusetts
When you really have two or more services, the disconnects for each service do not have to be grouped with each other.
Take down the existing outside breaker and put a new 200 amp main breaker panel inside next to the other panel. Done.
Here the poco doesn't care how many meters one tenant has. It's their decision anyway.
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