DIY Temporary Electrical Service Installation

and back here we just install the

temporary

panel so we have a hundred amp panel on one side and then the meter base on the other side comes down to a couple of snaps so we have the booster installed and everything what I need. I'm not going to go into detail on any of that because it's not really about that, it's more about taking out the conduit trench on the cable, we're going to connect the main cable to the

temporary

power pole that we're on. I'm going to connect it to the green power box in different counties for example I live in Kitsap County in Washington in Kitsap County the power company actually connects the wire to the meter base and to the green power box or telephone pole In Pierce County, which is where I am now in Washington, I make the connection from the wire to the meter base and the power company only makes the connection from the wire to the green box or telephone pole if that is the case, so each county in Washington varies.

As to how this all works, I highly recommend that if you are doing this in any state or county, you call your local power district and get very explicit instructions on what they will do so you know what to do in any case. Let's go ahead and start dragging this cable which is either triplex or it's kind of a generic brand name. This turns out to be south wire, specifically south wire brand, it's oh oh oh 204 wire, which is a really, really heavy gauge wire. the main wire that you run into a house, so it's three wires together, two hots on a neutral and we'll wrap it up and lay it out.

Another thing we are taking into account is that we will have a bunch of extra wire wrapped in the hole in front of the power pole and we will put someone in there and put ground on top of it while we build the house so that when we connect permanent power to the house I will remove the power pole. We will dig the hole with the plywood over the top of the cable. We'll run the cable out of here and then dig a trench to the house so that the excess cable will allow us to connect to the house.

It is very important that you determine what type of meter plugs you need, they are more commonly known as ring style or ring strips and in this case we need a ring style that allows the power company to place a ring over here with A small look like an electronic chip lock. thing, so make sure you get the right type of meter base for what your power company uses. Temporary power poles require me to ground all of this, so I have a ground wire stapled to the side that runs inside this that is grounded. The strip of that wire will eventually not be attached to these two eight-foot round rods that we are going to stick into the ground four feet apart, so the first one will go right over here and the next one, although that way it will be outside. out of the way of whatever happens, let's see how far we can hand it down, hopefully, oh, look at that man.

I went down three feet, three and a half four feet almost effortlessly now that we're at it. I'm going to use a mallet and hit it carefully. We have our ground wire here, it comes around the post to the ground rods in the ground back to the panel. The last thing we need to do is put a ball on the panels, so we've pulled the wire up through the The bottom conduit comes from the green power box that's on the road and those are these wires here and then the wires that They go to the panel on the other side are the ones that pass through the back wall.

It is very important that the line and load go to the correct side, the correct terminals inside the mirror, such as the wires coming out of the green box off the road, must go through the top terminals when you look at this, if you are not an electrician, I would think that's how it is. it comes right in the center because that's how it's set up, it just makes sense to go straight down, you can't do that, you have to bend and go over it, line up and go to the top terminals and then to the meter. enters and then these lines that will come out at the bottom will enter this other terminal or the other panel.

Sorry, make sure to use an anti-corrosion compound. This is an auxiliary protector. Pick it up at Home Depot or Lowes. Required on all aluminum. These cables come from the green power box in the road well so we can place the cables here because the bend radius is short. I had to disconnect the other side to loosen them and prepare them, but they are all connected so I have the line coming up and going down so you can see. I have my line coming from the bottom from the duct right here. This is a technique called. This is known as a line in

electrical

language.

It's coming on him. the top enters the top terminals towards the neutral from the neutral the load comes out at this point, so the input, load and output line passes through the conduit to the other panel. This is a connecting strap, as you saw, I forgot to come and do it. this so I had to take one of these and put it to attach this panel to this panel now if I had used metal conduit I wouldn't need to do that but I didn't and I forgot anyway that's what This It's like this, this is what this panel looks like and what it should look like.

There we go, so we have completed the

installation

of the temporary power pole right here behind me. I already did. I didn't go into many details. This I will just say that you really need to understand your L&I requirements and the local power companies requirements for

installation

and temporary power poles. There are requirements about how high the meter base has to be in the house, how high the outlets have to be, how things have to be. to be attached and to be honest I forgot to attach this so we had to run to the hardware store and we had to attach this panel to this panel via this plastic chaser with a grounding strap but Like I said, understand your terrace. requirements, this video is not about what it takes to make all of that happen, but rather an overview of how to generate temporary power, so from the temporary power pole we have what is commonly known as a triplex, which is the excess that rolls up here, but it goes to the bottom of the pole to the meter from the meter to the panel from the panel to the outlets and then runs down my trench into the conduit, so the conduit on the left is for the power, obviously the conduit on the right is for the phone and that conduit goes under the road under the easement right through all this soft dirt here to the green power box the green power box we've left an extra amount of cable in the hole to plug it into the korean power box we passed the lni inspection stickers Unfortunately the other side of the panel but one of the things I really had to fix and then I had to make a real show of it.

I didn't have the egg barrier where I was in the trench before he came and inspected. I have done this several times and never had to pass the caution tape inspection in the trench but each inspector never made the tape only required where there is no conduit and in this case that is the straight barrel cable that is in the ditch and you can see it down here. I have two more intense colors. I have red and yellow. He had yellow in his hand. I threw it in the ditch and then drove away. I thought: you know what I don't want to have? to get another Rhian SPECT so I went down and bought the actual caution power line under the caution tape which is the red thing that goes across the trench the guy came and inspected it we're all good to go they got our sticker and they called the electric company.

They are scheduled to leave on Monday, now it's Saturday to make the connection, but before they make the connection I have to fill in, so that's what we're going to do real quick, finish the back field, so I'm going to pull the tape. out of the hole, fill about halfway, put the room back on top and put the dirt back on top of the tape and we're ready to go, well we're finishing this up guys look at me there we did all the filling It covered all the wires, we had the caution tape on the floor, which was one of the hits I took when the Yellin I inspector first came out.

I had to put that in the ditch, every inspector is a little different, I've never done that. I've had that before, I always put it in, but as you saw, they put it there, they put it there in the ditch and the whole backfield had to be complete for the power company to come out and make the final connection. Here we have the power pole, a temporary power pole and this has to be for the contractor that we are using to build this house. It has to be within a hundred feet of the house, this is about 3540 feet max, it's in a good spot because it's up against trees so it's unlikely that someone will end up backing up or hitting it with a large construction truck.

Make sure you have enough outlets. There are eight exits here, which is a bit excessive. You could probably get by with four and they're at two. separate switches, that's a lot of details that I didn't really cover in this video. There are many other good videos available on how to technically assemble one of these. Just making sure they follow your lni requirements and your local power district. Make sure you have called and spoken to them as well to understand what your local power district requires before you start working in any case. I hope they got something.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the links. I'll have my Build House series here and I'll do my tractor repair series here. It definitely has a subscribe button although it has helped me for a long time until next time, thanks for watching.