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	Subject - upgrading service in a condo cshowalter Help - I need your opinion/ advice. I recently bought a condo in a building built in 1930. The meter / distribution room has a lot of original boxes/meters, etc. The old distribution box has 9 cartridge fuses rated between 60 - 90 amps. The building has 18 units, with 2 units fed off of each one of these fuses. Now, some owners in the building have upgraded their equipment AND 3 of these units so far have tapped their service off the line side of the distribution box. Is this legal? (If it's a state thing, I'm in Maine) My original thought when faced with my situation was I'll still go ahead, upgrade my unit with a 100amp wire/meter/new breaker box, and tap off the line side myself. And when the building starts blowing the big main fuses someday (2 - 600amp I think), we'll all have to pay for a new distributon system/ higher rated service. Is this an idiotic way to view this situtaion? So, I guess my questions are: Is tapping off the line side legal? Any other options I'm missing? Professional opinions wanted! cshowalter No advice for a starting member? No moderators? Anyone? Another point of view from someone more knowledgable than myself would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. David Hyatt I am sorry I was trying to let some of the others take this one. But i will give it a try. When you say you want to tap off the line side was you referring to the line side of the fuses or line side of the meter? By the way we really appreciate your question and your participation in this forum. David Hyatt The more I think about your question the more confused I get. You have a main power coming in from the utility. That splits off to main fuses before each individual meter? Then from that meter to your unit. If you splice before the fuses(main), you are probably eventually going to over load the main wires coming in. They were not sized for the extra load. Am I on the right track of what you are wanting to do? Let us know. cshowalter Thanks for the reply. I'm not an electrician, so I may not be 100% on this, but here goes: Three wires coming into the building - my electrician said it's a 600amp service. In the main fuse box with disconnect, there's one or two (or three?) big cartridge fuses (I may be wrong on quantity/rating so let's forget the 2 - 600amp). Out of that box, 3 wires go into a distribuition box. In the Dist box, each of these 3 wires feed (3) 60? amp cartridge fuses for a total of (3wires X 3 fuses each) 9 fuses. Since there are 18 units in the building, 2 units are grouped to each one of the 9 fuses in the dist. box. i.e. If I want to have any work done and pull the fuse in the dist. box to do so, my neighbor will also lose power. The 18 wires out of the distbox now feed the individual meters/disconnects/etc... to the units. Now, what 3 units have done already is feed their meter with a new wire out of the dist. box, and connected it to one of the 9 cartridge fuses in there, BUT they connected it to the side of the fuse that recieves service from the 3 wires out of the main box NOT the correct side. (They bypassed the smaller 60amp fuse in the dist. box and are fed off the main for more power) My original questions were: is this legal? Should I read up on my ins. policies? Should I follow suit and feed off the main side of the fuses and when the main(s) blow, we as a building then worry about upgrading? Thanks again for taking the time to read this, it's much appreciated. JimmyDee I'm not sure what size wire is coming off the 600 amp fuses to feed the 60 amp fuses. What is sounds like is that there are 3 large feed wires feeding large copper buss bars. Is that correct? The buss bars should be feeding the smaller fuses. If that is the case, then the electricians that hooked up the other 100 amp service, did so correctly. The new service panels have to have a 100 amp breaker as well. It sounds like the electricians may have used the bolts feeding the fuses for their attachment to the buss. I would have to actually see this setup before saying this is the way it is,but it sounds like it from your description. At some point the 600 amp service may not be big enough for 18 apartments but what everyone is doing is not increasing the overall load, just making sure it can be increased in the future. Jim cshowalter I've been reading the situation like this: 3 people have already said 60amp service is too low so they bypass the smaller distribution fuses and tap off the buss bars (I think buss bars are correct - I haven't been to the meter room in a while). The even distribution of power in the building is gone. So let's say all 18 units want 100amp service, we all tap off the buss bars - the smaller fuses in the dist box are no longer used. Now, that one wire of three, between the main and one of the three buss bars, has to handle 6 units at 100amps (600max) instead of 6 units at 60amps (360max) - no unit could pull more than 60 wired the way they were originally - (the smaller fuses in the dist box would have blown). That wire can be overloaded now, right? With that thought, I wondered if this whole practice of bypassing distribution fuses/breakers was illegal? Thanks again. JimmyDee I can see where you are coming from but you have to remember that everything is fed from the 600 amp fuses and just because you now have the ability to draw 100 amps from each apartment, doesn't mean that that will happen. The likability of everyone having anywhere near 100 amp draw at the same time is close to zero. even though it may seem like an overloading situation, nothing changed for now. Now if everyone ran out and bought a lot of high wattage appliances and AC units for their apartment, you may have a problem. If you can get the apartment that is sharing your fuses with you to upgrade, you probably will be OK and with double the capacity you had before. Jim David Hyatt I don't think it is a good idea. What this will eventually do if others do the same is overload the main service coming in. If there is some kind of home owners association I would present it to them as to upgrade the whole system coming in. You doing it may be fine, and maybe legal, but when everyone else decides to do the same you could have a major problem. Because it the main wires get overloaded and there are not fuses on that side, before blowing a transformer you will probably burn down the place. Check out my post I made today on some what similar circumstances in a condo. In a way I did the same thing as your wanting to do. Between both of these discussions we both may learn something. cshowalter Thanks Jimmy and David for your thoughts. It's not just my apt that's outdated, it's the building as well. And to get 18 owners together to spend ~25,000 for updating the building's electrical system seems a tough sell - I just moved in. Then again, the place burning down isn't good for any of the owners either. I think the wires from the poles into the building, into the main box are fine (as long as the those big, old fuses work as designed.) If the wires from the main to the buss bars were rated for 600amps, I'd be ok as well? (no fires at least) But I don't think they are. I know anything less than a complete upgrade/redo of the building is a sketchy patch. off topic - Is there a way to post a diagram to show you how I think the system is setup? Thanks. JimmyDee Take a picture or pictures and e-mail them to Scott Vickrey and he can post them to look at. Jim cshowalter Thanks Jimmy. I don't have a key to the meter room so it'll take a little bit, but I'll arrange to get in there asap.