Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire electrical question

I have an upstais apartment. The meter has been pulled. That meter is in the same box as my meter. I have the correct size wire. These wires are in a screw clamp. There is plenty of room in the clamps to put in two wires. Can I jump from the output side of my meter to the clamps that supply the upstairs. I will of course pull my meter first.

I wouldn't recommend it.

You could potentially be doubling the load for which the size of your mains on the first meter are planned/rated if you are running both sets of circuits.

Nevermind, I re-read it...at first I thought you intended to run both apartments off of the one meter/one main.

I'm not totally clear on the parameters from the written description, but if your upstairs apartment had its own metered panel previously, and you've now eliminated the second meter, I think you might want to turn the upstairs panel into a sub-panel powered off the downstairs circuit panel. So the line will pass through the meter, to the main panel, which in turn feeds the sub-panel upstairs. Merely jumping from the screw clamp in the meter box to the upstairs connection might energize the upstairs apartment, but I doubt it would conform to code and probably for a good reason. Check out Fine Homebuilding's wiring manual, by Rex Caldwell--it will show you succinctly how to wire a sub-panel. Hope this helps!

While I *truly* appreciate folks going out of their way to help others with advice, I must confess that I'd no sooner engage in a round of Russian Roulette with a semi than take any advice online regarding something like wiring/electricty. No offense meant to ANYONE on this. 'What's the date of a rifle's manufacture?', 'what's a great beer?' or 'how do you change the sparkplugs on a particular motor?', you bet. Electrical? Unless it's my dad or someone else I trust with my life, no way. Sorry for the hijack. Carry on.

If you do not already know how to do it-dont.

Licensed Electrician here,the meter is power company property,you can get yourself in hot water and fined for a few hundred bucks,besides the fact that the meter is unfused and you will get your world rocked if you slip up.DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS!

do you own the building?

Things that make you go hmmmmmm....

the power company will be happy to do it for ya for a nominal fee im sure.

Rent the upstairs apartment to a couple of cuties. A divorce beats an electrocution and a burned down house.

The wires come in and go to my meter. There are two bars that go from the top of my meter and go over to the top of the other meter. I simply want to do that on the bottom so it's hot. I want to use wires in the clamps rather than these suprizingly thin bars. Just a jumper. Both were hooked to the same main anyway.

"I want to use wires in the clamps rather than these suprizingly thin bars."

The answer is yes, white to white, black to black, etc. Both meters and breaker boxes already share the same ground.

All you will be eliminating is the second meter, the power company will still get it's pound of flesh for every KW you use. Both house circuits will still feed their respective breaker panels so over-all safety won't be an issue. You obviously know much more about that stuff than most people.

Real good advice

They don't take kindly to someone messin around inside their box! It's suppose to have one of their seals on it....

In cases like this I check the size of the service entrance conductors and then I do a load calc to see if they are sufficient for the combined loads. Then make the changes as the code and local utility allows.

if you need to get temporary power to the other panel thier are safer ways to do it,that won't get you electrocuted or fined.

DO NOT SCREW AROUND IN A LIVE METER PAN.

CALL A LICENSED ELECTRICIAN.