The Electrical Service for Trades That Are Not Electricians
Why this matters
Every trade knows that switching off the main breaker kills the house. Fewer know that it does not kill the meter base, the wires feeding it, or the top of the main breaker itself, and those are exactly the parts a siding, roofing, painting or tree crew ends up next to. The conductors upstream of the main are energized whenever the utility's transformer is, and there is no breaker anywhere on the property that changes that. Only the utility can.
Safety first, before anything else on this card
- A scorched, melted, buzzing, smoking or sparking meter base or service mast: keep everyone back at least 10 feet, touch nothing, and call the utility's emergency line. If there is fire or smoke, call 911 first. Do not spray water on it.
- A service drop down, sagging to reach, or in a tree: treat it as live whatever it looks like. Keep everyone back, call the utility, and call 911 if it is on the ground in a place people walk.
- Overhead work near the drop: OSHA 29 CFR 1910.333(c)(3) keeps an unqualified employee in general-industry work at least 10 feet from an overhead line of 50 kV or less, with the distance growing at higher voltages. Construction work falls under 29 CFR Part 1926 instead, which has its own power-line rules; ask your safety lead which part your job is under. Ladders, extension poles, siding brakes and gutter sections count as you.
How a residential service is laid out
UTILITY POLE / PAD TRANSFORMER
|
| service drop (overhead)
| or lateral (buried) LIVE, always
v
[ weatherhead + drip loop ] LIVE, always
|
service entrance conductors LIVE, always
|
+----------------------+
| METER BASE |
| line jaws (top) | LIVE, always
| meter + seal |
| load jaws (bottom) | LIVE, always
+----------------------+
|
conductors to the main LIVE, always
|
+----------------------+
| MAIN DISCONNECT |
| line lugs (top) | LIVE, always
| breaker [ OFF ] |
| load side | dead when main OFF
+----------------------+
|
PANEL BUS + BRANCH CIRCUITS dead when main OFF
Read it from the top. Everything above the moving contacts of the main disconnect stays live when the main is off: the drop or lateral, the weatherhead and drip loop, the service entrance conductors, both sets of jaws in the meter base, the conductors to the main, and the line-side lugs on the main itself. Switching the main only opens the path below it.
The main is not always inside the panel. Newer homes often have it in a combined meter-main enclosure on the outside wall, and NEC 230.85 (2020 and 2023 editions, as adopted) asks for an outdoor emergency disconnect at one- and two-family dwellings, so in jurisdictions that adopted it, you will increasingly find the disconnect next to the meter rather than in the garage. The live-above-the-main rule is the same either way.
The vocabulary
- Service drop: the overhead cable from the pole to the house. In most homes it is triplex: two insulated hot conductors twisted around a bare neutral that also carries the weight. Weathered insulation is not protection. Treat it as bare.
- Lateral: the buried version, which rises up the wall in conduit into the meter base.
- Point of attachment and drip loop: where the drop is anchored to the house, and the downward loop of conductor before it turns up into the weatherhead, so rain runs off rather than into the mast.
- Service mast: the rigid conduit through or beside the roof that holds the weatherhead up. It carries the pull of the drop. Never lean a ladder on it, hang anything from it, or stand on the roof flashing around it.
- Meter base (meter socket): the enclosure the meter plugs into. The meter's blades sit in jaws; the top jaws connect to the utility, the bottom jaws to the house.
- Meter seal: a numbered tamper seal, often a plastic or wire tag through the ring that holds the meter in. It is the utility's property.
Who owns which part
Ownership varies by utility and is written in its tariff and service rules, which are public. In a common arrangement the utility owns the drop or lateral and the meter, and the homeowner owns the meter base, mast, service entrance conductors and everything downstream. Some utilities own the lateral, some only to the property line. Ownership is not permission. Even the parts the homeowner owns can only be de-energized by the utility, because the utility controls what feeds them. An electrician working on the service coordinates a disconnect with the utility; nobody else pulls a meter.
What a pulled seal or a scorched base means
A missing or cut seal. Possibilities: the utility pulled the meter and forgot to reseal, an electrician did authorized work, someone tampered with it to steal power, or the seal simply corroded off. You cannot tell which. Do not open the ring, do not reseat or touch the meter, and do not touch a meter that is loose or sitting crooked in its jaws. Photograph it and tell the customer to call the utility. In many states tampering with a meter is an offense, and you do not want your crew's hands to be the last ones on it.
Heat damage. Browned or blistered plastic on the meter, a melted ring, discoloration on the enclosure, or the smell of hot insulation all point to a high-resistance connection, usually at a jaw. A loose jaw heats under load and gets worse. It is a utility and electrician problem, and if it is actively hot or smoking it is an emergency per the safety block above.
Water in the base. A rusted bottom, a mast that has pulled away from the wall, or a gap at the weatherhead lets water in. Report it; do not seal it with caulk, because a sealed base can trap water rather than shed it.
Worked example: re-siding a wall with the meter on it
A siding crew is replacing vinyl on the side of a house where the service lands. Measurements the lead takes before work starts:
- Point of attachment for the overhead drop: 15 feet above grade, on the gable wall.
- Drip loop low point: about 13 feet above grade.
- Meter base: 5 feet to its center, surface mounted, with the existing siding cut around it.
- Inside, a 200 amp main breaker in the garage panel, 12 feet of cable away.
- The meter seal is intact and numbered.
The crew's plan before the questions: shut off the main in the garage, unscrew the meter base from the wall, pull it out a few inches, and slide the new siding and a mounting block behind it.
Why that plan fails. Shutting off the garage main kills nothing at the meter base. The line jaws, load jaws and the conductors to the garage are all live. Unscrewing a live enclosure that holds 240 volt service conductors and flexing those conductors is electrical work on an energized service, which no siding crew may do, and the meter cannot come out without breaking the utility's seal.
The corrected plan.
- Call the utility and ask what it requires to work behind a meter base. Many have a process for a temporary disconnect when a licensed electrician is involved.
- Bring in an electrician. The electrician schedules the disconnect, removes and reinstalls the base on a proper mounting block, and checks the mast and conductors while it is open. Service comes back only through the utility: once the base is reinstalled and the utility reconnects and reseals the meter, the electrician confirms normal voltage at the panel and that the house's circuits are live before the job is closed.
- The siding crew works the rest of the wall, leaving a clean gap around the base, and returns for the final course after the electrician reinstalls.
The overhead check. The crew's ladder is a 28 foot extension ladder, and the work goes to the gable peak. The drop attaches at 15 feet and runs to the pole. Holding 10 feet from the drop means no part of the ladder, the worker or the siding panel gets closer than 10 feet to the conductor. A 12 foot siding panel held by one end sweeps a radius of up to 12 feet, so a worker on the ladder with hands at about 8 feet, 5 feet under the 13 foot drip loop, can swing a panel straight into it. Working directly under the attachment point is out; the crew sets the ladder on the far side of the wall and uses scaffolding for the gable end, keeping material handling away from the drop's path to the pole.
What it cost them. One extra trip and an electrician's visit. What it would have cost the other way is not a number anyone should write down.
What changes the answer
The meter is on a pedestal, not the wall. Some homes, especially with buried service, have the meter on a post or a pedestal away from the house. The same live-above-the-main rule applies to the pedestal, and the buried lateral to it is a dig hazard. See related: The Utility Locate: Before You Dig.
There is solar, a battery or a generator. The house can then have more than one source, and some of them can energize the panel or the load side of the meter with the utility off. See related: Homes with Solar, Batteries or Generators Already Installed, and Generators, Backfeed and the Lineworker.
It is commercial or three phase. Bigger services, current transformer cabinets and separate metering compartments change the hardware but not the stance: if it is upstream of the main, it is the utility's and the electrician's.
How to verify you got this right
- Before working on the wall, the crew lead can point at each item in the diagram and say whether it is live with the main off. The correct answer above the main is always yes.
- The overhead distance was measured with the longest piece of material in mind, not the person.
- Nothing on or near the meter base was opened, loosened, painted or caulked. The seal number in the morning photo matches the seal at the end of the day.
- Any damage found was reported to the customer with a photo and the words "call the utility" or "call an electrician", and the call was logged. See related: Describing a Problem in Another Trade's Own Words.
References
- OSHA 29 CFR 1910.333(c)(3), clearances from overhead lines for unqualified persons in general industry; 29 CFR Part 1926 for construction work.
- NEC (NFPA 70), Article 230, in the edition your jurisdiction has adopted, which binds the service installation.
- Your utility's tariff and service rules, which set ownership and disconnect procedures.
- See related: The Five Questions to Ask About a System That Is Not Yours