100 amp or 200 amp?

13 years ago

We are purchasing a new house, and our inspection is next week. The insurance company needs to know sooner than that if we have 100 or 200 amp service coming into the house. The breakers are 200, but they want us to not look at the breaker and confirm on the OUTSIDE if it's actually 200 amp. I have no clue what I'm looking at--- is there a way to tell on the outside if this is 100 or 200? It's a 200 meter, but I believe that you can have that on 100 amp service since it's just used for measuring. I tried calling the electric company and they can't/won't help. (said they don't know?) The box looks small, but the pipe/conduit looks larger-leading me to believe it could be 200? The seller of the home said it's 200, but my insurance company said they don't want me to go by want the seller represents. Any help appreciated!

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Comments (3)

petey_racer
13 years ago
That is a 100A service.
I hope the panel is not a 200A panel.

WHY is this so important to the ins company???
ionized_gw
13 years ago
Why important to ins company? I have suspected for a long time that insurance companies "pick on" particular features to be sure that the electrical systems in homes have seen some attention in recent decades. It is likely that it is all based on statistics, but some genius, picks the stuff to look at for associations.

First they did not like fuse panels because it "means" that there have been no work or attention in decades. Now someone's calculations probably indicate that electrical fires are more likely in homes with 100-amp services than with 200.

The last place I rented after Katrina had a beautiful, 150-amp split-bus fuse panel in great shape and the rest of the system was in good shape too. Throw in a few grounded circuits and it would have been beautiful compared to what I have now with two, 200-amp circuit breaker panels and the slop connected to it.
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brickeyee
13 years ago
A 200 amp panel on a 100 amp service likely means that some portion of the conductors from the pole to the panel are nor sized correctly.

The only protection from the pole to the panel is the panel main breaker.
The POCOs fuse will be on the transformer input (at many thousands of volts) to protect the transformer from damage.

The rest of the lines (all the way to each main breaker) are sized based on how much each service connected is rated to pull.

This post was edited by brickeyee on Thu, May 23, 13 at 16:28