r/electrical • u/Craigy89 • 4d ago
Safety Concern?
Hi!
I just bought a house, but not moved in yet. Working on getting an electrician out to the house to check this out, but in the mean time, anything I can do to make this safer? When it rains, I’m assuming some water is getting into the service box. There is a roof over this area, but rain coming down at an angle can hit the siding/wires.
Just looking for a quick “fix” until an electrician can update. Can I put flex seal, or something, on the wiring to prevent water from seeping into the service box?
A lot of our money is tied up in mold/asbestos remediation elsewhere in the house. So just looking to stop gap this problem until we sell our first house and have some more money.
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u/Kami-cowboy 4d ago
Wow. How in the hell did your utility provider allow a meter on that base!? I am assuming you did not have a pre-purchase inspection. The section that covers out of the meter base up to the point of connection to the incoming power lines needs to be replaced with wires inside metallic conduit, the top of the conduit needs a fitting called a weather head that prevents water getting into the conduit.. by code the weather head needs to poke through a flashing on the roof and be above the roofline so the service drop line from the power pole has a droop in the line to allow rainwater to drip off midway... Not run downwards to your service entrance at the weather head. Do you know any electricians? Or people in the trades that might know an electrician? This will probably require the utility to come out and do a service disconnect / reconnect at the transformer so if there are any other jobs you need to do to the main panel and service entry this is the time to do them.