Upgrading The Electrical Service In Your Home
If your home has an older electrical service in it, you may find that you no longer have room to add circuits to the existing service. Upgrading the electrical service to add more outlets, lights, or other circuits, requires working with an electrical contractor who will allow you to choose the service you need and get the job done right.
Evaluating Your Electrical Service
If you are considering adding additional electrical circuits to your home, it is a good idea to have an electrical contractor come and inspect the current electrical service to see what needs to happen. A service of one hundred amps or less is not up to handling power requirements for modern homes, and most of these older systems are maxed out already, so upgrading it may be the only option.
Your electrical contractor can look at your home's current needs and any additional circuits that you are considering for the home and determine how much larger the service needs to be. In most residential buildings, a two hundred amp service will give you that additional power you need. Still, if you are running a lot of electrical equipment in the home or running a subpanel in a garage or shop, you may need to go with as much as four hundred amps with your new service.
Upgrading The Service
Once the power company disconnects the lines from your current electrical service entrance, your electrical contractor can start removing the old electrical panel and breakers from your home. The circuits in the existing box will be labeled so that they can be put back as they were in the new panel, and the electrical contractor will run any additional wires to the electrical panel location.
Once the old panel is gone, the electrical contractor will install the new panel for you and then begin adding all the original wiring back to the box. Each circuit will get a new breaker, and the additional circuits that are being added will be installed below the existing breakers. The circuits will be labeled so that you can look at the list on the door of the panel and determine what breaker goes to any circuit when the installation is complete.
Once the new wiring is added to the panel, the electrical contractor can add the circuits you need in the home for you. When all the interior work is complete, the power company will come and reconnect the lines to your home via the new service entrance, and the electrical contractor will turn the power back on and check to make sure everything is working correctly.
For more information, reach out to a local electrical company, like McDonald Electric.