I'm in the process of having a new home built. They are putting 150 amp electrical service into the house. Has anyone heard of such a thing? I thought 200 amps was the minimum acceptable. The house is 3300 sq ft. of living area with an attached 3 car garage.

 

As I understand it...it goes by square footage.

You can only have so much stuff in a house & garage.... so big.

http://www.selfhelpandmore.com/index.htm

 

150 amp services were popular in the 80's and are o.k. I put in a lot of them. I think a 3300 sq. ft. house should not have a 150 amp service panel though. Not because it is not large enough in ampacity, but because the 150 amp panel only has a 30 branch circuit capacity. For the small additional price, I would go with the 200 amp service panel w/ 40 single pole or 20 two pole (or any combo of either) breaker(circuit) spaces. That big garage is going to need some circuits for man toys

 

http://www.codecheck.com/eleccode.htm

 

I forgot to say I'm also adding a swimming pool. It's going to really make me mad if I have to change the service in order to power the pump. I was already wanting to add a 220v outlet in the garage. Unless I can find a code that says otherwise, I'm not sure what I can do. Mil1ion, I'll study the codecheck website but at first blush I didn't get it.

 

When building new, there's no such thing as too much capacity. Go for the 200 amp service.

 

It's your house and you want 200 amp and you are paying for it. You are paying so that makes you the BOSS!!!

V X

 

I agree with the other guys, go for the 200 amp. It will save you alot of headaches in the future.

 

I have the time now, to clarify my earlier post so here is my reasoning for stating using the 200 amp 40 ciruit panel board. ...

The NEC (national electrical code, which is using minimum standards) states a 100 amp service is the minimum service ampacity for a dwelling. In the back of the NEC book there is a table for load calculations that one uses to do their math for calculating service sizes. When I took my contractor/masters electrician license tests MANY years ago, we had to use those tables to figure out service ampacity sizes for schools. banks, etc. ...

Which in reality, those type commercial/industrial structures have electrical engineers doing the service and electrical plans for anyway. But homes, (dwellings) usually do not have EE's ,so the electrical contractor just uses his experience and what is the norm for his/her electrical service installations. Not saying your EC is putting in less service than needed, but some builders do shove the minimum standards as low as possible to keep the selling price low. That is fine for a spec house , but not good for the future homeowner for their custom built home...


Basically the load calculation tables gives a VA (volt/amp =watt) per square foot demand requirement for different structures. I think a dwelling was 180 va per sq. , plus lighting and heating, cooking loads, etc. ...

The bottom line is , the time a person takes to figure out load calculations for their new home would be better spent picking out paint colors, plumbing fixtures and landscaping schemes ....

The reason for that statement is, if one calculates the load for a home using the demand factors and continous load ratings from the NEC, they will find the size of the service needed for their home is lower, than what the proposed service ampacity rating equipment has alloted breaker spaces for...

A 100 amp service panel with a main breaker for disconnect means , in most manufacturers electrical distribution equipment comes with a maximum of 16 -20 single pole breaker spaces. That is too few of breaker spaces to meet the needs for the 220 volt appliance, the 2-20 amp kitchen dedicated appliance cicuits required in the kitchen, lighting and receptacle loads in a electrically heated home of lets say, over 1500 sq. ft....


A 150 amp panel with main, will have a maximum of 30 single pole circuit breaker spaces. Once again, for a home over 2500 square feet, one will find themselves running out of breaker spaces. I have put two 150 amp/30 circuit panelboards in large homes and even installed two 200 amp /40 circuit services in a few homes years ago ,that were 5000-9,000 sq ft. ..

Once again, not because the homes would have a estimated demand or continous load factor, to require a need for a 400 amp service, but because of the need for the two 40 circuit panelboards to give me the 80 breaker spaces I would be needing to not overload a breaker /branch circuit. Back then, I always like to leave the homeowner at least 6 -8 free breaker spaces for future loads. Hope this help clear up my first post . Good luck and congratulations on your new home, AND that big garage all jmo

 

It also depends on other energy sources that may be available. If you've got natural gas and you're planning on using it for heating/hot water/cooking/clothes dryer, the 150 may be acceptable. That said, IMHO, 200 would probably serve you better, and leave room for any possible electrical expansion(s) down the road. . I have a 3600 sq. ft. house that has 2 geothermal heat pumps, electric cooktop, electric oven, 2 hot water heaters and electric dryer and I have 2 200 amp panels.

 

My home is small just about a 1000sqft and had a 60 amp service that was 35 yrs old now it sports a 200 amp service and I wish I went to a 250 amp just to get a little more out to my garage.

 

We live in an old turn-of-the-century victorian. We upgraded to 200 amp a few years ago, and it was a good move. It sure made it a lot easier to wire the addition we put on.

Go w/200, or you'll be looking to upgrade in no time flat, especially with all the electrical stuff we can't seem to live without these days.

 

Our 1500 sq. ft in FL is 200 amp. We have central air and heat pump for heat. It was originally 150, but the panel got baked, so I had the guy up it to 200. The two hot leads coming into the panel were copper, but the ground (of all things) was aluminum! It overheated and melted part of the buss bar. We were wondering why all the lights were flickering.

 

Unfortunately, it wasn't my decision as to which electrical panel was installed. It's a "custom" home but you can only pick out certain things such as brick, paint, etc. We are going with natural gas for everything that we can. Other than standard outlets, the house currently has 220V for an electric dryer, an oven, and the a/c. I won't be using the 220V for the dryer as I have a gas dryer.

Is the 180 v-a a requirement in the NEC or just an estimater? The company building the house is a very large homebuilder so I'm guessing they did their homework so I'm going to have to find something that is rock solid.

 

Being an all gas home you should be fine with the 150 amp service. If it passed electrical inspection, then by all building and electrical code standards, the customer needs have been satisified. Anything else above that criteria is considered "extras" and builders charge for it.