Electrical Service Entrance

I've been spending a bit of time building my electrical service entrance. The service entrance consists of the electricity meter and the associated conduit and wire... basically all the electrical stuff that's on the outside of the house.

The meter base is mounted on a piece of treated lumber. It has to be anchored securely to the house, so I drilled holes in the concrete wall and used 1/2" galvanized lag bolts and anchors. The service conduit is a 2.5" galvanized steel pipe, and it's mounted to the wall in a similar fashion.

I was worried that it was going to be a huge, ugly task drilling large holes in the concrete, but I rented a rotary hammer drill and it was a piece of cake. You can drill a 3/4" hole through an 8" concrete wall in under a minute. I used a block of wood attached to the outside of the wall as a guide. It helps to hold the drill bit straight so you don't end up with a wobbly hole in the wall.

I'm having a 200 amp service installed, so the specified wire is 2/0 guage. It's about 7/16" in diameter and very hard to bend. It was quite a task getting it to bend and fit through the weatherhead on the top of the conduit.