On 6/3/2010 12:19 PM, Doug Miller wrote:
"wrote:

Interesting. My main breaker panel is in the attic (unfinished space
over the garage) at pretty much the opposite end of the house as the
service entrance.

Code has not always required it to be at the point of entrance. It may very
well have met Code when it was installed. Seems to me that change came about
in the mid-late 1980s, but I could be wrong.

I think the phrase "as near as possible" purposely leaves a lot of
latitude in most local code adoptions and the ultimate implementation of
this requirement.

I built a house recently where the "service entrance" was on a separate
garage and the main service panel was on the utility room wall on the
second floor of the main house.

Reason was that the service had to be brought in overhead since it
crossed an easement and couldn't be buried, and the clearance between
the service lines and a window on the second floor of the garage was
insufficient to do an overhead to the main house or it would have to
cross adjacent property.

IME, the overriding concern of most municipalities is easy access to a
main cutoff at the service entrance, after that "as near as possible"
could be across the street.

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Last update: 4/15/2010
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