[MassHistPres] Electric Meters & other utility locations

Thu Jul 1 10:38:57 EDT 2010

 Some communities in Rhode Island have dealt with this issue as well, working with National Grid and some state representatives/senators.  I think the SHPO's office may also have gotten involved, and perhaps PreserveRI, the statewide nonprofit.  I haven't followed this issue closely, so I don't know where things stand, but either of those organizations--and maybe some Googling--will give you more updated information.

Shanti
sanderheggen at cs.com

-----Original Message-----
From: slater at alum.rpi.edu
To: masshistpres at cs.umb.edu
Sent: Thu, Jul 1, 2010 9:51 am
Subject: Re: [MassHistPres] Electric Meters & other utility locations

We are having a problem with this in Springfield as well. Houses in our historic districts generally had meters in their basement, with service entering the house in the front (closest to the street). When someone wants to update their service, the electric company will force the homeowners to locate the meter outside, and due to the location of the existing service, the meter winds up on the front of the structure. Here is a building that is just outside one of our districts, you can see the horrid effect:

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/12/developers_bringing_new_life_t.html

My understanding is that this is not a well-planned thing -- the power company shows up to disconnect the service to allow for the upgrade and only then does the homeowner (and electrician) find out that they need to put the meter outside. By then, they are faced with just doing it, or rescheduling everyone -- the electric company, the electrician, and any other contractor they have on hand.

It is usually not easy to place an external meter in a place different than where the original meter is, because this is where the circuit box is located, and all internal wires run there. That is why you will see two pipes leading to the external meter -- one coming up from the ground to the meter, the other going down to the ground to the internal circuit box.

We had a representative from Western MA Electric come to our meeting, and without citing any code or regulation he basically told us to stick it. We have been told in the past that they wanted the meter on the outside for safety reasons for their meter readers - but now that meters are read wirelessly, that excuse is no longer valid so they are now saying that it is for safety reasons so that the meter can be removed to cut off service in case of a fire. We think that they just want to make it easier to turn off service for nonpayment because we don't see this happening in more affluent communities.

We are in the process of drawing up a letter to the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities to see if there is anything that can be done to push the electric company's hand on this issue. It might be interesting to try and coordinate some effort from all historic commissions in the state -- surely that would have more weight.

Ralph Slate
Chair, Springfield Historical Commission

<-----Original Message----->We have a spate of new electric meters being placed
>on the front of buildings in our LHDs.  We only find out about them when the
>owners object, otherwise the electricians just install them wherever.  The City
>Electrical Inspector told me that the placement of meters does not fall under
>MGL 143 section 6A because the Electric Code is different from the Building Code
>and therefore we have no say about the location.
>How are other cities handling this?  Are there other tools we could be using to
>relocate the meters? 
>Thanks, 
>Kristi Chase 
>Kristenna P. Chase, Preservation Planner 
>Historic Preservation Commission 
>Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development 
>93 Highland Avenue, Somerville, MA  02143 
>(t) 617-625-6600 x2525, (f) 617-625-0722 

******************************

For administrative questions regarding this list, please contact 

Christopher.Skelly at state.ma.us directly.  PLEASE DO NOT "REPLY" TO THE WHOLE 

LIST.

MassHistPres mailing list

MassHistPres at cs.umb.edu

http://mailman.cs.umb.edu/mailman/listinfo/masshistpres

********************************

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.cs.umb.edu/mailman/private/masshistpres/attachments/20100701/505cd3c0/attachment.htm>