Two ESB meters become one..

wimpybeaver

Hi All,

Wondering if anyone can offer advice on the following please?
My wife and I bought a house about 2 1/2 years ago. Its an old cottage (~150 years old) and a ~30 year double storey extension.

The interesting thing is that they both have their own ESB supplies. At one stage I was going to leave that alone in case we ever wanted to rent out one side of the house but looking at the bills its costing me ~€300 a year just to have the second ESB meter. And I've decided that its better to get rid of one.

Questions:

Does anyone know if its possible to just get one of the meters disconnected and then have the two feeds from the outside ESB box connected to the single supply left? To me, this is the simplest way to merge the two with little re-wiring.

If this is not possible, can I get an electrician to connect the two fuse boards together? They are side by side in the house so thats a bonus :-)

Would the ESB care about getting some sort of sign off for this change for the house? I ask this as the house/cottage does need a re-wire but i wont be in a position to do that for another two years I would imagine.

Also, the house has three showers. One has an electric shower (heating cold water and power), while the other two are just power showers. I also will in the future be hoping to install, electric car charging ports, and to fit out a workshop with various power tools etc, so should I try and get my meter upgraded to a 16KVA one?

Thanks for any advice offered,

Seamus

aido79

wimpybeaver wrote: »

Hi All,

Wondering if anyone can offer advice on the following please?
My wife and I bought a house about 2 1/2 years ago. Its an old cottage (~150 years old) and a ~30 year double storey extension.

The interesting thing is that they both have their own ESB supplies. At one stage I was going to leave that alone in case we ever wanted to rent out one side of the house but looking at the bills its costing me ~€300 a year just to have the second ESB meter. And I've decided that its better to get rid of one.

Questions:

Does anyone know if its possible to just get one of the meters disconnected and then have the two feeds from the outside ESB box connected to the single supply left? To me, this is the simplest way to merge the two with little re-wiring.

If this is not possible, can I get an electrician to connect the two fuse boards together? They are side by side in the house so thats a bonus :-)

Would the ESB care about getting some sort of sign off for this change for the house? I ask this as the house/cottage does need a re-wire but i wont be in a position to do that for another two years I would imagine.

Also, the house has three showers. One has an electric shower (heating cold water and power), while the other two are just power showers. I also will in the future be hoping to install, electric car charging ports, and to fit out a workshop with various power tools etc, so should I try and get my meter upgraded to a 16KVA one?

Thanks for any advice offered,

Seamus

I can't imagine the Esb will want to connect the meters to each other so I would imagine you have 2 options. You can either get an electrician to join the boards together and get rid of the second meter and make the second board a subboard. The other option is to get rid of one of the boards altogether and reroute the circuits to the other board if there is enough space in the board to add in the additional circuit breakers etc.
The showers aren't a problem as power showers don't draw a lot of current and you only have one electric shower.
If you are thinking of upgrading the supply the cable coming into the house may need to replaced with a bigger cable. I would imagine the newer board will have the bigger cable at the minute.
This job should only be done by a registered electrician and there may a fair bit of work involved so you should probably get a couple of quotes. Paying €300 a year for the extra supply might end up being the cheaper option for now if you are considering a rewire in the next couple of years. You might be better off waiting until then to merge the boards.

wimpybeaver

Hi aido79, thanks very much for the advice. I'll probably get a few quotes and see before I make my final decision about connecting the boards. There's no room on either board to accommodate everything so ill see how much it would cost to make one a sub-board like you say.

I know I could wait but im sure other things will come up and the 2-3 year re-wire plan could get moved too. The new location where I want to make the central hub for electricity, network cables etc is currently a small toilet :-)

Thanks Again

aido79

wimpybeaver wrote: »

Hi aido79, thanks very much for the advice. I'll probably get a few quotes and see before I make my final decision about connecting the boards. There's no room on either board to accommodate everything so ill see how much it would cost to make one a sub-board like you say.

I know I could wait but im sure other things will come up and the 2-3 year re-wire plan could get moved too. The new location where I want to make the central hub for electricity, network cables etc is currently a small toilet :-)

Thanks Again

You're welcome. Another electrician may come up with different ideas upon seeing the job so it's always best to get someone to come out and have a proper look at it. Since you probably already have the mcb's and rcd's it wouldn't be that expensive to get a bigger board(just the housing) and put the components into it but depending on your rewire plans it may not make sense to move everything twice.

wimpybeaver

Hi aido79,

That's not a bad idea regarding a larger housing. I'm not a fan of how either board is wired to be honest but since id just be merging whats there anyway that would be fine for now and then being able to drop one meter.

I suppose if I do that, there would be no need for the ESB to sign off on the house wiring etc as there would be no change on the outside apart from them disconnecting a meter.

I was concerned that id be forced into getting an electrical to sign off on something if I were to change the ESB connection setup but thats probably not the case unless its a new connection :-)

Thanks Again,
Seamus

aido79

wimpybeaver wrote: »

Hi aido79,

That's not a bad idea regarding a larger housing. I'm not a fan of how either board is wired to be honest but since id just be merging whats there anyway that would be fine for now and then being able to drop one meter.

I suppose if I do that, there would be no need for the ESB to sign off on the house wiring etc as there would be no change on the outside apart from them disconnecting a meter.

I was concerned that id be forced into getting an electrical to sign off on something if I were to change the ESB connection setup but thats probably not the case unless its a new connection :-)

Thanks Again,
Seamus

You will still have to get the electrician to sign it off. Only a registered electrical contractor can do this job as they are the only people allowed to work on the board.
You're right about the ESB. They would only be involved in the disconnecting of the unwanted supply. They are not responsible for anything on the consumer side of the meter.

wimpybeaver

Yep, I wouldnt do that myself anyway. I know a couple of sparks so ill ask them to have a look and to see if they could make it one board and the cost etc. If its cheep(ish) then i might just do that anyway if theres minimal work involved etc.

Thanks Again