Where the power company stops and your responsibility starts

This is the question that causes more wasted days than any other in this trade. Something goes wrong outside the house, the homeowner calls the wrong number, and by the time anyone figures out whose job it actually was, a week is gone.

So here is the line, in plain terms.

The short version

The utility owns the wire coming to your house. You own everything from the attachment point in.

That is the whole rule. Everything below is just detail about where that point sits and what it means when something breaks on your side of it.

Their side

The utility is responsible for the pole, the transformer, and the service drop, which is the wire running from the pole to your house. They also own the meter itself, the actual glass-and-dial unit that spins.

If a limb takes the line down between the pole and your house, that is theirs. If the transformer on the pole fails and half the street is dark, that is theirs. If the meter itself is bad, that is theirs.

Call them, not an electrician. They will not charge you and an electrician cannot legally touch most of it anyway.

Your side

Here is where it surprises people. The meter base, meaning the metal can the meter plugs into and everything bolted to your wall, is yours. So is the mast, the weatherhead, the conduit, the panel, and every circuit behind it.

That means:

• A meter base pulling away from the wall is your repair, not theirs.
• A cracked weatherhead letting water into the mast is yours.
• Anything from the panel inward is obviously yours.

The reason this catches people out is that the meter and the meter base look like one object. They are not. One is theirs and one is yours, and they are bolted together.

The part that costs people money

When the meter base or the mast is damaged, the utility usually will not reconnect you until an electrician has repaired it and, depending on the situation, until an inspection has cleared. That is a sequence: electrician first, inspection, then the utility comes back and turns you on.

If you call the utility first and wait, you have not started the clock on any of the steps that actually have to happen. That is the week people lose.

What to do when you are not sure

Call and describe what you are looking at. If it turns out to be the utility’s problem, Redstar will tell you that and point you at the right number, because a homeowner who was dealt with straight is worth more than a service call that should never have been booked.

Nobody expects you to know where the responsibility line falls. That is genuinely not obvious, and looking at it from the driveway it is invisible.