Meter Location (was Residential Electricity)

code done for safety.

in the event of a fire or other emergeny the emergency responders need a quick easy way to cut the power / pull the meter

I read your post three times, and cannot find any questions.

Sometimes the questions are not easy to discern.

OTOH, while you were reading it three times did you not, at some point, say/wonder, "WTF?"

Read it again.

The power is served from the front side of the house and there is no easy way to have the meter in the back. They are not going to run the service lateral all the way around a row of homes and down through the back yards just to hide a meter.

That would be my guess too. Question for the OP, are all the condos done that way? Certainly no uniformity here in NJ and typically they don't put them on the front. They are usually on a side where they are still easily accessible but out of view. Condo I had years ago here, they were on the side, hardly visible at all. There is one new construction house here in the $800K range where the meter is on the front of the house, but it's not facing front, it's on part of the garage wall, where the garage extends out beyond the front of the rest of the house. I think that whole setup is dumb and ugly too.

There is no question posted, only a comment on location of a meter.

Why does there need to be a question? It is a request for comment.

I know. I just wanted Stormy to read it again.

I'll admit I did wonder what was the purpose of the post.

Why? Waste more time? Were they illegal Mexicans?

Derby wants me to read it again.

I don't think he noticed the queston in my initial follow up.

You failed in your attempt. Did you see my question.

Does a sentence that starts with "Did" and ends with a period and not a question mark constitute a question?

Grouping the meters on one end is certainly an option but you would also need have raceways for the SE conductors buried under the other units before they were built. At a certain point, voltage drop will become an issue if these SE conductors get very long. It is a lot easier to run a straight shot to the unit from the street.

It depends on how the condos come together. In my case they were in clusters of 16. Mine was at right angles to the one next to it. That corner area between the two was where the meters and AC for both units were placed, so there was no need to run anything further, it worked out very nicely. The next door neighbors condo had the next condo directly abut it, the one following that was at right angles to it, etc. So the electric for those two was again in a corner area.

No. I scan for "question marks" so I can recognize when a question has been asked. I didn't (and still don't) see a question mark so I assume you already have all the answers you want.

Is there something you wanted to know?

They built a bunch here that each building has the SE on the end wall w/ all the meters; each pair of two had it on facing ends, of course.

It's all whether the contractor is willing to spend the $$ for the aesthetics or is looking for the cheapest way out. Distance is easily compensated for at the expense of some cable size perhaps but probably not likely there, anyway; the service to the building has to be sufficient for the whole complex irregardless and the distance within the building from that distribution point is likely not an issue.

As for the routing, I didn't walk through these before they were completed so not sure how the main runs were done but I'd suspect there was room for a conduit trace in the space between floors designed in from the git-go...

The OP said he had a local ordinance question but never asked it. And he did not ask for a comment, he only posted his comment.