Electric main feed line

[encorehunter]

I had the inspector out last week and he told me I needed to run 4/0 4/0 2/0 wire from the meter box to the house, roughly 100 feet. I ran 4/0 4/0 4/0 and connected them. There are two 7 foot ground rods at the house connected with #4 solid wire. Now that it is buried he wants me to run a 6 gauge stranded wire to connect meter box ground to the ground at the house. Is there a reason I need to connect these? I did everything that was asked, but the inspectors keep coming up with more stuff. I write everything in a notebook when they tell me and check it off as completed, so I didn't just "miss" it.

[Wulf202]

If I read that right the ground rods are not connected to the box but are connected to each other. That would be a mojor problem.

[encorehunter]

Sorry, there are two ground rods at the house that are connected to my box.

[davsel]

He probably would have checked it off had you run the 2/0 he told you to.

You can have surge problems if the box to house ground/neutral is missing or too small.
I had a problem with this after the cement guys I contracted with punctured one of my supply cables. Three years later, the aluminum wire corroded to the point of going out. I was able to rig the neutral from the box to the house over to the supply side, and ran a solid copper 2 gauge over the ground for my neutral. With the neutral/ground disconnected, everything worked, but if the fridge kicked on while the dryer was running, lights would momentarily surge. I eventually busted out the concrete and had someone patch the corroded wire.

Good luck.

[Wulf202]

Yea then hes fixing the wire like davsel pointed out instead of making you pull the correct guage. Actually doing you a favor.

[encorehunter]

So running a larger wire was not the correct thing to do? I thought 4/0 was bigger than 2/0.
I'm sorry, I'm not good with electricity, but I thought bigger would be better.

[davsel]

2/0 is bigger than 4/0

12 gauge shotgun is bigger than 16, is bigger than 20, is bigger than 28.

[Sparky]

There is nothing wrong with the 4/0 you ran. It is bigger than the 2/0 so that is the reason he didn't make you change that out. Yeah you do need to run a ground to the meter housing if you do not have a meter main combo. The reason he didn't tell you before is anybody's guess. Maybe he missed it the first time. That has happened to me before.

[encorehunter]

I guess thats where I got confused. I knew 6 ga is bigger than 4 ga, I thought when I got into the aughts, it went the other way. 0 being the smallest and 0000 being the largest.

[davsel]

I guess thats where I got confused. I knew 6 ga is bigger than 4 ga, I thought when I got into the aughts, it went the other way. 0 being the smallest and 0000 being the largest.

I misread - you are correct.
No idea what his problem is.