Wires from Breaker Box into the House

[croco]

Hi!

Does anyone know if I can put in more than one pipeline with wires from the breaker box into the house?

My breaker box is outside, on the wall of the house facing backyard. The service comes into the breaker box through a pipe in the side. Currently, all the wires that go into the house are fed through a single 2 inch hole in the back of the breaker box right through the wall of the house (they all enter the house in the kitchen corner just under the counter - about the most difficult to access place in the house).

I want to add a few more breakers and separate lines that enter the house. Rather than trying to jam them through the existing hole and demolishing half of the kitchen to get to them, I want to add another pipeline on the side of the breaker box. The pipe would go down along the external wall and then enter the basement right above the foundation.

Does anyone know if this is up to code? I am looking at the code and some books but I don't really know what to look for. It does not look like multiple pipelines from the breaker box are explicitly forbidden...

Any recommendations?

[ncornilsen]

There is no issue with that, so long as the conduit is water tight and rated for the environment. I'd run Watertight metal conduit or PVC. (PVC would be easier.) Don't pull romex through the conduit, and make sure to pay attention to conduit fill tables. Terminate the conduit at a junction box (that can remain accessible) and change to Romex there.

Make sure you line up the bell ends all the same way, and pull the wire the right way, if you use PVC. (IE, don't pull "into" the cut ends of the pipes. Pull "into" the bell end of the adjoining pipe.

You going to permit this?

[Nate R]

This was done to the box in a house of mine. Box in in a back porch, but previous owner had electrician add conduit that went external to outside to add outlets elsewhere. As was described above, no problem to do so.

Permitting gets interesting. In my area, I can't do my own work period. So people do their own unpermitted work or hire an electrician. Seems silly to me that there's no in between.

[croco]

Thanks ncornilsen and Nate!

I am still thinking about permitting. In my area, I can do the work as the home owner but I need to permit every screw. It starts to become inefficient for smaller ad-hoc projects when the permit is several times more than the cost of the work.

[ncornilsen]

In my area, I can keep a permit open as long as 6 months. The minimum permit fee is $95, but each additional citcuit adds only a few bucks. So I batch projects as best I can, pull a permit, execute, and amend that permit as needed as ad-hoc projects come up. I've kept a permit open for 18 months before and doubled the number of circuits, resulting in only about $20 in additional permit fees to do so.

YMMV.