I’m a retired architect and mechanical engineer who has spent most of his career working to make buildings more energy efficient, sustainable and carbon free. My latest book, Clean Electricity, a practical path to zero-carbon buildings, makes the case that cleaning our electric grid with more renewables and converting to all-electric buildings is the most viable and least-cost way of addressing the climate crisis. In my retirement, I decided that I should “practice what I preach”.

My family has lived in a 100-year-old four-unit apartment building in San Francisco for 45 years where we have raised our two children. Three of the apartments are managed as rental units. The building is located in the North Beach neighborhood with coffee shops, churches, restaurants, hardware stores, grocery stores, bocce ball courts, libraries, and other conveniences within easy walking distance. Before I retired, my office was also within walking distance, about a mile down the hill. It’s nice to be able to get around without a car, especially one that uses fossil fuels.

We started the process of making the building all-electric in the fall of 2022. The last step was completed in August 2025, almost three years later. The process was not straightforward. We made some mistakes along the way, but finally made our way through process with the City of San Francisco and the local utility, Pacific Gas and Electric. Hopefully, I’m able to share some experiences that will make it easier for others who want to go all-electric. Our building is located in densely developed San Francisco. All utilities are underground, which vastly improves the visual character to the neighborhood but presents some additional challenges for electrification as you will learn as you read my account.

We encountered a lot of problems along the way. Some of the tales I tell will sound daunting, but it is not my intent to discourage others from electrifying their homes or properties. I believe that climate change is the largest environmental threat we face and that the most practical path to a carbon free future is to cease using natural gas and other fossil fuels and to switch entirely to clean electricity.

I hope that my story will help others avoid the mistakes I made, which were many. Also, perhaps electric utilities will find their way to ease some of the more onerous and unnecessary requirements that discourage electrification. The purpose of electric codes is to enable the safe conduction of electricity through buildings. This principle has resulted in a “belt and suspenders” attitude by code writers resulting in larger circuit breakers and larger wires (if a #12 wire is safe, a larger #10 wire is safer). But modern LED lighting, heat pump clothes dryers, and heat pump water heaters use a fraction of the energy of appliances and equipment serving the same function a decade ago.

At any rate, here is my story. Charge ahead with your own electrification projects and try to avoid my blunders. Insist on meeting early with your electric utility and use a good electrician who has been through the process before. If you already have gas in your building, work with the utility to understand how there may be conflicts with the upgraded electric service. Good luck!

Lots of Gas Appliances to be Replaced

Our building has been served by natural gas for its entire 100-year history. The owner’s unit (where we live) is larger than the others. It had (1) a natural gas furnace supplying warm air through a 40-year-old duct system; (2) a 30-year-old natural gas water heater that also delivered hot water to under-the-floor PEX tubing in a downstairs bathroom; (3) a natural gas clothes dryer where moisture had to be vented under the floor to an adjacent light well; (4) a six-burner Wolf cooktop rated at 16,000 Btu per burner, and (5) a natural gas built in oven. Controls for the heating system did not work well; the downstairs was always cold and the upstairs too hot.

A small one-bedroom apartment downstairs from the owner’s unit had (1) an old natural gas-fired wall heater, (2) a natural gas storage-type water heater, (3) a natural gas clothes dryer, and (4) a natural gas cooking range. The two other apartments each have two bedrooms. They both had (1) natural gas storage-type water heaters, (2) natural gas clothes dryers, (3) natural gas stoves, and (4) natural gas space heating. One had an ancient floor furnace located over the garage, while the other had a stand-alone gas space heater sitting in the middle of the living room.

There were four gas meters located behind our house in what the San Francisco Planning Department considers our “backyard”, although it is all concrete and only about six feet deep. Steel gas pipes run through the building everywhere. The space heaters and water heaters were vented to the out-of-doors, along with moisture from the gas fired clothes dryers. The building is three stories over parking so there were lots of double-walled steel vents leading to the roof. The light wells were crammed full of exhaust ducts from the gas appliances.

In all, there were 17 gas appliances that needed to be replaced with electric equipment. In virtually every case, new or additional electric service was needed for each new appliance. The new heat pump water heaters and cooking equipment all required 240 volts and by code high amperage.  New induction cooking equipment needs 40 amperes or more. Heat pump water heaters require 30 amps since they default to electric resistance water heaters if the heat pump fails to operate. The efficient heat pump space heating equipment also required 240 volts, but only 20 amps. In addition, we wanted to provide an EV charger for each apartment in the basement/garage. Each EV Level-2 charger requires 240-volts and draws up to 50 amps.

Inadequate Electric Power

Electric power to the building was delivered through our six-foot-wide “backyard” along with the former gas service. The utilities in our neighborhood are underground and the adjacent narrow street, the picturesque Castle Alley, is a quite crowded with wires, pipes, conduits, and cables. Six different utilities use the public right-of-way: PG&E Electric, PG&E Gas, Comcast, ATT, San Francisco Sewer and San Francisco Water. The underground splice box where an electric conduit runs to our building is just outside our “backyard”, only a few feet away. While this seemed like good news, it also raised problems which I’ll discuss later. This splice box was ultimately replaced by a larger one.

Service from the utility entered a large surface-mounted junction box and from there to a building-level disconnect switch. From the disconnect, power went to the meter slots and then to the breaker boxes located near the meters on the same wall. Electric service from the utility to the junction box was provided through a 2‑inch metal conduit leading from the adjacent underground splice box in the street (the underground portion was PVC. An audit by a professional electrician indicated that this service was capable of safely delivering about 90 amperes. The existing electric service was possibly inadequate for the existing building and certainly too small to accommodate the 17 new electric appliances and future new Level-2 EV chargers. 

On our side of the electric meter, we had four breaker boxes also located above or below the meters in our six-foot wide “backyard.” Two of the apartments had fairly new subpanels to supply local electrical loads. The breaker boxes were all fully subscribed with no extra spaces for new circuits, even if they had the capacity. An empty meter slot remained for a “house meter” which was never installed. The “house” circuits are pretty minimal serving only garage lighting, a garage door opener and miscellaneous plugs that are rarely used. The house circuits were powered from the owner’s unit.

Most of the wiring downstream of the breaker boxes had been upgraded to Romex but some ancient knob-and-tube wiring remained, serving a few mainly lighting circuits where it was very difficult and disruptive to replace. Since most of the lighting in the building had been replaced with low-wattage LEDs the limited knob-and-tube wiring was not considered a hazard since the wires are free of insulation coverage.

Getting Professional Advice

I realized that making our building all-electric was going to take a while. Not only did we need to replace 17 gas appliances with electric equipment, we needed to upgrade the electric service on both sides of the meters. I also wanted to add EV chargers for each of the apartments. As an architect and engineer, I have done a lot of construction work on the building myself, but this job was more than I wanted to take on alone.

In June 2022, I started by calling the son of close friends who had just started his business as an electrical contractor specializing in making homes and buildings all-electric. We paid him a fee to come by and look at our building and make recommendations. He wrote up a nice report and recommended that we (1) upgrade our utility service to 400 amps; (2) replace the breaker boxes that serve each apartment and move them to the other side of the exterior wall (into the garage) since they were all inadequate and fully subscribed; and (3) replace the electric service and meter slots in our “backyard” with a new service panel and to (4) request an upgrade of electric service from PG&E capable of 400 amps.

Energy Efficiency Improvements. He also recommended various energy efficiency improvements like replacing the old single-glazed windows, adding insulation where we could, and weatherstripping in all the obvious places. Good advice. I knew the answer about the windows, but I marched down to the San Francisco Planning Department anyway and showed them photographs of the building and told them that I wanted to replace the windows, as recommended by our consultant. I also brought “cut sheets” of the new windows I wanted to use, which looked exactly like the windows that would be replaced but with a U-factor about four times lower because of double glass, low-e coatings and better frames.

The planner did not pay attention to my photos and instead looked the building up on Google Maps / Street View. The verdict was as I expected; sorry, “but we can’t allow you to replace the windows.” I had tried this before and knew the answer. Our building is located in an historic district and being 100-years old, contributes to that historic recognition. The planning department believes that the old windows are a key feature that contribute to the historic character, especially ogees at the bottom of the upper panel of double hung windows and the waviness of old glass. I guess they also like the irregularity on the frames that results from having to scrape and repaint the windows every five to ten years.

The planner suggested that I consider a product called “Indow” inserts which are sheets of plastic with gaskets around the edge that are custom made to fit on the inside of the windows, even when the windows are not square, which is often the case in old buildings. I looked into the product but quickly rejected it. They would probably work well in office renovations, but with Indows in place, you can’t open the windows for ventilation and they also interfere with blinds and curtains. The polycarbonate plastic will scratch and discolor over time, especially in rental apartments. Furthermore, they cost almost as much new windows. Bad idea. The City of San Francisco is a sustainability leader in many ways, but preventing property owners from replacing old, leaky, single-glazed windows is clearly counter to the City’s PR about sustainability, especially when it can be done without compromising the historic character or the building.

Hiring an Electrician

While replacing the windows was nixed by the city, and since I had already insulated everywhere, I decided that it was time to engage my electrician. He knew our building very well, having wired for our penthouse addition 40 years earlier and having been responsible for various other electrical improvements and repairs over the years. He liked the suggestions of our consultant and started work in October 2022 to replace and relocate the breaker boxes and install new service. He also started the process with our utility by requesting a service upgrade to 400 amps.

Electricians were on the job for several weeks that Fall. They installed four new 125-amp breaker boxes in our garage, one for each of the rental apartments and one for the “house”. A 200-amp breaker box was installed for the owner’s unit since it is larger and requires more power. The garage was a jumble of wires while they carefully marked each circuit as it was transferred from the old breaker boxes on the other side of the wall to the new. They worked separately on each apartment to minimize disruption of electric power. The new breaker boxes were surface mounted on the inside of the garage so that the 2x6 framing space behind the panels was free to pull and relocate the wires. However, the wall where the new panels were installed is a structural shear wall so we had to take care to not compromise this seismic reinforcing.

They also installed a 600-amp meter panel with a meter slot for each apartment and one for the house. This was installed on the exterior side of the wall where the new breaker boxes had previously been located. Temporary service was connected to the new meter panel. Their thought was if we need 400-amps, a 600-amp service panel would be even safer. This seemed like a good idea at the time but turned out to be a problem, as will be discussed later. If PG&E provides 400-amp service, the service panel needs to be exactly 400-amps, no more, no less. Also, a special meter slot is needed for the house so the meter can be changed without interrupting service. But this was a good start. We now had upgraded breaker boxes with lots of extra slots for the new circuits.

The Conflict with the Gas Service

A year later, we had made a lot of progress running wires/cables near the location of the proposed new electric appliances. Much of this work was done in the basement/garage without disrupting the tenants. However, we had not heard anything from PG&E about our request for an electric service upgrade so I asked my electrician to make some inquiries. He contacted our representative and sent some pictures of the new service panel to show how close it was to the splice box in the adjacent street. He had previously requested a site visit by PG&E to discuss the project, but got no response.

The PG&E representative responded right away indicating that the application was incomplete and until she got more information, she could not forward it to engineering for a cost estimate. Her list of additional information was extensive, and with my help, we put together a package of drawings that we hoped would meet her needs, including photographs of the new service panel with the five-meter slots and the near-by PG&E underground splice box in the adjacent street along with scaled plans and elevations showing the new meter panel, windows, pipes and the proposed location of the new electric conduit. 

Again, the response from PG&E was quick and the representative identified a number of problems that needed to be corrected, including: (1) the meters were mounted a few inches too close to the ground, (2) a drain pipe from our sprinkler system was too close to the service panel, but the main point she raised was that (3) the gas line serving the building was too close to the location of the new electric conduits and would have to be relocated.

The electricians raised the meter panel to meet the Greenbook requirements and we also promised to have our plumber move the sprinkler drain pipe once construction was underway, but we took issue with her requests to relocate the gas line. I personally wrote to the PG&E representative to advise her that it was our intention to electrify the whole building and eliminate gas service altogether, so spending a lot of money to upgrade and rebuild the gas service would be waste of both our resources and those of PG&E. I noted that two of the four apartments were already all-electric and gas service was turned off at the meters. The other two apartments were planned to be electrified in the immediate future, as soon as the new electric service was in place.

I had always assumed that the proper sequence of events would be to (1) first upgrade the electric service so that we had adequate capacity for the 17 new electric appliances and new EV chargers. We would then (2) replace all the gas appliances with electric equipment, and finally we would (3) demolish the gas service the building. Because of the conflict with the gas service, the PG&E representative recommended that we do things in a different order. Since she had canceled our first request for an electric service upgrade because our proposal did not meet all the PG&E Greenbook requirements and deadlines had passed; we needed to reapply for an electric service upgrade. She suggested that when we reapply that we simultaneously request that the gas service be demolished and out electric service upgraded.

This meant that had to do things in a different order. We first needed to (1) replace all the gas appliances with electric equipment, then (2) demolish gas service to the building and finally (3) upgrade the electric service. This was a reversal of what I always thought the process would be and raised the question of whether the existing electric service would be adequate to serve all the additional electric equipment. We would hold off installing the new EV chargers but we could not demolish the gas service until all the gas appliances had been removed and replaced with electric equipment. The building was fully occupied.

PG&E and the City inspectors draw a clean line between the equipment located on the utility’s side of the electric meters and the equipment that located on the building side of the electric meters. The City has responsibility of assuring code compliance and safety on the building side and PG&E has responsibility for safety on the utility side. We had already upgraded everything on our side of the meters; everything was already properly sized and safe, even with the addition of new electric equipment. It was the utility side of the meter that could possibly be overloaded. With all the new electric appliances in place, the service that our consultant had estimated at 90 amps, would have to serve everything until the service on PG&E’s side of the meter was upgraded. Most of this service was underground. If PG&E was recommending this sequence of events, then so be it. But to be safe, I installed some instruments to monitor the electric current in a few critical places just to make sure. More about this later.

Replacing the Gas Appliances

So, after the exchange with the PG&E representative in the fall of 2023, we changed our emphasis to focus on replacing all the gas appliances so that the gas service to the building could be demolished. It’s one thing to electrify your own house or condo, but multi-family buildings raise additional challenges since you have to work around tenant vacancies, or plan work with tenant approval while they  are away on vacation or gone for other purposes. In the fall of 2023, we had a turnover in one of the apartments (Rental Unit #1) which gave us a chance to do the work in that apartment. Also, one of the other apartments (Rental Unit #2) had recently sold and had been purchased by a member of the family; it was undergoing a major interior renovation. The work in these two apartments was underway at about the same time we changed our approach to first removing all the gas and then later upgrading the electric service, a lucky alignment of timetables.

Rental Unit #1. The tenant turnover gave us the opportunity to replace the four gas appliances in that unit. It was the first to be electrified. This apartment is located directly over the garage making it easier to run the new electric circuits. Each of the four new electric replacements required a double-pole 240v circuit, but since we had previously upgraded the service panel for all the apartments, we had the extra slots and capacity in the breaker box.

The gas range was replaced with an electric induction range which required a new 240 volt, 40-amp circuit. Once the power was in place the appliance company brought in and installed the electric stove and removed the gas stove. The new stove took up the same amount of space as the old and fit nicely into the slot between cabinets.

The new heat pump water heater required a 240v 30-amp circuit. In normal operation, HPWH’s draw considerably less than 30 amps, but almost all of the models on the market have electric resistance backup so 30 amps is needed for safety. Also, most building codes require 30 amps for electric water heaters since replacements may be electric resistance. Most water heaters and all of the water heaters in our building were/are located in separate and small laundry rooms.
       Since heat pumps remove heat from air and transfer (pump) this heat to the water, they can’t be located in small spaces, otherwise the space becomes too cold and the HPWH becomes less efficient. One option is to use a louvered door, but since these devices are noisy, this is undesirable, especially when the laundry room is close to bedrooms as was the case for this apartment. The other option is to duct intake air from outdoors to the water heater and/or exhaust cold air to the outside. Since the water heater was located adjacent to a lightwell, this is the approach we took. Ducting air too and from the unit is not necessary if the water heater is located in the garage, basement or other large space.

A 240v, 30-amp circuit was also needed for the heat pump clothes dryer, although monitoring equipment (installed later) shows that these units only draw about 900 watts and less than 4 amps under normal operation. The electric code assumes that a subsequent clothes dryer replacement may be electric resistance, thus the larger circuit is required. An advantage of heat pump clothes dryers over gas or conventional electric dryers is that moist air does not need to be vented to the outside. Water from wet clothes is condensed and can flow into the drain used for the washer. This freed a lot of ducts and wall/roof penetrations. However, drying time is significantly longer.

The heat pump for space heating required installed in this unit required a 240v, 20-amp circuit. The heat pump we used was a clean-looking console mounted on the inside of an exterior wall with two 8-inch ducts passing through the wall to the out-of-doors. There is no outdoor evaporator/condenser, just a simple 10-inch by 20-inch grill. This was desirable to maintain the historic character of the building. The units use about a little less than 600 Watts (drawing a little over 2 amps) under normal operation.
      Water condenses when the heat pump is operated and one of the more difficult challenges was making sure that the condensation is routed to a save and code-acceptable place. Also, the wall opening around the grill was carefully sealed from water penetration. Removing the old gas floor furnace left a big hole in the oak hardwood floor that had to be carefully replaced, trimmed, sanded, and sealed.

Rental Unit #2. This apartment had just sold and was purchased by another member of our family. It was undergoing for a major renovation which presented a welcome opportunity in our efforts to electrify. We pulled the permit for this renovation in the fall of 2022, but the tenant stayed for another 10 months, so work did not begin until the summer of 2023, about the same time we were told by PG&E that we needed to remove the gas service before they would upgrade our electric service. To make it easier to run the many new electric circuits required for a gut-rehabilitation, we installed a 100-amp subpanel in the hallway fed by a large electric cable from the service panel in the garage/basement. All the new circuits had much shorter runs, since the relocated kitchen and renovated bath were very near the new subpanel.

The old kitchen and the bathroom were both stripped down to wood studs. The 10-inch-high baseboards were temporarily removed in other rooms in order to run the new electric circuits for plugs and lighting. The coved plaster ceilings were retained. The old knob and tube wiring was completely replaced.

New electric appliances included:

1. A 24-inch-wide induction range, supplied by a 240v, 40-amp circuit. It took a while to find a 24-inch model which was necessary for the compact kitchen.
2. Two console-type heat pumps like the one described above for rental unit #1, supplied by 240v, 20-amp circuits. This apartment being on the upper floor had more exposed surfaces and more heat loss, thus two units were used where one was adequate for the apartment downstairs.
3. A heat pump water heater like the one previously described for rental unit #1, supplied by a 240v, 30-amp circuit with evaporator air vented to the unit as previously discussed.
4. New laundry equipment in the same room as the water heater, including a heat pump clothes dryer. The dryer was served by a 240v, 30-amp circuit.

The largest technical problem we had with the renovation was not related to replacing gas appliances, but rather a requirement that cooking appliances have mechanical exhaust to the out of doors. This was a challenge for this apartment. We considered trying to reuse the metal ducts that previously served the gas appliances, but this idea was not accepted by the building inspector for several valid reasons. Venting through the outside wall was also undesirable since the location of the vent would have been about 35 feet above the ground and over a tree, making access very difficult, the larger reason was that the vent would have had to penetrate a beautiful decorative plaster cornice, that in my opinion was the main contributor to the historic character of the building. Our final solution was to use the space where the gas vents had previously run. This sounds easier than it was since some demolition was required in the owner’s apartment upstairs. The “owner” was cooperative. 

Rental Unit #3. For the third rental unit, there was no turnover or vacancy, but in this case, the necessary changes were more straightforward, plus by this time we were “experts” having already replaced eight gas appliances in the other apartments. This unit had four gas appliances: a water heater, wall furnace, clothes dryer and range. The laundry and the water heater were located at the back door in a small, closet-like space. Work in this space could be done without disturbing the rest of the apartment, except for the inconvenience of no hot water or a way to wash clothes. The wall furnace was located in the bedroom and was a little more trouble. The gas range was a standard size and easily replaced, once 240v, 40-amp electric power was in place.

Like unit #1, the new electric wiring/cables could be run in the ceiling over the garage/basement with minimal disruption. With four new 240v electric circuits coiled beneath the location of each new appliance and connected to the new service panel, we were ready to electrify as soon as an opportunity presented itself. This happened in the spring of 2024 when the tenants took a multi-week vacation.

We replaced the gas water heater with an electric resistance appliance. Because of its location and tight quarters, there was no opportunity to vent intake and exhaust air. Plus, the “laundry closet” was close to the bedroom and already separated by a louvered door. Noise from the heat pump would have been a problem. We added a new 240v, 30-amp electric circuit for the new laundry, but left the old gas washer/dryer combination until we could arrange for delivery and installation by the appliance company. The gas wall furnace was removed and replaced by a small electric resistance wall heater served by a new 240v, 20-amp circuit, The wall around the new space heater was patched, taped, and painted.

All of the work was done in a couple of days. The appliance store came right away and installed the new induction range and took away the old gas stove. Installation of the new laundry with the heat pump clothes dryer was scheduled for later by the appliance store because the equipment we needed was not immediately available.

The Owner’s Unit. At this point, all three rental apartments were electrified. The owner’s unit, where we lived, was a bit more complicated and was the last to be fully electrified. However, we did not have to squeeze work between tenant turnovers or vacations. A penthouse was added to the building in the 1980’s that doubled the size of the owner’s unit. At that time an electric subpanel was added to the top floor that served the kitchen, laundry and most of the circuits in the owner’s unit. However, this subpanel was fully subscribed with no empty slots for additional circuits. The feeder from the breaker box in the basement was of adequate size, but the panel itself needed to be upgraded.

During the renovation of Rental Unit #2, and while some of the ceiling was open, we pulled most of the wires needed to serve the new electric appliances in the owner’s unit which was directly above. It would have been very difficult otherwise. It helps to plan ahead. The new induction cooktop and electric wall oven each needed a new 240v, 40-amp circuit. A new 240v, 30-amp circuit was needed for the new heat pump clothes dryer and two new 240v circuits were run to the closet that contained the gas furnace and gas water heater. One of these would serve an air-to-water heat pump and the other was an extra. With the new subpanel and cables in place, we were ready to install the new electric appliances, although the final connections were not made.

The oven, induction cooktop and heat pump clothes dryer were all pretty straightforward replacements, but there was an issue with the cooktop. When the old gas Wolf cooktop was removed, it left a 36-inch-wide front-to-back gap in the counter top. The induction cooktop needed a continuous counter with a hole in the top where the unit is dropped in. We could have done a kluge to fill out the gap and accommodate the new drop-in cooktop, but that would have looked awful and we decided to replace all the countertops in the kitchen which we did not like anyway (another story). We also got a new drawer under the cooktop. This was an extra and indirect expense related to the electrification, but one that vastly improved the look and functionality of our kitchen.

The approach we took to replace the gas furnace and water heater was a bit more interesting. After a lot of research, we installed a combination system that uses an air-to-water heat pump which was installed on our roof, directly above the mechanical closet. The heat pump heated a thoroughly insulated 120-gallon water tank. The tank provides hot water for domestic purposes, e.g. cooking, bathing, etc., but in addition hot water is drawn from the top of the tank and delivered to coils in a down-flow air handler that provides space heating.

The heat pump uses CO₂ as the refrigerant, which has a global warming potential of one, compared to R-410, the most commonly refrigerant, which has a GWP of over 2,000. The system is zoned such that the upstairs and downstairs are separately controlled, a big improvement.

The large tank provides a certain amount of thermal storage. The heat pump can be operated during the day when electricity is clean and California has a lot of solar energy. The stored hot water will then last through the early evening and morning to provide both space heating and domestic hot water.

I was a little skeptic about using the SanCO2 heat pump for this purpose. It is a single-pass machine. These are great at heating cold water to 150 degrees F or more, but when warm water is circulated through the machine, the efficiency and effectiveness is reduced. This would of course be the case when the heat pump is used for space heating since the return water temperature from the air handler would be warm. I conversed with lots of experts who shared my concern, but the California Energy Commission has recently completed some monitoring of the system I was using and the monitoring showed that it worked well.  We installed it and it seems to be working as expected. The SanCO2 heat pump draws about 1,100 watts (4.6 amps) and the air handler draws only 125 watts.

A New PG&E Application

Our last gas appliance was removed from the building in April of 2024, about 18 months after we started the project. All gas pipes were capped and the gas valves were closed at each of the meters. But the meters were still there and until the entire gas service was demolished, we could not upgrade the electric service. I contacted our representative at PG&E to let her know of the status and to get direction on how to request that both the gas be demolished and that our electric service be upgraded. She had previously advised me that our original application had been canceled and we needed to make a new filing. She also said that she had been reassigned within PG&E and she would no longer be our representative. Not supprising.

I started over at the beginning, sort of, in April 2024. This time, I decided to take a more active role in the process and filed the upgrade application myself. Previously, our electrician had taken the lead. PG&E has a web portal called “Your Project” where you can request upgrades and other infrastructure changes/improvements. I filed the application as best I could, but there was no box to check if you wanted to demolish the gas, so I put it in the notes. I made the $3,500 deposit toward PG&E’s engineering cost and was given a new “PM” number (I’m not sure what “PM” stands for) and we were ready to move ahead with a fresh application.  

I was contacted right away by PG&E’s Application Verification Team in May 2024 thanking me for being a valued customer.  The representative explained that my application was being forwarded to the San Francisco Division Service Planning Office and that a project coordinator would be assigned within 5 days. He gave me names, phone numbers and emails of his Supervisor and Regional Manager to call if PG&E’s services fell below my expectations. I came close a few times to contacting these persons as the months passed. It took a couple of weeks, but I finally got the name, phone number and email for our new representative, now called our project coordinator.

I did not contact him but rather decided to let him do his work. In late July 2024, after about two months, there had been no word from PG&E so I wrote to our project coordinator asking for an update. He responded that the engineering team was still working on the electric upgrade, but the gas cutoff design was complete and asked if I wanted to proceed with that. I responded the next day to move forward with the gas cutoff.

A few weeks later, the project coordinator sent a contract for me to sign. I was authorizing PG&E to spend $2,374 to engineer the electrical upgrade, which including a capacity study, an upgrade to the splice box in the street, and pulling the cables to our new service panel. We had an option to let PG&E do the engineering work or have our own contractors do the work (I think there is a piece of legislation or CPUC rule that requires this). I choose the former. The cost they quoted was lower than the $3,500 deposit I had already made, so we received an approximate $1,100 refund. I signed the contract, but the engineering for the electrical upgrade would not be completed for a couple of months.

Demolishing the Gas

The gas demolition was first scheduled for early September 2024, but finally occurred in late-September after a delay related to getting permits. A PG&E crew dug up the street and capped the service leading to our building. The underground cutoff valve in the sidewalk was removed and filled in. The meters were removed, leaving a jumble of pipes hanging from the wall. These were all dead and were removed later by my handyman.

Several months after we had demolished the gas service to the building and removed all the meters, I noticed when reviewing our energy bill from PG&E that we were still being charged for gas. Not only were we being charged the monthly service charge, we were also being charged for gas consumption, even though there was no gas service or meter. This was true for the owner’s unit, but also for the other three apartments which had separate accounts with PG&E.

The people in PG&E who send the bills had no knowledge that the gas service was demolished. There is obviously little or no communication between the group that does the demolition and the billing department. Since they were unable to read the meters, since they were gone, they charged us based on an average of previous years. It took multiple phone calls, emails and other correspondence to straighten out the problem and the process had to be repeated by each of the tenants in the building since they had their own accounts with PG&E. For each apartment, PG&E sent out a technician to the job site to read the meter and verify that there was no gas consumption. Of course, when they arrived, they discovered that there was no meter to read since they had been removed months earlier. It was finally settled after several months of phone calls, multiple PG&E site visits and email communication. 

Upgrading the Electric Service

About six months after filling the second application and after the gas was demolished (October 2024), we had an on-site meeting with PG&E personnel to discuss the best way to upgrade the electric service. My electrician had requested this meeting two years earlier, but was unsuccessful. For those of you considering electrification, make sure you insist on and have this meeting. It set the course for the rest of the work. The meeting was attended by our PG&E project coordinator, their chief inspector, and a couple of other utility personnel specializing in trenches, conduits, etc. My electrician and I were both present at the meeting. We learned a lot and I wished it had occurred two years earlier; it would have saved us a lot of heartburn and money. But since our first application was rejected, we had to completely remove the gas service before they would talk to us about upgrading the electric service. Here is what we learned.

• The 600-amp service panel that had been previously installed was unacceptable. For a 400-amp service upgrade, which we were requesting, the service panel must be 400-amps, no larger, no smaller.
• The conduit leading from the service panel to the splice box in the street must have a minimum diameter of 4 inches and a minimum turning radius of 36 inches. A preliminary path for the conduit was laid out in our 6-foot “backyard”, leaving the service panel at a 45-degree angle and veering toward the street. The maximum turns cannot exceed 315 degrees.
• The recommended location for the new 400-amp service panel was where the gas meters used to be. This option would not have existed before the gas was demolished; it provided more room for the large 4-inch conduit and the 36-inch minimum turns.
• The service panel for the house meter must be of a special type so that the meter can be replaced without interrupting service. This makes sense when the house meter powers emergency equipment, but in our case, the house meter powers the garage door opener and some lights in the garage. There is no exception to this rule.
• PG&E deferred to the city inspectors as to whether or not a main disconnect would be required. Ultimately, one was not required, but this was a concern for a while because there was not room on the wall.

After the meeting, one of the PG&E participants filed an underground inspection log with details on how to dig the trench and lay the conduit. This went to my electrician but not me. The inspection comments were pretty clear with references to specific sections of the PG&E’s 500-page Greenbook standard. This was very helpful, but came too late in the process from our perspective. The graphic is my interpretation of the requirements.

• The applicant must have a valid USA (811) ticket even for excavations on private property. Expired tickets will result in cancellation of the scheduled trench inspection.
• Our electrician is not allowed to enter the splice box on Castle Street unless a qualified PG&E employee is on site.
• Pack clean sand around the conduit and mark it with 6-inch-wide electric warning tape as part of the backfill process.
• A straight rigid steel riser is required for the exposed portion of the conduit. This riser must be centered in the termination section and extend downward to a minimum of 6 inches below final grade. No bends, offsets, or couplings are allowed.
• A 6-inch crossing separation is needed at the sewer clean out on Castle Street. A 36-inch parallel separation required from any gas line or wet pipe.

A week or so after the site meeting, our project coordinator also followed up with an email to me and our electrician laying out the next the steps:

• You can install the new 400A panel at the location we discussed at the site meeting. Please send me the specs prior to purchasing so I can get it approved.
• You can dig your trench anytime leaving it at least 3 feet short of the existing sidewalk junction box. You can call for a trench inspection at this point. (But we did not want to dig the trench until the electric equipment was on site and PG&E had upgraded the splice box. Otherwise, there would be a 5-foot deep hole in our “backyard” which is used by tenants and our garbage collectors.)
• On 11/20/2024, PG&E will install the new #3 splice box on Castle Street. (This was postponed several times and finally installed in March 2025.)
• You can finish the last 3 feet of conduit with Pat (the PG&E chief inspector) and do the mandrel test same day. (It turned out that the Pat was not the trench inspector and the mandrel test was several weeks after the trench inspection.)
• I will schedule 2 Cableman to pull in the conductors. Meter Techs will arrive that same day with the new house meter. (They did not arrive on the same day causing a power outage longer than expected.)

Our electrician found some equipment in late-October that would meet the PG&E specs, but it was too large and would not fit on the available wall space. I did some research and found a more compact Siemens unit that had the four apartment meters in a stack. The house meter had to be in a separate cabinet specially designed so that the meter could be changed out without interrupting service. This was submitted to the project coordinator at PG&E and he checked with others within the utility and confirmed that the equipment was acceptable. The only problem was that the equipment was in scarce supply and not immediately available. We put in an order, but the estimated delivery time was in the range of six months.

Another problem was that PG&E had not upgraded the splice box in the street. While we were allowed to dig the trench, the exact termination points on each end of the conduit would not be established for several months. The Greenbook standards would have required the trench to be about five feet deep, essentially making our 6-foot wide “backyard” dangerous and completely impassable.  We decided to wait until both the splice box and meter panel were in place before digging the trench. While this seemed to be the smart thing to do, we did not realize that if we waited PG&E would implement additional requirements for digging trenches that would set us back another couple of weeks.

After two delays, one because of rain, PG&E installed the new #3 splice box on Castle Street in mid-March 2025. It was originally schedule for November 2024. The work occurred while I was on vacation. So, we did not get to see the inside of the splice box. We were expecting it to be 26 inches deep, but as we learned later, it was only 18 inches deep and the bottom was impenetrable, because they installed the new splice box over the old one and did not remove the bottom of the old splice box. This detail was significant for us as we positioned our new 4-inch conduit near the splice box.

The Siemens WEP4412 equipment finally arrived in late-March 2025. It was ordered in October 2024, six months earlier. Our electrician came to the job site right away and installed the new equipment and ran the feeders to the breaker boxes in the garage, but did not connect them. The new splice box was in place and the equipment was in place; both ends of the conduit were now known. We could now dig the trench.

Digging the Trench

We needed a USA ticket before we could dig the trench. USA does not stand for United States of America, but rather Underground Service Alert. It’s the group advertises itself with the slogan “call 811 before you dig”. You don’t normally need a USA ticket for digs on private property, but PG&E requires them anyway. I went online and filled out a form.

Getting the ticket is a fairly straightforward process: (1) you go the USA website: (2) open an account: (3) enter information about your dig, including whether the dig will be by hand or machine; (4) specify the geographic coordinates of the dig: and (5) mark the location of the dig on a Google-maps like electronic image. Underground Service Alert then identifies all the organizations that have stuff buried near where you plan to dig and notifies them of your excavation project. The utilities then have two weeks to indicate their approval and/or to come to the site and mark with colored paint where their underground services are located. In our case, Underground Service Alert notified six utilities: PG&E Electric, PG&E Gas, Comcast, ATT, San Francisco Sewer and San Francisco Water. We had to work around all of these underground pipes and conduits and make sure that the trench for the new electric conduit maintained the necessary clearances with these other underground services, but only a couple of feet of our excavation was on the public right-of-way so there were no conflicts. PG&E’s Greenbook is very specific about the required separations, which depends on the type of pipe or conduit, e.g. gas, water, electric, communication, etc.

We got the USA ticket in a little over two weeks and I thought that was easy; we were ready to dig. But there was a snag. PG&E informed us that starting April 1 (April fools’ day for 2025), we needed a special credential before we could call for the trench inspection. Since digging the trench would have left a deep hole in our back alley that our tenants use on a daily basis and garbage collectors use to pick up our trash, and to minimize this inconvenience, we postponed the dig until our electrician was able to obtain the special credential. PG&E had contracted with a certification company in Chicago to administer the certification program so reaching them by phone had to be done before about 2:00 PM. Our electrician jumped through the hoops and got the certification, but this delayed the project for about three weeks and cost about $600. By the time he got the certification, our USA ticket had expired, but extending it was easy enough with a single phone call. I like the people at USA.

So, we dug the trench and pieced together the 4‑inch PVC conduit, but did not glue it. It seemed to me that we were in compliance with all the Greenbook standards, so we called for the trench inspection. It was schedule for May 8, 2025 between noon and 1:00, but the inspector called around 1:30 to say he would be late. Around 2:00, he called again and could not find the job site. I walked out to Green Street, waived him down and walked him back to the trench. He was in a bad mood.

He and my electrician went though the mating ritual of comparing QR codes with each other, the procedure implemented by PG&E’s contractor in Chicago. The inspector did not like what he saw with our trench and raised several issues.

• There were two side-by-side 4-inch knockouts in the bottom of the meter panel for bringing in the steel conduit. We used one of them. He wanted us to ignore these knockouts and open our own 4‑inch hole between the two so the conduit would enter in the dead center of the splice box between the two knockouts provided by Siemens. This seemed a little silly, but I guess it’s what the Greenbook says.
• The steel portion of the conduit is supposed to extend six inches below grade where it connects to the PVC conduit. It was an inch or two short.
• But the main issue was that he did not like the way the PVC conduit would have entered the splice box on the street. He wanted the conduit to be much deeper and to turn up entering the spice box vertically from the bottom. Achieving this would have required much more excavation which could possibly conflict with the sewer and water lines in the street.

The first two issues were fairly minor compared to the third. After some discussion and negotiations, he removed the special five-sided bolts that secure the top of PG&E’s splice box in the street. When it was open, it was clear to all of us that his idea of entering the splice box from below in a vertical manner was not possible. The PG&E crew that installed the new splice box placed it over the top of the old splice box making it impossible to enter the box from the bottom as he was recommending. At his request, we brought out some extra PVC fittings we had not yet used. He selected a 45-degree bend, used our saws-all to open the corner of PG&E’s splice box and inserted the new fitting. He gave us specific instructions on how far the fitting should extend into the splice box.

After seeing PG&E’s work with the splice box, the inspector loosened up. It was now around 2:30 PM and he said “If you can install the conduit as I have instructed by 5:00 PM this afternoon and send me pictures, I will approve the trench”. Okay, but we had to hustle. My electrician called two of his guys from another job. They rushed over, we finished the job, following the inspector’s specific instructions. We placed sand around the conduit, mortar around the splice box opening, and a six-inch wide marking tape over the sand. I took pictures and texted them to him, just after 5:00 PM.  We received no confirmation but assumed that the trench and conduit were approved. Our electrician left a sturdy tape inside the conduit for the PG&E cablemen to use in pulling the new conductors.

A week or so later, we filled the trench. The clay fill was shoveled in and compacted. We bought a few of bags of asphalt paving to temporarily finish the top surface of the “backyard” so our garbage collectors and tenants could use it before the concrete was permanently repaired.

Pulling the Wires

The next step in the process was to call for another inspection, the mandrel test. A mandrel is this round device attached to a cable with a diameter slightly smaller than the inside of the conduit.  It is pulled through the conduit to verify that there are no obstructions. This test was scheduled for late-May. The PG&E inspector arrived on time, but when he checked, the previous trench inspection had not been cleared, although we had filled the trench. PG&E’s rules are that the mandrel test can’t be performed before the trench has been approved. Uh-oh. My electrician explained to the inspector that we had followed the instructions of the other PG&E inspector and sent him photos as he requested. So, the inspector on-site called the other inspector on his mobile phone, who agreed that we had passed the trench inspection, but admitted that he had not yet signed off on the inspection. The mandrel test proceeded and we passed. I think the inspector for the mandrel test was senior to the other inspector, which might have helped.

The PG&E mandrel inspector checked a few other things and told our electrician that all was well once we had a “green tag” from the city saying that all the work on the other side of the meters was up to code and ready to electrify. He wanted a few other minor changes that we were able to verify by sending him photos. The city “green tag” inspection was immediately scheduled a few days later (May 27). We passed that too. Whew!

All was clear for PG&E to send the cable crew to pull the wires and a second crew to install the new meters. We were almost at the end of the process. The trick here was to schedule both crews on the same day, as our project coordinator had promised, because when the new meter panel was energized, the whole building would be without power until the new meters were plugged into the slots. Our electrician also needed to be on the job site that day to power the five breaker boxes from the new meter panel and disconnect power from the old meter panel. While all this was happening, the building would be without power. We warned the tenants to charge their computers and devices and to be prepared for a power outage.

As luck would have it, this work was scheduled on a day when I was three time-zones away in Atlanta. I was in touch by phone with my electrician. He and the cablemen were on site first thing doing their work and we expected the meter technicians to be there later in the day. But mid-morning (east coast time), I started receiving robot-calls from PG&E that the appointment for installing the meters was scheduled for the next day. If this was true, the whole building might be without power throughout the night, a major inconvenience. While driving, I made a number of hands-free calls to try and sort out the mess, but nothing was certain.

As it turned out, there were actually two crews planning to visit the job site on the next day. One crew had responsibility for installing the new meters and a second crew came to install a PG&E accessible lock box with a key to our gate so PG&E personnel could enter in the event of an emergency. We already had that, but it must not have been in their records. They came the next day as advised by the robots; we were unable to reschedule anything. But our electrician had temporarily provided us with power by plugging the old meters into the new meter box sockets. I’m not sure PG&E’s Greenbook allows this but it saved the day, or I should say the night.

But there were even more problems in my day of absence. With no power, the garage door had to be operated manually and somehow as it was manually raised and lowered it was pulled from the tracks requiring a call to our garage door maintenance company. Once the door was fixed and power restored, it still did not work because the circuit breaker that powered the garage door had not been turned on. I had a facetime call from Atlanta with my wife to show her how to activate the circuit and all was well.  A lot happened on my three days of travel, but when I returned, our three-year electrification project was finally complete. The only thing left to do was to repair the concrete in our “backyard” where the trench was dug but that is another story for another time.

Summary

While some of my stories may discourage home owners and property managers from electrification, that is not my intent. The most practical and lowest cost path to a carbon free future is to electrify everything we can. It’s not easy, especially in occupied multi-family buildings where you have to work around tenant turnovers or make the upgrades in occupied dwellings, but it is worth it. Otherwise, our younger population and their children will have to deal with the effects of global warming and the resulting climate change. This will be far more costly and disruptive than electrifying projects like ours.

My hope is that this story will help others avoid my slipups. Also, perhaps electric utilities and their regulators will ease some of the more onerous and unnecessary requirements that discourage electrification. Code writers can also encourage a healthier future by requiring new buildings to be all-electric from the get-go. It is much easier, even cheaper, for new construction. There are also opportunities to revise the rules and procedures for estimating electric loads in new construction and renovations to recognize the low power draw of modern appliances and lighting equipment (I’ll write more on this later). This would enable many projects to electrify without the need for an upgrade of the electric service.

So, my message is clear. Electrify everything and do it now.