Electric meters on the side of houses in the 30s and 40s?

[p51]

What would electric meters on the side of houses look like in the WW2 era or earlier? I did a lot of looking onlike but can't find a photo of any house back then showing what the electric meter on a house back then would look like.
I'm in the process of getting ready to make some power poles for my in-progress model RR layout and I want to get the meters on the structures looking as they should for 1943.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Westinghouse watt-hour meter, c. 1935. Mount it in a painted grey steel box with a cutout front and a crimped lead seal at the hasp on the bottom. Some might have a little wood thing like a birdhouse around it to keep the rain off.

A GE version from around the same period, in its mounting box. Utilities would generally use the same type of meter on all their installations, so take your pick.

 

[p51]

THANKS! I looked a really long time before giving up trying to find a photo of a house from that timeframe with the meter on the side.
From 1/48 scale, it wouldn't look much different than meters we use today.

 

[Stanley Doble]

In those days meters were usually inside the house or in the back porch. Sometimes the meter reader had to go in the house and down in the basement. If no one was home they would estimate the bill and adjust it the next time they got a reading. Putting the meters outside started in the sixties.

This may be why you can't find a house with a meter on it. Maybe if you find a picture of the back yard with the back porch in view but possibly not even then.

In the case of a farm where the electric service had to go a long way from the road they would put the meter on the first convenient pole but it would be inside a wooden box with a sloping roof.

 

[Stearmen]

This might help, http://www.w2agz.com/Library/Electricity%20History/rea_books.htm It has the pool mounted box like Stanley mentioned. I know from my Grandparents farms, the wire would come to a pole close to the house, then into the house. In town, some would have a simple 2 by 4 nailed to the house, not to safe. It was a steep learning curve! Oh, if you have a small town, be sure to have wires crossing in several directions on the main street, power, telephone, and even telegraph wires. You can find photos of it, it is mind boggling, but would make a great little detail!

 

[LizzieMaine]

If you watch the famous "porch scene" of the 1934 W. C. Fields movie "It's A Gift" you'll see a good example of what Bro. Doble was talking about -- Fields lives in a three-story apartment house with outdoor porches at the rear, and just above the porch swing where he tries to sleep, you'll see a row of three wall-mounted Westinghouse-type meters. There's a bit of license here, Fields is on the second floor of the house, and the meters would normally have been on the ground floor, but otherwise it'll give you a good idea of what an outdoor meter should look like.

My house was wired in the thirties, and still has the original steel meter box on the side of the house. The meter unit itself has been changed out several times, but the box is the same. My grandparents' house, wired in 1941, had the wooden birdhouse arrangement over its meter, complete with a little door that closed with a metal hook.

 

[GHT]

What a fascinating thread, did any other countries have a coin slot meter, to allow a pay as you go, system. It was common place here in the UK, right up to the early seventies. Householders on such a system paid a higher tariff, but the cynical utility company, (there was only one, it had been nationalised,) would deliberately overcharge so that the householder got a rebate when the meter was emptied. For hard pressed working people, that "rebate" would often buy a child a pair of shoes for school.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Some cities had coin-operated gas meters, which usually took quarters, and were mounted in the cellar, but these weren't as common as the shilling-powered meters in the UK. These meters were most popular in the first few decades of the 20th century, and were most often used in apartment buildings allowing tenants to use as much gas as they could pay for without running up a big bill for the landlord.

 

[p51]

My folks have told me they remember meters alongside the houses where they grew up in rural Northeast Tennessee in the 40s and 50s (they were little kids during WW2). I just had no idea of the specifics. Thanks for all the info!

 

[Stanley Doble]

Looking at old pictures, if you see the wires coming to the house, then a pipe about 1 1/2" in diameter that is the electrical conduit. Where it ends you will find the fuse box and meter.

 

[vitanola]

In those days meters were usually inside the house or in the back porch. Sometimes the meter reader had to go in the house and down in the basement. If no one was home they would estimate the bill and adjust it the next time they got a reading. Putting the meters outside started in the sixties.

This may be why you can't find a house with a meter on it. Maybe if you find a picture of the back yard with the back porch in view but possibly not even then.

In the case of a farm where the electric service had to go a long way from the road they would put the meter on the first convenient pole but it would be inside a wooden box with a sloping roof.

Basement? How about attic!

Meters began to be installed on the outside of houses in the early 1930's. They could only be mounted outside after the 1931 revision of the National Electic Code which for the first time permitted the installation of the meter on the pole side of the main disconnect. Thirties meters would have been units like the GE I-20 :
i
placed inside an aluminum or galvanized steel cabinet with a glass window, or, after 1935, the I-20 S outdoor meter:

The second meter that Miss Maine posted is a switchboard model polyphase use t, made for indoor use.

 

[Edm1]

I looked at a house last year that had the meter in the basement. I had never seen one like that before.

 

[MikeKardec]

I had a meter like that in a metal housing until ten years or so ago. I didn't realize it might have been the original meter! When building recording studios we used to try to keep them as far away from the equipment as possible ... not for any tested reason but they did throw out a fair electromagnetic field detectable with a Gauss meter. I can't say I understand this stuff but I figured why take the chance of it causing problems.

 

[Fading Fast]

I asked my Mom about this because my memory was uncertain, the house I grew up in was built in 1939 and it had a outside meter on the back of the garage (my memory of it is that it looked reasonably close to the one Vitanola posted above in post #11). She said three things would happen: (1) the regular guy who knew where it was would come and read it and my Mom would only see him if she happened to be outside at the time or looking out the window, (2) a not regular guy would show up, ring the bell and ask us where it was or (3) they would estimate the monthly usage and then "catch up" the following month (which she said always got my father to grumble that "they estimated high again").

My Mom couldn't help with this, but it was either at our house or at the house I rented an attic apartment in where I remember seeing the meter's wheel move faster when you turned on the air-conditioning - not surprising, but it made the cost of running the at the air-conditioning very visceral.

 

[LizzieMaine]

They still do estimates here for those of us who have refused to install "smart meters" -- I think I get an actual meter-reader every other month, And sometimes, as when the side of the house where the meter is is buried under seven feet of snow, they'll even ask where the meter is....

 

[Edward]

What a fascinating thread, did any other countries have a coin slot meter, to allow a pay as you go, system. It was common place here in the UK, right up to the early seventies. Householders on such a system paid a higher tariff, but the cynical utility company, (there was only one, it had been nationalised,) would deliberately overcharge so that the householder got a rebate when the meter was emptied. For hard pressed working people, that "rebate" would often buy a child a pair of shoes for school.

PAYG meters are still around. Very common in rental accomodation, especially rental accomodation aimed at students. The cin meters are thing of the past now, though, all replaced long ago with pre-paid cards.

My parents' current house, built in the early 90s, has the meter down in the garage under the house. Before that, we lived in an Edwardian House, in which the meter was in the front porch, up high, as memory serves. My meter box in my flat (Local Authority build, opened 1951) is in my kitchen. The electricity supplier always estimates. A few years ago they sent me a snotty letter asking me to send them the updated figure (very easily identified since the meters went digital years ago), saying that it was two years since they could get in, and their meterman said he "thought the property is unoccupied". I guess it never occurred to them that I might actually have a job, hence not being around in daytime during the week. Anyhow. Upshot of it was that I sent them my figure in, and they realised I'd been overcharged for years. I had a rebate of about GBP3,000 came in, and at a time money was tight too. They actually had the cheek to ask whether I wanted to money refunded, or if I wanted to keep some or all of it on the account in credit!

 

[HudsonHawk]

They still do estimates here for those of us who have refused to install "smart meters" -- I think I get an actual meter-reader every other month, And sometimes, as when the side of the house where the meter is is buried under seven feet of snow, they'll even ask where the meter is....

You actually have a choice? I have smart meter, because...well, the electric company came around and said "we're installing new meters."

 

[LizzieMaine]

We have a very powerful Public Advocate's Office here, and because of that there's a law requiring that the power company allow customers to "opt out" of the smart meter program. They charge me an extra $12 a month for having a "non standard meter," but it's more than worth it given that the meters put out intolerable blasts of broad-band AM radio interference, and I'm constantly listening to AM radio. I also like the idea of sticking a fork in the eyes of Central Maine Power, which is now owned by a Spanish conglomerate with no more concern for local customers than the man in the moon.

People like me have also prevented them from laying off all the meter readers, which I see as a victory for working-class solidarity. A small victory, but every victory counts.

 

[HudsonHawk]

We have a very powerful Public Advocate's Office here, and because of that there's a law requiring that the power company allow customers to "opt out" of the smart meter program. They charge me an extra $12 a month for having a "non standard meter," but it's more than worth it given that the meters put out intolerable blasts of broad-band AM radio interference, and I'm constantly listening to AM radio. I also like the idea of sticking a fork in the eyes of Central Maine Power, which is now owned by a Spanish conglomerate with no more concern for local customers than the man in the moon.

People like me have also prevented them from laying off all the meter readers, which I see as a victory for working-class solidarity. A small victory, but every victory counts.

I still have a meter reader, he just can read it from the street with his phaser rather than having to go into the back yard and write down numbers. Perhaps my meter, or my power company, is only quasi-smart.

 

[Haversack]

One of the interesting features of houses and small apartment buildings here in San Francisco are the tiny windows at street level to allow the meter readers to see the gas and electric meters. This is because most buildings here are zero-lot line with the meters located inside the garage. There is no standardization for these windows so they come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They are now largely redundant as PG&E has been diligent in changing over to smart meters and making meter readers redundant as well.