Is there room for a smart meter?

Thanks @BPLightlog maybe I’ll wait for the next occupier to rewire and start again. Shame as BG are offering £25 credit per smart meter installation - there’s plenty of room at the gas meter but that’s no good on its own, 😕.

Hello Julia 👋

That meter looks to have come of age …

As BP says, there appears to be enough room width-wise. Because smart meters usually have the comms hub mounted on top of them, they’re all about the same width - 130mm. The problem here will be the extra height of the comms hub, so I think that doorbell would have to go. My Aclara with a WNC hub is 170mm top to bottom. You’d have to measure from the bottom edge of the existing meter and see where 170mm takes you.

It’s difficult for ordinary mortals to find any details of smart meters, even basic ones like their dimensions. It’s all very well for suppliers and installation engineers to know them, but as you illustrate, customers sometimes need to know too.

I thought you had a Secure meter?

@Firedog Thanks for that info. This is my late mother-in-law’s house, so I thought I’d try getting a smart meter in while the family are clearing it, and get the £50 from BG !! However, if I could reposition the doorbell thing myself (how difficult can that be ?!?🤓) maybe it’s still possible.

There should be a feed from one of the trips on the consumer unit. If you isolate it there, someone could take the cover off the bell and move it - it might need longer cables .. or just remove it for now

I’ll get my screwdriver out…!

Hey @juliamc 

Glad to see BP and Firedog have already stopped by and offered great advice as always!

If you do have the smart meter fitted in there, please do pop back with a photo. I’d love to see how it fits in the end!

@BPLightlog unfortunately there’s no dedicated bell feed here, it’s all a bit out of date ! The meter has the date 2003 on it, does that mean it’s nearly defunct ?

Yes, 20 years is a typical lifespan. 
Those wires connect to somewhere ..

Not encouraging you to get too far into things but if there’s nothing much operating, you could throw the main breaker while you take the cover off the bell

… or even better, switch each off one by one until you find the connection (when the bell doesn’t work)

I’m with @BPLightlog on this one, flip the main breaker and you’ll probably find it’s wired into the house power supply somewhere behind the case. Keep us updated on your progress 😊

Update: British Gas’s offer of £50 cash back to get a smart meter has expired, so I will leave it for the next owner of the house to deal with. However I asked an electrician about moving the transformer to make room for a smart meter, and his advice was that if I got one my bills would go up !

Oh dear! 🤪

Wrong electrician!

Or maybe he just didn’t want such a ‘small’ job so trotted out some BS?

In some areas electricians are in high demand and are turning down such small jobs in favour of larger ones.
(For one thing it’s less travelling betwen multiple small jobs and more time actually working)

No, he’s coming here anyway to do an even smaller job - he’s local.