Who Is Responsible for the Power Line from the Pole to the House?

A storm drops a branch on the wire running to your house. A line sags low over the driveway. The mast on the roof is bent and the meter box has pulled away from the wall. The first question is always the same: who pays to fix it?

The short answer is that responsibility splits at the point of attachment on your home. The electric utility generally owns the overhead wire from the distribution pole to your house, called the service drop. The property owner generally owns the hardware on the house that receives it: the weatherhead, the mast, the service entrance cables and the meter base.

The word “generally” is doing real work in that paragraph. The precise boundary is written into each utility's tariff or service rules, and it differs between investor-owned utilities, electric cooperatives and municipally owned utilities, and between overhead and underground service. This guide explains the usual split, what happens after storm damage, and how to find the rule that applies to your address.

Key Takeaways

• The service drop is usually the utility's. The overhead wire from the pole to the point of attachment on your home is owned and maintained by the electric utility or cooperative.
• The weatherhead, mast and meter base are usually yours. The cap where the wires enter, the pipe that holds them up, the cables running down to the meter, and the box the meter sits in belong to the property owner.
• The meter itself is the utility's. The meter is theirs; the enclosure it plugs into is yours.
• Storm repairs happen in sequence. If a tree tears the weatherhead off the house, an electrician repairs your hardware first, then the utility reattaches and re-energizes the drop.

The Boundary: Service Drop vs. Weatherhead

An overhead residential connection has five parts, in order from the street to your breaker panel. Ownership changes hands once, at the house.

1. Distribution pole — utility owned, including the transformer and any equipment on it.
2. Service drop — the wires from the pole to the house. Utility owned.
3. Point of attachment, weatherhead and mast — where the drop is anchored to the house and enters the conduit. Property owner.
4. Service entrance cables and meter base — the cables down the wall and the box on the wall. Property owner. The meter inside the box is the utility's.
5. Main breaker panel — property owner.

1. The service drop

The service drop runs from the pole in the right-of-way or easement to the attachment point on your structure. The utility owns it and repairs it: sag, worn insulation, a snapped conductor after wind or ice, a connection that has come loose at the pole. You do not pay for this work in most territories, and you should never attempt it.

2. The weatherhead, riser and mast

The weatherhead is the hooded cap where the drop's conductors enter your conduit. The mast, sometimes called a riser, is the rigid pipe that runs up the wall or through the roof to hold the attachment point at a safe height. Both are part of the house. A bent mast, a conduit pulled away from the siding, or cracked service entrance cable is the owner's repair, done by a licensed electrician.

3. The meter and meter base

The meter base is the enclosure mounted to the wall. It is yours, and if it pulls loose or corrodes, your electrician replaces it. The meter that plugs into it is the utility's; only the utility removes, replaces or tests it.

Overhead vs. Underground Service

Underground service replaces the drop with a buried service lateral from a pad-mounted transformer or pedestal to the meter. The split usually follows the same logic, with one common exception.

The exception matters in rural Texas. Some electric cooperatives' service rules make the customer responsible for the underground lateral from the transformer to the meter, particularly where the customer paid for the line extension. If you are on cooperative service with an underground feed, this is the first thing to check.

What Happens When a Storm Takes the Line Down

After wind, ice or a tree failure, drops are routinely torn from houses. Knowing the sequence saves days without power.

1. Look at the house, from a distance. If the weatherhead, mast or meter base is bent, pulled away or on the ground, the utility will not reattach the drop to damaged hardware. Stay clear of any wire on the ground or hanging low; treat it as energized.
2. Hire a licensed electrician. The owner's hardware is rebuilt to the current electrical code: mast, weatherhead, service entrance cable, meter base.
3. Get the inspection, if your jurisdiction requires one. Many cities and counties require a code inspection of a replaced service entrance before the utility reconnects. Your electrician will know.
4. The utility reconnects. Once the hardware is repaired and any inspection passed, the utility crew reattaches the drop and re-energizes the service.

How to Find Your Utility's Rule

Texas electric delivery is split among investor-owned transmission and distribution utilities, about 75 electric cooperatives, and about 72 municipally owned utilities, and each writes its own boundary. Three steps find yours.

1. Find the delivery utility on your bill. In areas with retail choice it is not the company you pay; it is the one that owns the poles and wires.
2. Find its governing document: the tariff for retail delivery service for an investor-owned utility, the service rules for a cooperative, the utility ordinance for a municipal provider.
3. Search it for the boundary terms: “point of delivery”, “point of attachment”, “service drop”, “service lateral” and “customer's facilities”.

If the document is unclear, call and ask one question: “Where is the point of delivery for my service?” Write down the answer, the date and who gave it.

Documenting Condition Before a Dispute

The argument after a storm is rarely about who owns what. It is about whether the damage came from the storm or from a mast that was already rusted through, and whether the drop was already sagging before the truck hit it. A dated photograph taken before the event is what settles that, and most people do not have one.

For your own hardware, that means ordinary photographs of the weatherhead, mast and meter base, kept where you can find them, taken once a year and after any work. No special tool is needed for that.

Where AcreSeal fits is narrower: when the problem is the pole or the drop, not your hardware. A drop hanging low over a driveway, a pole leaning toward the house, a conductor down in the yard. The free report form takes a photo, the location and a description, with no account. AcreSeal recomputes the SHA-256 of your photo on its server and locks it alongside your GPS fix and the weather at that moment; the database rejects any later change to them. Anyone can check that digest against a file you hold, with no account and no help from us. What it does not prove is the time: an independent, third-party timestamp only covers reports a utility has sealed into a work order, and a public report is not one of those. Whether a utility or an insurer relies on the record is their decision. What you get is a record of what you submitted, which cannot be quietly altered afterward, and a link you can hand to anyone.

Frequently Asked Questions