The city told me that there is now an ordinance to bury the lines 200 amps and over. Our stove, hot water heater and furnace are gas. The clothes dryer is ready to be replaced and it will be gas. We don't need air conditioning in this area. If nothing else would upgrading to 100 amps be a good improvement to make for the future for other home improvements? Would the 100 amp service also add value to the house or would it just be an expensive upgrade to go over the 60 amps? The electrician says going up to 100 amps is a necessary upgrade.

The code allows potential overloads as you describe based on calculations. Kind of like a 320 amp service. A meter is rated 320 and 2 200 amp main panels are connected to it. The service calc shows the load as under 320 amps and this practice is fine. Now if someone really wanted to I suppose they could heat up 3 or 4 ovens on clean, instant hot pulling 100 amps, 2 dryers going, Heat on full with 2 furnaces, every appliance and every light on. Get over 160 amps on each main without tripping. And the 320 service would be trying to pump out near a 400 amp load. But the service calcs allow you to assume that would not happen. Same with a 6 throw main disconect. The totals can add up more than the service size but the calcultions have to be addequate for the service size.

I have shopped Houzz for a few years now. I only wish I would have seen this thread sooner! I just had GT of Chico Ca install kitchen counters. WHAT A NIGHTMARE! First time they were to big. They didn't follow what I had specified. The second attempt they were to small and didn't fit. Third time they were installed but the work was so sloppy! Unlevel counters, epoxy oozing around the sink. The list goes on... I have photos of all of it and the company offered me a lousy $200 to cover the cost of touching up my badly scratched cabinets. I hate my kitchen now. It does look cheap as others have stated. What a huge and very costly mistake.

I think that Austin and I are looking at the same coin. Looking at the other side, a tradesperson that normally does residential (maybe some commercial) might get a chance to do some industrial work. I am sure that there is some learning or relearning that would need to be done. Some details are going to be different. At that point the decision is to bone up on the most relevant sections, or refuse the job because it is not worth the investment. Here is an example that while might not be realistic, I hope is amusing. An electricain is asked to be a subcontractor for an outdoor pool installation in Barrow Alaska. He's never seen an outdoor swimming pool much less built one. He's a busy guy, booked up for the next 6 months. Obviously, he has never been involved in an outdoor pool installation, but he remembers there are specifics that he does not remember or did not learn the detail. Why should he be familiar with that part of the code? Communication is often all about understanding a different point of view. It is perfectly understandable that someone working in industrial situations that has never considered a residential AC unit might be taken aback that he can't see a dedicated disco right next to it. An experienced person standing right next to him, and the compressor, points to the main panel 45 feet away and says that is is right there. You'd never want to have someone looking around in (line of sight) panels in a plant to find the breaker for a 30 HP mixer that requires shutting off for maintenance once a month or cleaning every day. Heck, you would not even consider using the type of disco used for residential HVAC equipment on a fractional HP motor, It is probably not durable enough. That is not what the situation is for the OP and other homeowners. The breaker as a disco is allowed and it works for me even though it might surprise someone who has not thought about it before. In the same vein, I remember a question, I think, in this forum. As it spun out, the OP suggested that the wires in the romex should be colored to indicate which of the two hot busses that they originated on so that when working far from the panel, he could tell. The poster was an electrical engineer. It turns out that he was, as a colleague of mine puts it, a "5V electrical engineer". He is used to looking at low voltage wire looms connecting boards. Electricians and engineers that are in the field working all the time with what he was thinking of for the first time got a good laugh about that.