Hot water heater on 208 vac?

| PS: I do however wonder about the wisdom of extending high voltage lines | across a farm - even with the 240v lines some guys kill themselves when | they forget to check overhead when using tip trucks, augers etc.

I would not want to have anything more than 600v running across my property. It would be acceptable to put in a pole near the edge and run MV to it and run the LV down the pole and underground from there. If the house was far away, what I'd try to get is 480v or 600v on that underground feed and put a tranny in the house. How hard is it to meter 600v single phase with one CT.

| Thanks for the ideas but i am not prepared to pay to have this fixed - I didn't choose to have the | xformer where it is, and I didn't select the wire gauge etc. As southern elect made those (wrong) | choices I reckon they can damn well fix it at their cost

Not necessarily. The choice could be made by the previous homeowner.