Robert Seekins, senior electrical designer for the Wendel Duchscherer consulting firm in Buffalo, N.Y., surveyed a local county park's building and its equipment in western New York. The photo above shows a fueling depot for the park equipment. It is used every day to fill the gasoline tanks in all sorts of equipment, including pick-up trucks, lawn mowers, graders and dump trucks. Rather than use proper explosion-proof equipment and a sealed RMC conduit for supply and support, note how the installer gracefully draped “illegal nonmetallic sheathed cable” around the tank level gauge. The unqualified person connected 120V wires together with wire nuts in the open air and even taped all of the grounded conductors together.
The above right photo shows a water pump, located in a pump house that is about 30 ft from the fueling depot. This is a view looking in through the broken down front door, at the main pump. The steel flexible metal conduit scrapes on the flywheel when the motor is running. The conduit is not properly secured and is supported by the wires inside of it, which are twisted together and secured with masking tape. The motor terminal housing cover (sometimes called a pecker head) is gone, completely exposing the motor leads. My favorite detail though, is that the metal rods are poised to fall on this complete assembly at any minute. This is a terrible disgrace to the electrical industry.
Editor's Note: Many sections throughout the NEC can be cited here. For example, see Articles 500, 501 and 514 for Motor Fuel Dispensing Facilities.
“514.1 Scope. These occupancies shall include locations where gasoline or other volatile flammable liquids or liquefied flammable gases are transferred to the fuel tanks (including auxiliary fuel tanks) of self-propelled vehicles or approved containers.”
Some of the rules that are followed by a reference in brackets contain text that has been extracted from NFPA 30A-2000, Code for Motor Fuel Dispensing Facilities and Repair Garages.