Can you identify the Code violation(s) in this photo?
How well do you know the Code? Think you can spot violations the original installer either ignored or couldn’t identify? Here’s your chance to moonlight as an electrical inspector and second-guess someone else’s work from the safety of your living room or office. Can you identify the Code violation(s) in this photo? Note: Submitted comments must include specific references from the 2011 NEC.
Hint: Sunshine and blue skies
‘Tell Them What They’ve Won...’
Using the 2011 NEC, correctly identify the Code violation(s) in this month’s photo — in 200 words or less — and you could win something to put in your toolbox. E-mail your response, including your name and mailing address, to neccodeguy@hotmail.com, and Russ will select three winners (excluding manufacturers and prior winners) at random from the correct submissions. Note that submissions without an address will not be eligible to win. Winners will receive a fluorescent lighting tester from Milwaukee Tool, valued at $199. The product allows complete lamp, ballast, and pin testing, before or after install, without dismantling fixtures.
(*Please allow six to eight weeks for delivery of tools.)
DECEMBER WINNERS
The number 10 is a Code violation when it’s the number of wires stuffed into a foot lug that’s designed for only one conductor.
Our winners this month include: Ryan Young, an electrical designer with MEPIS in Chicago; Jon Perruzzi, an electrical engineer with SMRT in Portland, Maine; and Diana Kemper, a CADD coordinator with Semac Electric in New Britain, Conn. They all knew that terminals for more than one conductor shall be identified as such, in accordance with the last paragraph in 110.14(A).
Because the single barrel lug installed was only identified for use with one wire at a time, this would also be a violation of 110.3(B), which requires equipment to be installed and used in accordance with its listing or labeling. Our winners also knew the requirements in section 408.40 for panelboard grounding which requires, a panelboard wired with nonmetallic raceways or nonmetallic cables or “where separate equipment grounding conductors are provided”, to have a terminal bar installed inside the cabinet and bonded to the cabinet if metal. The terminal bar must also be connected to the equipment grounding conductor of the circuit feeding the panelboard. The use of a sheet metal screw to secure the lug may also violate the requirements in 250.8.
