Laundry circuits in multifamily dwellings?

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ibew48matt

Member
Location
Vancouver, WA
I have a question that I am hoping the group can help me with. While preparing for my Washington Master Electrician Exam, I was going over some practice exams, and I ran across an issue that I can't work out.

The layout is a 30 unit condo building with a laundry facility on premises, and I am to use the standard method to determine the building service size. There are no electric dryers listed in either the units or the laundry facility, so I am assuming gas dryers. Seeing that there is a laundry facility that is not located in each individual unit, I did not add the 1500VA laundry circuit to each unit. I can find no guidance in the code book as to where to apply the laundry circuit (including in Annex D) but I know it must be there somehwere, right? The answer to the practice exam says that the 1500VA gets added as a house load at the end, and is not subject to any demand factors, so they added 30X1500VA, which seems rediculous, as there would be 375A worth of outlets for washers and gas dryers in a 30 unit condo.

Anybody have any ideas?
 

Buck Parrish

Senior Member
Location
NC & IN
IMO - You would need to know the exact number of washers and gas dryers. Or name plate rating for each appliance. Then you will have a demand factor. Which you would then add to the total calculated load for the service.
 

peter

Senior Member
Location
San Diego
The whole premise of that section is absurd. The reason being that you do not know in advance [at the planning stage] what stoves or dryers, etc. will be installed by somebody else at a later date.
~Peter
 

celtic

Senior Member
Location
NJ
ibew48matt said:
The answer to the practice exam says that the 1500VA gets added as a house load at the end, and is not subject to any demand factors, so they added 30X1500VA, which seems rediculous, as there would be 375A worth of outlets for washers and gas dryers in a 30 unit condo.

Anybody have any ideas?
Absurd.

IMHO, w/o any additional information [name plate data; number of appliances; etc], the answer would be 1x1500va.
 

charlie b

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Lockport, IL
Occupation
Retired Electrical Engineer
This was a bad question. I hope they do better on the real test.

First of all, it is the duty of the person writing the test question to state clearly that the building owner does not allow individual units to have their own laundry. Otherwise, you must include the 1500 VA in each unit, with the appropriate demand factors applied.

But if the individual units do not get their own laundry, then indeed the laundry load becomes part of the "house load." But that does not mean that the central laundry room shared by all tenants will have 30 separate laundry circuits at 1500 VA each. Here again the test question writer has a duty: to tell you about the laundry equipment that the owner will put into that room.
 

wbalsam1

Senior Member
Location
Upper Jay, NY
210.11(C)(2) says the laundry circuit is required. No exception available. If the condo is a dwelling unit...then the code seems clear...add the 1500va.
 

celtic

Senior Member
Location
NJ
wbalsam1 said:
210.11(C)(2) says the laundry circuit is required. No exception available. If the condo is a dwelling unit...then the code seems clear...add the 1500va.
No doubt.
The question is:
How many? 1, 2, 5, 30 :confused:
 

wbalsam1

Senior Member
Location
Upper Jay, NY
celtic said:
Prove it ....using the OPs question as the givens.

I can't. Here's why. I looked at page 70-720 Annex D, Example D4(a) and the 5th paragraph says: "Laundry facilities on premises are available to all tenants. Add no circuit to individual dwelling unit."

This negates my earlier claim that there was no exception. Granted this appears in the Annex, but I think its obviously enforceable. Therefore you win...I lose. Yet another example of my haste coming back to haunt me. :D
 

charlie b

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Lockport, IL
Occupation
Retired Electrical Engineer
wbalsam1 said:
210.11(C)(2) says the laundry circuit is required. No exception available. If the condo is a dwelling unit...then the code seems clear...add the 1500va.
I don't have my book at home, but something about this statement does not seem right to me. First of all, this article is about branch circuits, not about adding load. So this is not the place to look, if you want to know about whether you can omit the 1500 VA.

I seem to recall that it is worded in the context of, "add a branch circuit to accomodate the laundry circuit required by some other article - probably 210.52." If you go there, I think you will find words that allow the omission of a laundry circuit for multi-family dwelling units for which the owner does not want the individual tenants to have their own laundry machines. Can someone check me on this?
 

Buck Parrish

Senior Member
Location
NC & IN
charlie b said:
I don't have my book at home,

Can someone check me on this?


Yes 210.52 (F) Exception #1
Says if laundry facilities are provided on the premises. And are available to all. The laundry outlet is not required in each unit.
 

celtic

Senior Member
Location
NJ
wbalsam1 said:
I can't. Here's why. I looked at page 70-720 Annex D, Example D4(a) and the 5th paragraph says: "Laundry facilities on premises are available to all tenants. Add no circuit to individual dwelling unit."

This negates my earlier claim that there was no exception. Granted this appears in the Annex, but I think its obviously enforceable. Therefore you win...I lose. Yet another example of my haste coming back to haunt me. :D

I wouldn't be so hasty in sending up the white flag :wink:
There is a very very minuscule possibility that I might actually be wrong [an absolute first on this forum :D]
 

ibew48matt

Member
Location
Vancouver, WA
Than you everybody for your posts. I came to the conclusion late last night after getting hung up way to long on this one, that if I ran in to this on the real exam, I would omit the Laundry load from the units as allowed by the exception in 210, and not add it as a house load because it was not identified in the question, and I would challenge the question that way, and move on.

Like I said originally, I believe that there needs to be a load added to the house load to account for the washers (and gas dryers), but if it is not identified, I cannot add it.

Again, thanks for the posts everybody.
 
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