Wood "poll"

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Wood "poll"

  • True

    Votes: 8 42.1%
  • False

    Votes: 11 57.9%

  • Total voters
    19
  • Poll closed .
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rbalex

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Mission Viejo, CA
Occupation
Professional Electrical Engineer
Proposition:

Common wood pole design with crossarms and bare conductors is not a specifically recognized NEC Chapter 3 wiring method and is therefore not permitted to be installed in a facility beyond the service point by the owner of the facility.

Comment as you wish
 

mdshunk

Senior Member
Location
Right here.
Open wiring on insulators, the way I see it. I know I've installed miles and miles of customer owned lines in such a manner that has been inspected.
 

mdshunk

Senior Member
Location
Right here.
Nuts! 310.2(A) says they need to be insulated unless permitted someplace else. Article 398 (open wiring on insulators) doesn't specifically permit bare conductors. Seems like the only NEC compliant way would be to use triplex or quadplex if this is secondary. The solution for primary, if you can't use bare, is going to be double-ugly.
 

charlie

Senior Member
Location
Indianapolis
rbalex said:
Common wood pole design with crossarms and bare conductors is not a specifically recognized NEC Chapter 3 wiring method and is therefore not permitted to be installed in a facility beyond the service point by the owner of the facility.
I believe the NESC is to be used where the NEC falls short of providing prescriptive rules. At that point, since the NESC is a performance document, proper engineering must be done to assure a safe installation. :smile:
 

mdshunk

Senior Member
Location
Right here.
benaround said:
Does 225.4 (2005) add anything to this discussion
Sorta, but there's nothing that specifically permits them to be bare when mroe than 10' away from the building that I can find, as 310.2(A) requires.
 

rbalex

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Mission Viejo, CA
Occupation
Professional Electrical Engineer
In answer to C3PO, it certainly wasn't intended to be a trick question.

For further consideration, assume the system is over 600V and both the designer and installer are well qualified. Would the last sentence of Section 300.37 alter your analysis?

Edit: Oops, sorry - second to last sentence.
 
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jerm

Senior Member
Location
Tulsa, Ok
rbalex said:
For further consideration, assume the system is over 600V and both the designer and installer are well qualified.

When we first started working on oil fields (with 13k customer owned primaries) none of us would have been considered even "qualified," much less "well qualified." But we observed all the saftey precautions we knew about, no one was injured or killed, and we figured it all out as we went. Sometimes you just do what you can the best you know how...

We considered it all outside the scope of the NEC, and there was no AHJ to speak of. Begin flame now:
 

don_resqcapt19

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
retired electrician
charlie said:
I believe the NESC is to be used where the NEC falls short of providing prescriptive rules. At that point, since the NESC is a performance document, proper engineering must be done to assure a safe installation. :smile:
Charlie,
All references to the NESC were removed from the 2008 code. It is my understanding that a task force has been appointed to write a new article for the 2011 code to code these "utility" type installations that are on the load side of the service point.
 

don_resqcapt19

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
retired electrician
Given the defintion of "open wiring on insulators" I don't see how that article would apply to conductors on poles.
 

rbalex

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Mission Viejo, CA
Occupation
Professional Electrical Engineer
don_resqcapt19 said:
Charlie,
All references to the NESC were removed from the 2008 code. It is my understanding that a task force has been appointed to write a new article for the 2011 code to code these "utility" type installations that are on the load side of the service point.
I did a simple word search and found 10 references to the "National Electrical Safety Code" in the 2008 NEC. All but one (Note to Table 110.31) were FPNs. The most relevant to the poll is the FPN to Section 225.1.
 

C3PO

Senior Member
Location
Tennessee
rbalex said:
For further consideration, assume the system is over 600V and both the designer and installer are well qualified. Would the last sentence of Section 300.37 alter your analysis?

Edit: Oops, sorry - second to last sentence.

Yes, in that situation I would say it is permitted.
 

don_resqcapt19

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
retired electrician
Bob,
Sorry, I thought that they were all removed based on the reasons why they removed the one in 90.2. The main reason that the reference was removed in the scope was the conflicts between the two documents.
 

mdshunk

Senior Member
Location
Right here.
jerm said:
Is there an online version of the National Electrical Safety Code?
No. It's an ANSI document, if I'm not mistaken. It's not exactly cheap, if I remember correctly. I have a couple copies, but the newest is several editions old.
 

jerm

Senior Member
Location
Tulsa, Ok
From what I can find, it's an IEEE document. 2007 is the most recent one (they update every 5 years now) and it's $130. I guess I'll see if my local library has a copy, I'd love to take a gander at it.

From 1973 to 1993, the NESC was revised on a 3-year revision cycle. In 1993, the NESC Committee approved extending the revision cycle for the next edition of the NESC from three years to four years. The NESC 1997 Edition, (C2-1997), was published August 1, 1996.
At its 21 May 1996 meeting, the NESC Main Committee met to consider the appropriateness of changing the revision cycle to five years. By letter ballot, a 5 year revision cycle was approved, commencing with the NESC 2002 Edition.
The NESC is revised every 5 years.

edit: My library has a copy that they'll let me look at, but they don't let it out of the building. I guess they're afraid someone might try to build their own utility in their backyard... ;)
 
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