Brooks Box In Concrete

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batch

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I have a pole sign we are installing and the electrician put a brooks box where my foundation goes. I am being told to pour around the brooks box and encase it in concrete. It is a concrete brooks box and I am being told by the electrician that it is allowable by code. Just seems like there will be no drain field.

40 years of electrical signs and this is the first time I've been asked to do that. Besides using wirenuts for wet locations. Anything else I need to consider or do?
 
so the box is going to be accessible in the foot print of the sign? I am assuming the bottom is dirt so draining shouldn't be a problem. How is he getting his wires out of the box to the sign?
 
Is this an open bottom hand hole?
If so those are common for lighting poles. Sweep into box with 90s, use weatherproof wire nuts, bond lid, 2” of pea gravel in bottom.
 
tom baker said:
Is this an open bottom hand hole?
If so those are common for lighting poles. Sweep into box with 90s, use weatherproof wire nuts, bond lid, 2” of pea gravel in bottom.
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I haven't done a sign pole but I am assuming it would be like a light pole with a handhole in it already, what is the point of the box? why not just stub your conduits into the pole and make the connections in there?
 
batch said:
I have a pole sign we are installing and the electrician put a brooks box where my foundation goes. I am being told to pour around the brooks box and encase it in concrete. It is a concrete brooks box and I am being told by the electrician that it is allowable by code. Just seems like there will be no drain field.

40 years of electrical signs and this is the first time I've been asked to do that. Besides using wirenuts for wet locations. Anything else I need to consider or do?
Click to expand...


When you say pour around it, do you mean it will sit on top of your foundation and be completely encased on the bottom as well as the sides? I assume this as you say it will have nowhere to drain. If this is the case, then I agree with you, this would be a poor installation.


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Here we call them Quasite (sidewalk box) if it’s the same thing I’m thinking of. Usually those are open in the bottom for drainage, and if you are completely encasing it in concrete, there would be no drainage. I would believe a drain pipe to a gravel bed would be needed.
 
hillbilly1 said:
Here we call them Quasite (sidewalk box) if it’s the same thing I’m thinking of. Usually those are open in the bottom for drainage, and if you are completely encasing it in concrete, there would be no drainage. I would believe a drain pipe to a gravel bed would be needed.
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I am wondering why it needs to be concrete encased. If it's at grade level why not form around the bottom of the box to keep it open.
 
Perhaps you mean the brooks box will be set in a 6” or so slab, in that case they bottom of the box extends below the slab and would be open
 
tom baker said:
Perhaps you mean the brooks box will be set in a 6” or so slab, in that case they bottom of the box extends below the slab and would be open
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Would like OP to clarify. It’s not typical to have a slab around a pole base; OP said foundation, and usually this is a giant chunk of concrete in the ground and can be many feet deep depending on sign height.
 
brantmacga said:
Would like OP to clarify. It’s not typical to have a slab around a pole base; OP said foundation, and usually this is a giant chunk of concrete in the ground and can be many feet deep depending on sign height.
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Yeah, Waffle House signs have a concrete base large enough to almost bury a dump truck! LOL!
 
Hi,

It is a 10' x 10' X 4' sign footer. The electrician is saying to embed the brooks box in the footer. I can't see how it would drain. But, manager of our in house electric division said that as long as the brooks box was concrete it would be to code.

My installer is on site with the projects electrical foreman discussing alternate option.

I would still like any feed back or code references you all might have.
 
314.30 only specifies that the terminations are rated for wet locations. I don’t know of any code that specifies drainage, but it is a poor design choice to have a closed bottom that cannot drain. I would put the enclosure outside of the footer with a gravel base, and extend conduit through the base into the pole. At the very least I would run some sort of utility pipe out the bottom into open ground with a French drain sleeve.

The only other thing that comes to mind would be discussing this install with the engineer that designed the sign footing, and ask how this might affect the integrity of the footing. This enclosure is deducting from the cubic yards of concrete specified. The answer is that it’s probably minimal, but I’d ask.


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It wasn't just the sign circuit in the brooks box. And we asked the electrician to move the brooks box out of the footer.

The solution became obvious once the footer was dug. The sign is going to be in a curbed island. But, the curb is not in yet. The electrician didn't want to move the electric out of the footer and then have it in the way of the curb contractor.

There ended up being enough flex in the pvc to move the electric right to the very edge of the footer. We could then use wood to prevent concrete from flowing in where we didn't want it. You wouldn't have wanted to put it that close to the edge and then have us dig the footer. But, once we had dug out our installer was like, "Hey, wait, I could just do this. He got the electrical contractor to look and they liked it. So, we had a consensus.

One thing was we had 3 electrical contractors saying putting the Brooks box in concrete without drainage was fine. Then after I told them I posted my concerns with drainage, they all said I would have to put a drain field in. Which was my concern to begin with.

Thanks for the replies.
 
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