Emergency Lighting off a receptacle circuit

[brother]

I see a guy installing emergency lighting (the small battery back up type) and he tapped into a duplex receptacle circuit and not the normal lighting cicuit!! I thought maybe there may be an exception for him somewhere but its just not there!! 2008 NEC 700.17 IS very clear.

Even if it was an exception, this would be a bad design. You want the battery light to come on when the lights go out!!. Correct me if Im wrong or missing something in the code.

 

[iwire]

There is an exception, your in the wrong section.

Check out 700.12(F) ....... however that exception does not allow the unit equipment to be placed on a receptacle circuit.

The unit equipment must be connected to the lighting circuit supplying the area or if it is a large area supplied by at least 3 lighting circuits you can put the unit equipment on a dedicated circuit with a breaker lock on.

 

[brother]

There is an exception, your in the wrong section.

Check out 700.12(F) ....... however that exception does not allow the unit equipment to be placed on a receptacle circuit.

The unit equipment must be connected to the lighting circuit supplying the area or if it is a large area supplied by at least 3 lighting circuits you can put the unit equipment on a dedicated circuit with a breaker lock on.

Thanks for the section, Its still a code violation this guy is doing. Im, quite sure there are not a minimum of 3 normal circuits and this emerg. lighting circuit is NOT comming from teh same panel board. 277 lights and hes tapping off a 120 v receptacle.

 

[Jim W in Tampa]

An alert fire marshal might catch him. What he is doing is crazy and risking lives.

 

[iwire]

Its still a code violation this guy is doing.

Sure sounds like it.

What he is doing is crazy and risking lives.

Not an over the top response at all, the sky is falling. :grin:

 

[Jim W in Tampa]

Actually a fire marshall might miss this. Ones i deal with usually just ask me to kill the main breaker.

 

[construct]

Actually a fire marshall might miss this. Ones i deal with usually just ask me to kill the main breaker.

Our fire marshall simply kills the building power as well. Eventhough I said to him, "How does that verify the emergency lighting is on the correct branch circuit?", he still does it anyway. I always shut off the normal lighting circuit to verify, or make sure there are three circuits serving the same area to allow the emergency lights to be on own circuit.

 

[hillbilly1]

Our fire marshall simply kills the building power as well. Eventhough I said to him, "How does that verify the emergency lighting is on the correct branch circuit?", he still does it anyway. I always shut off the normal lighting circuit to verify, or make sure there are three circuits serving the same area to allow the emergency lights to be on own circuit.

Most fire marshals are only concerned about a power failure to the building or the main tripping. The likelyhood of more than one lighting circuit failing in a large area is small. If it is a lighting control system that fails, the emergency lighting still will not activate. There is a greater chance of a panelboard main tripping, so the emergency lights for that area would be better served being feed from that panel.:smile: