Fixing the NEC

[Birken Vogt]

needlessly drive up the price

There are so many things needlessly driving up prices and other costs. I live in California so my list may not apply to you

1. Residential fire sprinklers. Fire chiefs went on record saying unnecessary, but that was after the law was taking effect. Nobody asked them.
2. Energy efficiency standards for gas furnaces. You will never see payback on a condensing furnace because one breakdown will cancel all savings and an early major replacement event will put you way behind an 80% model.
3. Heat pump water heaters: see above
4. Various building efficiency standards: never see payback.
5. Fancy appliances that break and get replaced within 10 years, meanwhile I still run my 2002 refrigerators and my 1970s freezer that I have done minor repairs to once every 15 years or so
6. All sorts of construction standards that make every car look like a jelly bean SUV, meanwhile I still drive and actively use my 200x vehicles mainly because I know how to fix them.

 

[going_commando]

i said it back in post #68, but i'll re-iterate. every stupid code, and overly-redundant code, and every manufacturing lobbyist-incentivized code (like AFCIs) that the code board members keep shoving into everyone's faces is just another excuse for every-day people to say "i've had enough." and do you know what? so have i ... and many other electricians who know that putting a freezer on a GFI is going to cause OUR customers to lose about $3000 worth of meat, when it randomly decides to trip.

so, what do these every-day people do to get away from this good-idea-fairy running wild? they make the choice to hire unlicensed handymen, or their "cousin's, friend's, uncle who used to be an electrician in zimbabwe" to do their electrical work!

all of these ridiculous codes, that needlessly drive up the price of a quality electrical installation only incentivise non-electricians to hire other non-electricians to do their work, because of all of the stupid stuff that licensed elctricians will be forced to do. there's a reason that the very first article of NFPA 70 is article 90 - PRACTICAL SAFEGUARDING.

what's worse is, this insanity and lobbyist mentality defeats the entire purpose of having electrical and building codes in the first place.

Very valid point. I put in a receptacle for my freezer and you can bet she ain't gfi protected. I'll chance a tickle grabbing the handle over throwing the contents away because a ghost snuck by and pressed the test button. I have also never put a sump pump on a GFCI. I'm not dealing with a flooded basement call because a GFCI self tested itself to death.

 

[going_commando]

There are so many things needlessly driving up prices and other costs. I live in California so my list may not apply to you

1. Residential fire sprinklers. Fire chiefs went on record saying unnecessary, but that was after the law was taking effect. Nobody asked them.
2. Energy efficiency standards for gas furnaces. You will never see payback on a condensing furnace because one breakdown will cancel all savings and an early major replacement event will put you way behind an 80% model.
3. Heat pump water heaters: see above
4. Various building efficiency standards: never see payback.
5. Fancy appliances that break and get replaced within 10 years, meanwhile I still run my 2002 refrigerators and my 1970s freezer that I have done minor repairs to once every 15 years or so
6. All sorts of construction standards that make every car look like a jelly bean SUV, meanwhile I still drive and actively use my 200x vehicles mainly because I know how to fix them.

I'll anecdotally disagree with the heat pump water heater. I live in NH, and the electric rate is about $.23/kWhr. My heat pump water heater paid for itself ($1750) in about 2-1/2 years over the electric resistive I had before. I installed it May of 23, so if it failed today I would put in another one and it would still be cheaper than installing a regular electric. In the summer it costs about $5/no for hot water, and the dead of winter when my basement is 45-50 degrees, it costs about $22 in high demand mode. A regular tank would be $70-80/mo.

 

[kwired]

Switching to the metric system in the US was unanimously turned down each time it came up since 1926 when it was first proposed. Since we do not use the metric system, it is improper for an American publishing company that primarily publishes for US consumption to put SI units before US customary units. It's just an example of how the CMPs fail to think.

Further, what purpose does emphasizing SI units serve? For example, nobody here uses a metric tape measure to measure panel clearance, conduit diameter, support spacing or a million other things we measure every day.

-Hal

IIRC it happened before they started putting SI units first throughout the NEC - they changed the maximum height for switch/breaker handles from 6 foot 6 inches to 6 foot 7 inches. Which is almost right at 2.0 meters.