Fixing the NEC

[don_resqcapt19]

More installers for sure. I suspect the ibew people who are on the panels are not installers, and besides they have agendas beyond just making reasonable codes.

Most of them are, or were field electricians.

Can you give me an example of an agenda beyond a reasonable safety code.

Can you show me a PI or panel statement by a member of the IBEW that supports your unreasonable comment???

 

[brycenesbitt]

Interest groups are REQUIRED for all ANSI consensus standards and the NEC is an ANSI consensus standard as are the UL product standards. It is required that all of the interest groups that are impacted by the standard have members on the committee developing the standards.

They sure messed that one up when doing the GFCI thing for EVSE. AFIK they treated Tesla as representative of the entire advocacy, manufacturing and operations interest groups.

 

[brycenesbitt]

All of the qualified person rules need to be removed, but that will not happen as they have the support of many of the interest groups that have members on the code making panels. Those rules are a total waste of print, and there is no way that they can be enforced. About the only way they can be enforced is by the electrical licensing process, but the way the rules are written, they strongly suggest that a licensed electrician is not a qualified person for some installations. That is total BS.

They can't be enforced, but they do have an impact, in AJH's that try to assign meaning to the tea leaves. The 625.4 qualifies persons rule came from NECA. I tried to get NECA to limit the rule to L3 chargers, prior to the various votes, but did not make headway.

 

[hbiss]

Can you give me an example of an agenda beyond a reasonable safety code.

You would have to sift through millions of PIs and see what was adopted and what was used as substantiation. And if they are anything like this about GFCIs people need to be fired because nothing is substantiated.

Requirement for dishwashers in dwellings to be GFCI protected wasn't even about shock/electrocution when first required in code (IIRC it was 2014 NEC that first introduced this) What triggered it was a component failure (not even sure what component) that tended to start fires but they found that a ground fault also developed when this failure occurred and GFCI would trip before it started a fire. IMO that should have been a product recall thing and not a freebie for the appliance manufacturers by letting the GFCI bail them out on this defect.

The HVAC units was triggered by one electrocution incident that had a bad or missing EGC and unit frame was energized. That can happen with anything if not installed properly or something is damaged, yet the number of these types of incidents isn't really all that high.

Laundry equipment - IDK, kind of suspect sort of a "because we can" requirement. I may be somewhat ok with requiring it for 5-15 or 5-20 receptacles as these have long been a problem with missing EGC pins on cord caps and a main reason many other locations over the years got added to the list of receptacles requiring GFCI protection but was almost entirely 15 and 20 amp 125 volt receptacles that required it. Then they started adding more receptacles - anything 125 volts to ground and up to 50 amps - no real good reason AFAIK those rarely are missing EGC pins unless someone intentionally removes it, they don't break off unintentionally like some 5-15 cord caps seem to do easily.

Then when they started adding three phase receptacles as well I remember reading the PI/comments on that and it basically said something to the effect of "we now have that capability", nothing about any sort of shock/electrocution incidents or related statistics that show there is any significant trouble with these applications. I fail to see any significant number of compromised EGC pins on cord caps in these applications as well and feel this had to be pushed by the manufacturers more than any other group. They may not sit on the CMP that handles this section, but you can bet they are going to present information to try to convince those on that CMP to help sway their decisions on making these code changes.

Electrocution deaths from dishwashers. All male, all repairing the dishwasher while live.

This will be an ongoing problem, at least on the assumption that stupid people breed faster than they kill themselves.. Since a lot of work goes into rare but interesting deaths in the code process, this issue should be of interest.

kwired:The HVAC units was triggered by one electrocution incident that had a bad or missing EGC and unit frame was energized. That can happen with anything if not installed properly or something is damaged, yet the number of these types of incidents isn't really all that high.

The original newspaper article and analysis give some more color: the original HVAC units was stolen, a relative found a unit somewhere, installed it with flex: no permit, and perhaps even no reading the NEC. Likely when it was jumped on and damaged, this completed the circuit to the case. EGC validation is trickier than with dishwashers, as the HVAC unit is a life safety device in heat waves you can't just shut it down hard without creating a consequence that may be worse than the problem you solved.

-Hal

 

[hbiss]

How about substantiation that AFCIs have saved ONE life and the public should be made to pay millions of dollars for them.

-Hal