Re: is it legal to have RMC runs exposed outdoors?
Thank you all for your replies. I never expected so much feedback! Anyway, I will try to answer some of your questions/comments.
Tom Baker: The spring is not free flowing so a ram pump will not work. We're using a positive displacement pump for the design at this point. I think a solar setup will be the most economical way of making this work too, but the boss doesn't like the idea since he really wants the place to be flexible to future upgrades and so on. he doesn't think solar would cut it if we decided to go bigger.....
GWZ2: The primary line to the ridge comes up from the other side of the mountain unfortunately, so there is no way to splice off and have a transformer at the location. What exactly do you mean without ecco problems?
Beenie: The change in elevation is 2000 feet. It is a steep grade down to the pump. That being said, the existing facility (this will be part of an expansion project) already has water and power down to the spring, but it is 40 years old, illegal, and will have to be replaced. I guess my only point is that it has been done before, and they did it though a much steeper (but more dirrect path) They drop 2000 ft in 5000 linear feet. At some points it's a 80-90 degree clif and they had to use technical cimbing gear to get the pipe and wire down there (it's all exposed, no conduit...very illegal), anyway, getting off-topic. The project has not been engineered yet, they want to take first stab at it in-house and then allow someone else to finish.
Pierre: The pump will only run for about 1 hour a day durring regular operation, maybe 2. When we inntitally fill our 200,000 galons worth of tanks though, they'd want to run it continuously until they're full. My feeling is that we should use solar and just fill them by truck first time around, but we'll have to see....
Tom baker and gwz2: I'm with you guys on the legality. I've read articel 300 and 344 and neither seem to prohibit this action, but the building authority thinks otherwise so we really need something to prove to them that it is okay (maybe legally they're supposed to prove it to us, but this is NM, everything is backwards
)
iwire: We can infact use 480V 3 phase. 3 phase motors work a-ok for this kind of stuff. 20' anchors and 3" sch 80 steel galvanized pipe seems pretty indestructible to me too. If we went 1.5" like you later suggest that would be very beneficial for cost and ease of installation.
Beenie: We will get an electrical and hydraulic engineer to review the plan and place their seal of approval on it before anything is built. I certainly have my doubts too. Trucking water up to the site is on the table right now, but there are some other forces at work here too pushing for a water source (different people are paying for installation and operation, so operations wouldn't be very happy paying for water to be trucked up every three months and so on.....). As far as your concerns as to simply getting the water up the 2000' vertical run, they do it now so it must be possible right?
Any other references aside from running conduit on a roof to a HVAC unit that would indicate that this is legal? In the case of HVAC, is it explicitly allowed or is it not mentioned, therefore making it okay? I've already stumped a couple of inspectors with this whole problem, so it looks like it's up to you guys
