Today I think of the nonsense changes proposed for the safety code by industry "champions" (My Woo Hoo, Friends! That's what I call the salesmen who are put on the professional code-change panels by companies with a new product to sell. They have the money to buy in.) Where was "Bath-Tub-Anti-Shock-O-Matic" 100 years ago? Maybe they needed to shorten the name to some catchy acronym. Maybe it used to be about safety.
Today, we have a proposal to have all switches wired with a neutral so that a particular company's (to remain un-named to protect the guilty) device will work properly. Hey - if your engineers can't figure out how to make it work, go back to the table and think about it again. I really don't want your bag of trouble because I have four kids and a leaky radiator I don't expect you to fix for nothing. The radiator, that is. I'll fix the kids, if it's the last...ahhhhh, cookie?
Hey, I used to respect the Code. Kind of a bible for electricians, it was a compendium of decades of engineering and reality-based knowledge of untold thousands of tradesmen and engineers. The end of all of these annoying rules was to protect life. When I was a young wire slinger, I grew to have a great respect for the wisdom it contained because I began to see how it all fit together. A dark force has since entered. Call it special interests.
Remember when we used to put two runs of romex under the same staple?Then 3-M invented a special plastic cable holder that didn't sell because it cost 30 times as much as a wire staple. "But, It had a nail and a nifty plastic fingery-thing! " you say. Hah, still cost them a penny. Where were the studies that showed possible excessive heat buildup in the old installations? Nowhere! But we all bought the concept because the Code said so. Because the company is big enough to put lots of its own people on code panels. They have degrees. They're smarter than most of you because they sit at desks and use calculators. Ahh... yeah... but most of us electrical contractors do too, now. See what I'm saying?
Now we're worried that a toddler who can't find his own mouth with any regularity will somehow stick two pins simultaneously into an outlet and get a lethal shock. Yeah, change the code yesterday, Friends! Ahem, because some corporation had a new product without a real market, we got another "life safety" change to the code. Ten times as many children die from toys every year as get injured from an electrical outlet. Thanks NEC, I really like screws. I use them every day.
Now I understand that recent studies have shown that the purported reasons for requiring a $50 AFCI breaker- the risk of incipient fire - have never been duplicated after extensive tests. Gee - they actually did serious damage to a wire and couldn't make a fire in a wire protected with a regular old $4 circuit breaker? Since the requirement to use these pricey devices has become embedded in the code for years, I wonder what research was used to suggest this was a problem in the first place? A balance sheet, perhaps?
I recall the marvelous revelation that the wire nut that UL listed for a copper to aluminum connection eventually caught fire because - no one actually tested. They accepted the company's assertion on faith. Some of us remember the eventual withdraw of "weather-tight" EMT fittings that were never tested despite decades of acceptance. We all waited years for the "industry " to re-invent an actual weather-resistant conduit fitting, during which time we sat on our hands. ARE YOU KIDDING!
Just a thought for the electrical industry - when a "life safety" code becomes co-opted for commercial interests it will likely loose the moral imperative that makes it work. Where I used to consider real life-safety ramifications of my work, I find myself now only thinking about liability if I don't follow the rules because they have degraded into a province of special privilege for those few that can write them. I think that it's time for the NEC to remove corporate shills from the real work that needs to be done. This is our bible, after all. We should require evidence-based work for changes from therein.
