NEC 110.26 Exemption?

[Chev]

Question...We have a situation, new construction at an industrial site.
The powers that be want to mount a safety switch box for a door heater above a panel that controls the door on a truck dock (separate feeds).
They are saying that since the door control panel is fed through the bottom of the enclosure they can ignore the 6 1/2' clearance as stated in 110.26 and mount the box on top of the panel. I don't think so, I have not found an exemption that would allow for this.
Am I in error in thinking they are clutching at straws to avoid moving the heater safety switch box to a more code friendly location? Wouldn't they then be ignoring the part of 110.26 that says mount nothing under the panel (safety switch box) if they left it where it is?

 

[jaggedben]

Question...We have a situation, new construction at an industrial site.
The powers that be want to mount a safety switch box for a door heater above a panel that controls the door on a truck dock (separate feeds).
They are saying that since the door control panel is fed through the bottom of the enclosure they can ignore the 6 1/2' clearance as stated in 110.26 and mount the box on top of the panel. I don't think so, I have not found an exemption that would allow for this.
Am I in error in thinking they are clutching at straws to avoid moving the heater safety switch box to a more code friendly location? Wouldn't they then be ignoring the part of 110.26 that says mount nothing under the panel (safety switch box) if they left it where it is?

Unless one of the items sticks out 6 inches more than the other, my personal opinion is that it would be unreasonable to enforce a restriction on what they want to do. One could read the code a couple different ways. Are these two pieces of equipment 'associated' or not? They both seem to relate to the same object, i.e. the door, so perhaps one could say they are associated and this is allowed. My question to you then, would be what issue of safety is at stake here that makes it important to restrict the location of the switch.

 

[Chev]

Unless one of the items sticks out 6 inches more than the other, my personal opinion is that it would be unreasonable to enforce a restriction on what they want to do. One could read the code a couple different ways. Are these two pieces of equipment 'associated' or not? They both seem to relate to the same object, i.e. the door, so perhaps one could say they are associated and this is allowed. My question to you then, would be what issue of safety is at stake here that makes it important to restrict the location of the switch.

The panel is for the door controls, the other is for a forced air heater over the door which will be thermostat controlled. They control 2 separate entities, the one thing in common is they relate to the door.
There is not a 6" issue as the safety switch is mounted to be at the same plane as the door controller via unistrut.
As far as it being a safety issue one should not be in both panels at the same time as they have different functions.

 

[Strathead]

Can you state the opposition you have more clearly? 110.26 is a long section and I can't tell what exactly you think the violation is.