Yes it's available I buy it for furnaces all the time. 4-4-6 copper is very common and honestly a great price at the moment vs using aluminum 2 SE cable which is harder to source and needs to convert to copper anyway. When I did the large lightning one I ended up doing 1 ser fished in the basement to the panel about 75 ft to a junction box and then 3 copper to the charger in conduit.
True to some extent. Lot of things in code are somewhat conservative on the side of safety.
Probably not enough demand for it in your area that nobody is stocking it. They likely need to purchase in minimum quantities and don't want to if it isn't going to sell very fast.
I buy it all the time from the local supply house in cut lengths
So far mostly you from western states indicate availability. Here will get this crossed eye look and comments they never heard of such a thing. Get the same response on many items that would make life easier on the job and most new products takes years to get.
Gotta change that supplier's will change what they stock if you want the product just tell them you're going to be ordering online if they don't start and they will.
Major western supply house that starts with P indicates cut lengths are being made only in Or and Wa and not in stock anywhere else. What they stock seems to be a small selection, #4 and #4/0 SER and #6 and #4 SEU, a few others exist in the catalog but no stock company wide.
My main supply house seems to not have things in stock at the local location. Just Friday I wanted some 8 bare solid as I have a swimming pool project I need it for. They don't stock it. Not many are using it I imagine. Not that there aren't any pools at all but not that many being installed at any given time either. They do stock it in their Omaha location and I will have it tomorrow.
I've gotten it from a sonepar supplier also
Bare 8 is avaible at big box stores. Remind them of this and that they need it if they want to last.
If there were lots of pools installed on a regular basis maybe would be smart for them to stock it. meanwhile they can typically have it from the other location the next business day as they run a transfer truck between locations every day. Similar with some other cables or conductors that don't sell very fast they often need to come from the Omaha location. But that location has a lot more stock and variety than stores in surrounding areas.
Cut lengths is always cheaper at supply house. Fittings and specialty items too. Only things sometimes cheaper are maybe small romex and certain breakers but not the majority of plug on breakers just the ones people look up to compare pricing.
Down side though you have to afci the whole house even the garage
Tell me the code sections that say this is a violation please
I should have mentioned this is only applied to single family residential structures
