Gee whiz, a whole lotta fuss over a fire marshall.
I will take a fire marshall over a health dept. inspector any day.
In VA, I dealt with FM's all the time and most were reasonable; however, the health inspectors tended to never budge an inch.
I live in same state as OP, though I don't deal directly with fire marshal very often, I must say I am glad I do not. They have been relatively easy to deal with as far as what they want from the electrician, but that generally is not much. Mostly things like placement of egress lighting and exit signs is just about the extent of what I ever even talk to them about. They may require installation of a backup generator (legally required standby system), smoke or fire alarms, fire suppression hoods in commercial kitchens or require installation of other specific item at times, but other than requiring those items to be there, the electrical inspector is the one that makes sure I did wiring of it correctly, the fire marshal doesn't have much NEC knowledge maybe not even any more NEC knowledge than the average guy walking down the street.
I say I am glad I do not deal with them directly very often because I still see them and some of the things they enforce for other trades, and I must say there seems to be little consistency.
All of us electricians in this state know the NEC is the code we must follow for the majority of what we do, we all know it fairly well, and so do the inspectors that come check our work. There is consistency. Even if an inspector misinterprets some section of the code, you do not see something different allowed from one job to the next, but that doesn't happen a lot anyway, they do have regular meetings and go over such things and you get fairly uniform enforcement of NEC throughout their jurisdiction.
Fire marshal on other hand I see so much difference in one installation to the next I would go nuts if they had a more direct impact on my work. I assume they go by different NPFA publications for the most part, but I don't think it is nearly as organized as the state electrical division, I don't even know if they cite any NFPA codes when asking someone to change anything. I do know the general contractors and others that are asked to comply with things often don't know what they will be asked to do until he comes and inspects and gives them a list of things that need changed. Electricians OTH, if they very familiar with NEC at all, have a pretty good idea of what will be required from their installation before the inspector gets there.
A new office building I was working on once was a wood framed building with a full basement - very similar in construction to average dwelling. Early in the project, I stopped there one day and the builder was laying a block wall, partitioning off a section of the basement. I asked what was going on. Fire marshal says they either need less square feet of space or install fire sprinkler system. OK, sounds like something that should have come up on a plans review (which I doubt happens much on these smaller projects), so I understand this to some extent. They partitioned off maybe a couple hundred square feet of basement and filled it with gravel, making it unusable and effectively reducing the square footage of the building to a level where FM would not require sprinkler system. Unfortunately they partitioned off the space where my service was going to go - so I had to make changes to my plans
Later on same project I seen there was issues with fire rating of a door to the basement stairs. They had a couple different doors installed at one time or another and each was rejected. The builder was not what I would call much of a professional, but that is another story. Bottom line and most stupid thing I had seen in a while from a fire marshal was that he basically wanted a 1 hour door, didn't care if it was at top or bottom of stairs, he just wanted a 1 hour door between the basement and first floor. But the basement was unfinished and was nothing but mechanical area and storage area. He was so concerned about a 1 hour door at the stairwell but required no finish rating for the unfinished ceiling of that basement which had exposed wood framed joists and wood subfloor above it. If there had been a fire in that basement that ceiling would be giving in long before a 15 minute door that he was so concerned about would have had any issues:slaphead:
