Water filled lines in electrical cabinet.

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Watertech

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We have a 1970's era facility with a 480v MCC/panel board. Inside one of the sections is a pressure switch with water lines running to it. It seems to be an obvious code violation, but I am at a loss as to which exact NEC code it violates. A little help? Thanks
 
Watertech said:
We have a 1970's era facility with a 480v MCC/panel board. Inside one of the sections is a pressure switch with water lines running to it. It seems to be an obvious code violation, but I am at a loss as to which exact NEC code it violates. A little help? Thanks
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It may not be a violation, can you describe it more?

For instance many types of listed equipment have both water and electricity in the same enclosure.

I once worked on an induction furnace and it had 1/2" copper water cooling lines soldered too the bus bars and a pool pump motor pumping the water through those and up toa roof top cooling tower.

More common would be a fire pump controller or a dishwasher.
 
If it's inside of a factory manufactured listed piece of equipment, IMO, the listing takes care of it and NEC is not involved beyond 90.7
 
Since this is supposedly a general use MCC/panelboard it probably shouldn't be in there.

If it were a control cabinet listed for a specific application - the chance of it being acceptable does increase.
 
It'll only take one leak and then when it sprays the guts of the MCC down, they'll think it was a bad idea, code legal or not.

We worked in a plant that ran a 2" waterline above an MCC once, and as luck would have it, the line broke and showered the MCC before it was even commissioned I'm told. The plant refused to replace the MCC and wanted to save it. I'm not sure what was done to the MCC after it took a bath to take care of the water issues, but I know myself and the others in our shop used to have service calls at all hours for YEARS chasing intermittent connection issues due to corrosion. Bad memories....:rant:
 
Cow said:
It'll only take one leak and then when it sprays the guts of the MCC down, they'll think it was a bad idea, code legal or not.

We worked in a plant that ran a 2" waterline above an MCC once, and as luck would have it, the line broke and showered the MCC before it was even commissioned I'm told. The plant refused to replace the MCC and wanted to save it. I'm not sure what was done to the MCC after it took a bath to take care of the water issues, but I know myself and the others in our shop used to have service calls at all hours for YEARS chasing intermittent connection issues due to corrosion. Bad memories....:rant:
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Early in my apprenticeship I worked on a commercial building where they energized the panels before the roof was completed. First rain was a real problem. Bad memories but a good learning opportunity.
 
iwire said:
It may not be a violation, can you describe it more?

For instance many types of listed equipment have both water and electricity in the same enclosure.

I once worked on an induction furnace and it had 1/2" copper water cooling lines soldered too the bus bars and a pool pump motor pumping the water through those and up toa roof top cooling tower.

More common would be a fire pump controller or a dishwasher.
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Thanks
 
Saturn_Europa said:
Seriously?!? You can't drop a bomb shell like that and not elaborate :)

Sounds like a cool project!!
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Threadjacking here.

Dave, pics or it didn't happen. No pics allowed in this facility. Big player, end result is a radioactive product used for imaging cancer cells.
 
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