What a big disappointment

[ryan_618]

OK, maybe not require it for residential, but certainly some footnote, or requirements for hospitals, etc.

It already is a fine print note. If you refer to the document cited in the FPN to 110.12, the document reccomends installing with the ground up.

I think this is absurd, and I would like to see this FPN removed for this very reason.

 

[infinity]

Quote:
To support my change, there is documentation that studied and reported that hospital bed fires have been attributed to recep grounds down, from paper and bed linens getting across the the hot and neutral.

Well; what happens when these bed linens and other items fall on the plug a few times? IMO you then wind up with no grounding path to what ever is plugged into the receptacle. If you apply downward pressure, I am pretty sure that ground pin will pull out and still leave hot and neutral plugged in.

Attachment plugs with ground pins are designed that the ground be "first make, last break", that's why they're longer.

 

[dnem]

It's too bad that this thread moved into a debate of the merits of one certain code change idea.

That wasn't my intent in starting this thread. I was commenting on the process itself.

David

 

[kingpb]

Agreed!

Agreed!

David,

Your right. The process is flawed. I imagine like everything else, there is a huge political atmosphere surrounding how/what changes are made.

My intent was not to sidetrack the topic, I was trying to simply point out an observation that how the decision was made to call it a design issue had no weight.

The ground up/down has been debated before, and consensus is unlikely.

Ryan Wrote: It already is a fine print note. If you refer to the document cited in the FPN to 110.12, the document reccomends installing with the ground up.

Well, I searched this document and must have missed this, could you please send me an e-mail with the page number, thanks.

Lets get back on topic.

Cheers.

 

[George Stolz]

It's too bad that this thread moved into a debate of the merits of one certain code change idea.

That wasn't my intent in starting this thread. I was commenting on the process itself.

While I do agree that some of the decisions reached by the CMP's and task groups can be frustrating (the EGC -> EBC decision comes to mind), I will offer something more frustrating.

I had a fellow (the guy with the crawlspace) call me yesterday to update me on the progress. I asked if he had his electrical inspection yet, and he said that he did, and it failed the first go.

Of the five citations, four were not code issues. Not NEC, building code, anything. They were simply items that the inspector didn't like.

The funny thing is, this fellow (the inspectee) ultimately called the guy on the mat for making stuff up in a "paternalistic" effort to enforce more than the code required.

My point is this: I would gladly suffer the heartburn of answers from NFPA I disagree with, and can still respect, than live in a place where the NEC did not exist. The process may get blood pressure up on occasion, but at least there's someone out there with the objective of calculated, indifferent reasoning and research to back their rules.

Do they fall short now and then? Sure. But they have a lot more at stake than a circuit-riding inspector whose actions rarely draw scrutiny. Thousands scrutinize their words daily, and I think they know it.