skorpioskorpio
Member
- Location
- Georgia
- Occupation
- Engineer
I've read the comments in several other posts where it's often stated that "All wireways are raceways, but not all raceways are wireways" which brings up more than a few interesting questions. According to the NEC all conductors in a raceway need to be continuous, whereas splices are allowed in wireways so long as they are accessible through a hinged or otherwise removable cover. So doesn't this distinction make All wireways NOT raceways? And take something like 4000 or 6000 Series Wiremold as an example, which has a substantial cross section with the 6000 series being 3 1/2 x 4 3/4 and has provisions for, not only end point devices like receptacles, but also for inline devices like breakers. These are defined by the manufacture as a raceway. Doesn't a breaker or series wired receptacles WITHIN that raceway violate the definition of being limited to continuous conductors? And then to confuse it even further, add gutters into the mix which have the same allowances as wireways but also add the addition of being able to contain both service, branch and distribution conductors within the same volume, with the only differentiating restriction seeming to be that the total continuous length is restricted to 9M or 30'. By all definitions, except by how it is primarily marketed, that 4000 and 6000 series Wiremold seems to qualify for all 3 definitions although I am not sure it is UL listed for anything but as a raceway even though it is technically depicted in their literature as all 3.
So what determines which is which, is it the primary classification of the manufacture? On a quick skim of the code I don't really see where a product being specifically UL listed for for this function is actually a restriction, it simply defines the functional requirements. A simpler example from the same manufacture above is the fact that Wiremold sells prewired products that seem to dance around the indistinction, the most obvious being 2000 and 2400 series Plugmold which comes from the factory with series wired devices AND splices within the product, and 2000 and 2400 series Wiremold which are the same physical products sold as unpopulated raceways and are depicted in their catalog directly attached to each other. This would seem to indicate that as soon as you attach a length of Plugmold to the end of corresponding series of Wiremold "raceway" it becomes by definition a wireway, right? Furthermore if you install breakers into 4000 or 6000 series Wiremold you have effectively installed a branch circuit within the confines of a "raceway" so now that all becomes, by definition, a gutter, no? And does that imply that those breakers, if installed within a continous run, would need to be less than 9M or 30' from whatever panel they are fed from and that that total run must also end before that distance? What am I missing here?
So what determines which is which, is it the primary classification of the manufacture? On a quick skim of the code I don't really see where a product being specifically UL listed for for this function is actually a restriction, it simply defines the functional requirements. A simpler example from the same manufacture above is the fact that Wiremold sells prewired products that seem to dance around the indistinction, the most obvious being 2000 and 2400 series Plugmold which comes from the factory with series wired devices AND splices within the product, and 2000 and 2400 series Wiremold which are the same physical products sold as unpopulated raceways and are depicted in their catalog directly attached to each other. This would seem to indicate that as soon as you attach a length of Plugmold to the end of corresponding series of Wiremold "raceway" it becomes by definition a wireway, right? Furthermore if you install breakers into 4000 or 6000 series Wiremold you have effectively installed a branch circuit within the confines of a "raceway" so now that all becomes, by definition, a gutter, no? And does that imply that those breakers, if installed within a continous run, would need to be less than 9M or 30' from whatever panel they are fed from and that that total run must also end before that distance? What am I missing here?
