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[Jay Barracato]

Actually it's NEC 520 & 525 that require "extra hard service" cabling when our events are outdoors or in a theater or arena.  No "J" in the type designation for us, even if the service voltage is 120/208v.

I believe it also refers to cables that are part of a distributed power system (I.e. not the power cable of a single device), are on the ground, or traffic areas.

The way I decided was if some of the cables must be SOOW, I might as well make all of them the same because for a small operator it doesn't make sense to have more than one type of cable.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

[Jonathan Johnson]

For instance, there's a bit of a war going on about requiring AFCI breakers (Arc Flash Circuit Interrupters) in homes. In a number of states, the local code legislators have ignored this code requirement for new home builds using the logic that the $300 additional cost for a $150,000 home build will depress the new home buying market. And many say there are too many random trips and that they really don't prevent fires (as advertized).

The debate is certainly one of economics, but there is also a liability factor. If an electrician is wiring a home, he may feel the extra $300 is well worth the additional protection from liability an AFCI allows. Think of it this way: if there is a device that is advertised to promote safety, and an incident occurs that might have been prevented with a safety device that was not installed even though it was known about and readily available, the liability could fall on the person who did not install the device -- in this case, the electrician. Some installers may figure that nuisance tripping is acceptable if it protects them from liability. Others may choose to not install the devices if they feel it will cost them the bid on the job.

Which brings up another point: if AFCI is not required, and $300 makes the difference between getting the bid or not, that is more likely the difference rather than changing the overall price of the home.

[Stephen Swaffer]

The debate is certainly one of economics, but there is also a liability factor. If an electrician is wiring a home, he may feel the extra $300 is well worth the additional protection from liability an AFCI allows.

It is true that each of us must decide our comfort level for responsibility.  AFCI protection is primarily property protection.  Grounding, bonding, and GFCI,especially in relation to sound providers is primarily personnel safety.  You will find code violations around my home and shop-an environment I have control over (though now with grandkids starting to come that may change-and those violations as well)-but very rarely knowingly in work I do elsewhere.

For me the thought has always been, if the unthinkable happens and I wind up on the stand in a courtroom facing a victim or their family, whether for a criminal or civil trial ,will I be able to feel good about my answers? Do I really want to say, "This way was cheaper and I thought..."?  Or, "This way was so much quicker-and it was just for one evening...."?  My post asking if the Salina electrician could be criminally charged was not vindictive.  Assuming the man is like most of us, I am sure just facing himself in the mirror each morning is a pretty severe punishment.  Is that shortcut really worth it?  Give him the choice between constantly resetting a breaker and a 12 yr old in a casket and the choice becomes simple.

Common sense rarely takes in to account the wild cards people throw in.  Several years ago, I was converting a service panel to a subpanel fed from a new service panel.  My 12 yr old son was helping me, I gave him a job common sense said was safe-connecting the grounding electrode conductor to the ground rods.  A very safe job-until dad ran a fish tape into the energized line side of the old panel-fed off a very large set of networked transformers about 50 feet away.  When the welding stopped because the tape burned in two, he called up to me asking, "Why am I getting sparks off the ground rods?"  Dad learned more than one lesson that day-fortunately for only the price of a fish tape.

Perhaps I am too pessimistic and paranoid-but am I paranoid enough?   Not an original quote, but true none the less.

[Mike Sokol]

Here's another electrocution lawsuit settlement.

Family Wins Million-Dollar Settlement from Electrocution at College
Mar 21, 2014  | Electrical Construction and Maintenance

The fountain, at South Georgia Technical College, was found to have 17 issues with wiring for the lighting and motor underneath.

The family of a 19-year-old student at a Georgia technical college recently reached a $1.4 million settlement from her electrocution in a campus fountain. Adriana Rhine was shocked in September 2012 when she went in the ground-level fountain to retrieve her 3-year-old son's ball. The settlement was reached in a wrongful death lawsuit against the state.

The fountain, at South Georgia Technical College, was found to have 17 issues with wiring for the lighting and motor under the fountain. According to a report from the LA Times, another student had been shocked a month earlier, but the fountain was only cleaned and refilled.

The Times reported that the settlement, reached in November and approved by a probate court this month, awards the family $1 million for Rhine’s death, the maximum damage claim allowed under the state’s tort laws. Her son receives $400,000 for the emotional distress he suffered as a witness to the death, described as "excruciating and horrific." Rhine had screamed for help, but people who tried to rescue her had to pull back after being shocked themselves. All $1.4 million will be held in a bank-managed trust for the son, the family’s attorney, Yehuda Smolar, told The Times

[Stephen Swaffer]

  I wonder how many near misses there are that never see the light of day?  Last week I received a call from a homeowner who was getting shocked by their water hydrant.  The first thing I did when I arrived was stick one meter probe in the slightly damp ground and checked the hydrant-Ouch-65 volts!   

The hydrant came out of a well pit-a concrete vault roughly 5 ft in diameter and  5 ft deep containing a pressure tank and piping.  I went to the panel it was fed from, about 40 feet away on a pole.  First thing I noticed was a black wire to the neutral bar with a white wire o the breaker.  That was power to the well pit, through a run of 2 wire UF.  The panel itself was fed wih 3 wire URD=no EGC, or ground electrodes for that matter.  Someone had added a 3 wire receptacle in a handy box in the well pit for a chlorine treatment system to deal with e coli.  I will have to check later, I suspect it had a bootleg ground and had energized all of the piping in the pit.  Apparently there was no dad in the home, the teenage boy had gone down into the pit (easily qualifying as an OSHA confined space) to check for shorted wires-without knowing where the breaker was, and kept testing to see if it was fixed by touching the hydrant since he did not have a meter.  He is still alive. With that kind of luck, perhaps he should be buying lottery tickets!   

[ProSoundWeb Community]