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Party-Pooper on deck to deliver next level of potentially poor news.

The Feds, if they so desire, could find a way to exert some leverage on the governments of states to comply. The entity that could really begin to push the code compliance forward might be the insurance carriers and underwriters. Right now in the southwest we are seeing building codes, zoning, defensible space and infrastructure requirements being modified or enhanced due to the big Cerro Grande fire that demolished a couple hundred homes in a fairly small community. As if the government wasn't enough of a force to beef up fire mitigation, now the insurance companies who took a sizable hit have now begun to come back into the game of rebuilding by stating that if you build in certain materials or haven't done enough 'defensible space' planning, they may opt to not sell you insurance coverage. Most of their losses will be or have been reimbursed by FEMA or other govt coffers but they're not in business just to break even and with the recent history of hurricanes, floods and fires they're wanting to take whatever preventative measures they can to guard their own tails.

[This message has been edited by BuggabooBren (edited 07-03-2003).]

If the NEC were adopted verbatim...
The next time Southern California had an earthquake there would be lotsa deaths from falling fixtures in office buildings.
We're not all the same, and the NEC is not an all emcompassing manual...but a minimum.
There is a need for local Codes...S

I never thought about it that way Scott.

I guess the Nec as a starting point with local amendments is best all the way around.

Russell

But they didn't say how it was to be enforced, right? I seem to remember hearing of one mid-Western state (Kansas??) which imposed the limit to keep their funding but set the fine for driving over 55 but below 75 to a paltry $5.

Good point on the earthquakes and other natural hazards in various parts of the country. There's got to be a lesson there for the push toward a "harmonized" code in Europe too -- Norway and Greece are very different.

Paul,the Feds did the same with some states on the seat belt legislation.

Our speaker of the house in Ga. got the law passed, but it excluded pickups and bigger trucks at his insistence. I'm sure that'll change now that he's retired tho.

Russell

I think the geographical ammendments would be a given.

I once did a school in central FL with a generic spec (engineer obviously was a snow bird)) calling for PVC to be buried something like 3'6" to accomplish a clearance of 10" below freeze level.

In central FL 10" below freeze level would be some where in a flight path.

This real situation on the flip would definatly have to come in to play in a true nationaly adopted code, which is where we are now isn't it?

Roger