The NEC has been morphed from improving safety to improving the economic performance/ market development of various interests -- the ability to find flaws in the Code is becoming ever more marginal as experience is won.
Perversely, the trade is force feeding technical improvements before they are ready. The smart logic behind AFCI breakers has already evidenced troubles in some devices.
It's better to adopt the medical motto: do no harm.
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If there's one ambit that I'd like to see advanced -- it's further expansion of EUSERC.
Founded to stop Poco fatalities -- at the SERVICE -- EUSERC has greatly expanded since 1945.
I hope and pray that its design mandates become ever more widely adopted.
I've lost track of the SERVICES who've been posted here at ECN that are not EUSERC compliant.
Getting too creative with SERVICES -- in an attempt to pinch pennies -- drastically increases risk -- all the way around. So much so, that I am constantly amazed that EUSERC standards have not rolled all the way across the nation.
From this day forward, the single most advantageous change is to shift from overhead to underground residential power distribution. It's outside the Code -- because it's a Poco issue, but it's where many troubles lie. Now that horizontal boring is so cost effective, one can only hope that the shift is finally made -- even in older neighborhoods.
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As for Code updates: dang if I have never come across any Code headache worthy of my submission. Millions of man-years of engineering seem to have exhausted all of the obvious mistakes.
I must commend the Committee for cleaning up the Code -- making it much more accessible to rapid resolution in the field.
The international codes are largely written to trip up the North American code writers -- on purely economic grounds.
Last edited by Tesla; 12/17/13 06:37 AM.
