ECN Forum Forums Photo Discussion Forums Violation Photo Forum Bucket Used as Underground J-Box

This bucket was used as a junction box for some pole lights located at a hospital.

They needed power to supply an emergency entrance sign, so they notched the top of a 2 inch conduit, and then pulled the wires out to feed it!

I wonder what the maximum wire-fill would be for this ingenious junction box. I don't suppose the NEC has a table to cover it!

It works out to 223 8-AWG THWNs for bucket fill; but reduce that to 118 for 2¼ gallons of cooling water per NEC 967.229(c)II(1a)v7.

Why didn't they remove a section of the 1.5" or 2" conduit and put two 90's on. This apears to be a quasite type box and in reality would not need an expensive divider installed. If they were trying to seperate systems per 517.30(C) they crossed over anyways, not to mention being in the same raceway. The quasite box would have been legal if it were Normal, Critical, or Life Safety branches exclusively, or Normal and Equipment branches combined.

Roger



[This message has been edited by Roger (edited 06-22-2002).]

Aha!

After 4 days of searching, the new helper finally found that "bucket of amps".