ECN Forum Forums Code Related Discussion NEC & other Code issues hospital iso panels?

happy new year all.

Got in to some thing the other day. looking for info.
are isolation panel still required in surgegy recovery rooms? and if so or not where in the code have thay been removed or that thay need to be there

any help would bee nice i have looked thru 517 and can not find any thing on it.

thanks larry

Such a requirement is a design decision, not a code one. Strictly speaking, the NEC doesn't mandate such things; it only allows other rules to be waived if such is present.

Medical facilities have all manner of 'special' needs these days. Not only is there the desire not to ignite anesthetic vapors, there are back-up power and ground fault protection decisions to be made. Then there's that whole 'equipotential plane' thing ....

In short, this is where the engineer or architect has to actually do some work, and not foist it all off on the trades to sort out.

We went around and around with this question for several hospital projects that I worked on.

The NEC only tells you HOW you need install this...not whether or not you need it.

Reviewing the rest of the 'tons' of Codes that apply to Health Care, the end result is that they aren't required by the letter of the law, although having them (IMHO) is an excellent idea.

Like with most things in this world...it always came down to the money. If it wasn't "required", the folks with the checkbooks saw no need to "waste good money" on them; no matter if they were recommended or not.

There are Three Major areas in a Hospital.
Critical, General, Wet.
Critical General you can use GFI (lost of power can be tolerated),
Critical WET (Lost of power Cannot be tolerated(possibly cause a lose of life)Isolated power System required.
All areas to be desiginated by hospital Administerer (see definitations 517)
See 517.20 A Wet Locations.Receptacles & Fixed Equipment.
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