ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Language on the panel directory?

I've seen jobs where the painters not only remove plates, they mysteriously vanish. It happens a lot in multi family resi with the basic 'all one color' motif.

Must be a near perfect world north of the border?

The majority of the 'ofice' type jobs have panel and circuit labels on the faceplates, and typed/printed directories within each panel. 99+% are correctly ID'd; occasionally a goof shows. Having a qualified person on site upon inspections settles the issue.

On Reno's last note...I used to see a lot of breaker handles 'marked' with red paint/nail polish and a cryptic note scrawled on the panel door 'red stays on'. Other places had white, indicating lighting, some had tape over the handle 'do not touch', and a host of other methods.

The requirements within the NEC have made improvements to ID, but alas, this is not a perfect world for sparkies, inspectors, clients, etc. The end result, no matter what, goes back to pride in workmanship. Yes, we may take pride in what we do, but there may be another guy/gal that does not care.

I've been known to use an ancient Dymo label printer, the kind that embosses plastic strips. In most cases they last forever (on some surfaces they won't stick though). For large panels you'd need one of the better models though, labeling 40 circuits with a Dymo Omega sounds like a major pain in the rear (the last panel I did had a whopping total of 6 circuits, if you have a 230V 2w single phase service any more than that seems pretty useless).

Not to beat a dead horse ....

I have just come from an industrial panel that has just recently been re-labled. The work was done by a team of professionals, including engineers and technicians. It is considered by all to be both current and clear. Here are some of the lables:

1,3,5: Kusakabe

8,10,12: Nakata

7,9,11: Elva

13,15,19: Pillar

14,16,18: PMC

I think you get the drift; they have labled the breakers according to the brand names of the equipment they serve.

I suppose that if you have ever worked in a pipe factory the lables make perfect sense ... but I doubt that they mean anything to anyone else. Yet, I have trouble with claims that these lables are in any way in 'violation,' thugh one might concievably some day replace one of those multi-million dollar machines with a machine made by someone else (or that corportions might change their names).

"Transient" or not, I think they're good lables.

Recent Chineese/English directory pic is in Photo Gallery.

Renovated Chineese (Ethnic, not American) resturant.

John, that directory is much, much neater than my attempt!

Reno:
That's not my handiwork. Credit to a electrical contractor who cares. He understands I need english, and the employees need chineese.

shi shi (thanks)

Reno:

The only issue that someone may bring up is the mfg info label is covered by the directory.

I personally did not make an issue of this. This particular job was a renovation, and the panel was/is existing, and most of the wiring is replaced. The 'old' directory, on the door was obsolete, so making 'modifications' would be tough.

I see nothing wrong with how this was executed.