Hi there,

We have installed a contactor to control all of the lights in a model home for a builder. There is a sales office attached to the house (the garage has been converted) and the switch is located inside the door from the garage to the house. So basically, the sales people flip the switch and all the lights in the house turn on.

That said there is no (currently functioning) control for lighting at the front door or the back door of the house however access to these entrances will be restricted. A person will only be able to enter the house through the sales office. Is this acceptable?

The house is wired so that the contactor can be removed and all the switches in the house can be hooked up should it ever actually be sold. They are simply tied through in each switch box with a "dummy" device installed.

Are there any other not-so-obvious issues with the installation of this contactor that I should be aware of? I can't seem to find a section on "contactors" in the code book. Surely its only because I don't know where to look...

Thanks for your input!
Mike

Sounds like standard stuff to me. As for inspections, I'd be getting a final inspection before people moved in and before a full C/O would be issued. With that, I don't see a problem. Typically we'd get a temporary c/o for saftey assurance while the home is being shown and let it go at that till it is sold.

We had a big discussion about models and models used as offices at Florida IAEI BB. There was the suggestion that when used as an office there should be exit signs and planned egress routes but when I asked why they didn't require the same for the model itself (it is open to the public) the muttering started and the conversation stopped.

gfretwell,

Is the sytem programable to where later they can reprogram to switches at those locations later? Or are there no locations in place at all?

The ones I see are like what Mike described. They just loop 2 or 3 circuits out of the panel, into a 6x6 box with a contactor in it. When this goes back to a house for sale they hook it back up straight to the breaker and pull out the contactor box.

Yup. That's precisely how we did it. And just for interests sake, we questioned (ourselves) about the exit/egress stuff on the house as well. We did install them in the sales office regardless.

Thanks again for the input guys!
Mike