More Preventive Maintenance in Less Time, Part 6

In previous Parts, we looked at ways to simplify maintenance (and repair) tasks to get gains in safety and efficiency. Consider one insidious time waster that often goes undetected: the remote disconnect. The NEC requires a disconnect to be within sight of a motor, and so motors have disconnects nearby. This makes it efficient to isolate motors from their supply.

The NEC does not require local disconnects for many other applications, and consequently many designers “save money” by skipping the unrequired local disconnect. What they’re really doing is not saving money at all, but instituting a costly round trip or two between the equipment and some control cabinet. It seems these are always on a mezzanine or in an adjacent building.

Installing a local disconnect in series with the remote one literally eliminates many wasted steps. Consider making it locked in the closed position, using a maintenance-only lock.