Sky-High UF Cable Violation
I spotted this mess while grabbing a lobster roll sandwich at a local eating establishment. The lobster roll was delicious, but seeing this shoddy electrical work left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Section 340.12(11) does not permit UF cable to be used as overhead cable unless installed as a messenger-supported wiring installation. There is no messenger supporting this UF cable. The support fitting is attached directly to the non-metallic cable jacket. You can’t see it from this angle, but this was a very long overhead span of cable with a huge sag in the middle. It stretched across the entire parking lot. This must be putting a large amount of tension and stress on the jacket of this cable at the points where the support fittings are installed at each end of the span. The non-metallic jacket is not designed to handle this kind of pulling stress and could eventually tear. Another problem I see is the use of a cable tie and a twisted single conductor as the supporting means for the junction box. I see no methods in Secs. 314.23(A) through (H) that would indicate that this box is properly supported.
A Sloppy Use of NM Cables
There are a lot of NM cables here, but it’s hard to spot any cable supports. In fact, some cables are simply strewn about and not secured or supported at all. If the installers had taken their time to read Sec. 334.30, then they would have known that NM cables must be supported and secured within 12 in. of these cabinets and thereafter at intervals not exceeding 4½ ft. Very few of these cables comply with those requirements. Most of them are loosely supported by 2-hole PVC conduit clips, which are screwed to the walls. Using PVC conduit clips to support NM cables may not be the best idea, and probably violates Sec. 110.3(B) if the clips are not listed for this purpose. On the left side of the photo you can see an NM cable coiled up on the side of the cabinet, with the conductors merely capped off. Terminating conductors in this manner violates Sec. 300.15, which requires the use of a box or conduit body at conductor termination points for NM cables. A closer look at the cable connectors installed on the top of the cabinets reveals several with two cables in each connector. This may be permitted if the connectors are listed for this purpose; otherwise, it violates Sec. 110.3(B).
