Home Improvement → Looking for a NEC code

Does anyone know if there is a specific section in the NEC that either permits or prohibits lighting on a general purpose outlet circuit? Thanks in advance.
Kevin

It depends on where it is located. In general is no rule that prohibits it in all places.

Allow:
210.19, 210.23, 210.70

Lighting outlets in bedrooms must be AFCI protected, therefore are generally added to the GP bedroom circuits.
Professional practice was to keep general use receptacles and lights on different circuits. The reasoning is that if an appliance blows a fuse or breaker, you aren't left sitting in the dark.

With the harsh new AFCI requirements, and the expense of the breakers, it has become common once again to mix lighting and GP together.

Many muni's are nixing the "total" AFCI requirements included in the 2008 revision, but keeping the bedroom portion.

It will be interesting to see how the new requirements pan out if un-amended. Those are going to be some large, warm, stuffed panelboards. But, AFCI will save lives and property.

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AFCI will save lives and property

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quote:

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Annually, over 40,000 fires are attributed to home electrical wiring. These fires result in over 350 deaths and over 1,400 injuries each year.

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Source: Ault, Singh, and Smith, “1996 Residential Fire Loss Estimates”, October 1998, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Directorate for Epidemiology and Health Sciences.

And this is the justification for requiring the expendature of millions of dollars? If that is the case we need to limit the speed of vehicles to 5 mph to prevent the thousands of deaths per year from excessive speed.

This requirement is nothing more than a scam by Electrical manufacturers and Electrical Contractors to enhace their bottom financial line. Many Local officials are generally not able to understand or have training the NEC and thus in a lot of cases blindly accept the code requirements for their area.

I fail to see how it's going to add to my bottom line. Please explain. AFCI breakers cost 10X that of a regular breaker. My estimate is that it will add about $1000 to the cost of an average home, all at the panel in materials. None of that is labor, as it will be negligible considering its breaker installation.
If anything, it will hurt contractors because customers will be less willing to spend money elsewhere to make the difference.

I can easily see why AFCI's are needed on regular circuits. Just visit my inlaws house and see the beds pressed up against plugs that are half out of the wall. And yes, they have been warned, but they know better.

But why is an AFCI needed on a lighting only circuit?

Do afci take care of ground fault? Have a young son and even though he has been taught not to he is still young. So gfci gives me some peace of mind just in case.

I don't know the makeup of the code-making panels, in terms of conflicts, but actuaries and economists are either sleeping or they're representing insurance companies.

The NFPA is a private organization. They pretty much govern themselves and do what they want, and save government (i.e. you and me) a lot of costs on deliberation and copy editing.

So everybody's got a conflict. I wonder if Julian Assange has anything on them?

It's not only conflicts of interests the burning desire by some to be able to force others to conform to their beliefs plays large. We are slowly being conditioned to accept heavy regulation of our daily lives by others "for the good of society". In short we are sheeple.

I find it hard to believe the estimated extra $1000 per home cost is anywhere near a cost effective solution to a perceived problem. This is one reason the cost of a home becomes more and more unaffordable to millions of Americans.

350 deaths and 1,400 injuries per year could easily justify over $2B of expenditures per year. And that is before you take into account the property loss from 40,000 house fires.

In contrast, there are over 13,000 speeding deaths per year, which combined with property and injury is well over $10B in losses; but the cost of lowering the speed limit is even larger in magnitude, hence why our speed limits have crept up over time.

That's an oversimplification that does not account for cause and effect.

For example, the costs of electrical fires are borne primarily by those living in old housing stock with bad wiring. Some of them are unemployed relatives living in the unheated attic using a space heater on a lousy extension cord. These people often do not own their homes and the properties are grandfathered, so the added expense will not produce any measureable change for possibly and probably decades.

In contrast, the costs of the new regulations are borne by new home buyers. I am suggesting that there is little overlap between the two groups. So the added spending is a burden on those in new and gut/rehabbed housing with questionable benefit to those in grandfathered properties.

Economically, if reducing fire deaths and injuries is the objective, the $2 billion is probably more effective if spent on heating subsidies, adding dedicated circuits and permanent heat. Or how about 12 AWG extension cords?

In the long run, of course it's good. But it will be a long time before electrical fire victims are removed from the opportunity cost. I'd like to see the breakdown of fire deaths and how they are correlated with income and age of the building.

You are quibbling about the specifics of how the costs are borne. I am only pointing out that the value of 350 lives is more than $2B/year when Jack_in_VA essentially claimed that 350 lives are not even worth "millions of dollars".

Do you have one single reputable source to back up your hypothesis?

So, just what was the original question?Yeah, I see it was about a specific section of the NEC.

Forget reputable. I have no sources, no tests of my hypothesis.

But if my views seem poorly-reasoned, I'm open to changing them. Show me what I'm missing.

I just looked back on the original question and I see I've done my part to move things significantly off-topic. Sorry.

Cooking is the cause for most(about 40%) of house fires, smoking is second, and depending on how you lump them together heating is third but since it is usually poor use of electric space heaters is can be linked to electrical, smoking and electrical are especially dangerous because they can sit and smolder for hours and when the people in the house are sleeping can erupt.

In-and-of-itself ALL original electric wiring is "safe" unless there is damage or a problem with the products themselves as in Federal Pacific boxes or there are additions/modifications not up to code.

Smoke detectors can "smell" smoke long before the average person can, more so if that person is sleeping, in every city I know of smoke detectors are required for every residence.

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