| I was a state Electrical inspector from 1988 to 1996. Since 1996 I have | returned to the tools and work as a construction electrician. I have been | reading some of the intellectual writings put online about application of | the NEC rules. I have to say, there are entirely too many people teaching | and writing about the NEC that have no idea of what goes on in the field, or | else they are ignoring the facts. I think too many of them have been away | from the tools so long that they live in an ivory tower far removed from the | real world.
Or the rules may be more intended to deal with the lowest common denominator in electricians, and where applicable, DIY homeowners. And maybe those teaching efforts are as well.
| In the real world we bend the rules, modify the rules, and cheat to make it | work and to make a profit while attempting to make a safe installation. So | often we design our own installation to use the available materials rather | than buy the materials to meet the engineer's design - if there ever was | one. Anyway, that is the way I see it these days.
Lots, maybe even most, electricians can do that properly. Some would not be able to figure it our correctly. I read about the retired electrician who installed new grounded outlets with no ground wire for a friend, and tied the grounds to neutral. At least he's retired.
| I still maintain and run electrician.com and attempt to provide continuing | education and online calculators for practical electricians. But everyday I | cringe at what I discover and learn in the field, and am baffled how I am | willing to modify a code rule and find a defense for it to save a few hours | work. And I think I am a lot like many others out there doing electrical | work.
That was an interesting voltage drop calculator. I ran it on some extreme values, where the voltage drop should have been half or more of the supply voltage, and it gave me negative voltage drop instead (as it were trying to tell me that thin wire run too long would create power). Maybe that's what has the "free power" kooks going :-)
I have on my projects plate to build a new voltage drop calculator that will not only get the right voltage drop, but also draw pretty graphs that can show the drop over either changing distance, changing wire size, or changing loads. Unfortunately, the calculations are not that simple, especially considering mixed linear, reactive, and harmonic loads ... and loads that change due to the effect of the voltage drop itself.
| Does this make me a bad electrician? Maybe yes, and maybe no. It does make | me an employable electrician - if you get my drift!
In my view that does not make you a bad electrician. But I would not want a bad electrician trying to do some of what you describe. Maybe more theory is required in the education process?
I'm not an electrician and do not plan to be. My career field is networks and programming. One problem I have seen in my own field is that new tools and methods intended to make programming easier and more reliable for good programmers have also had the effect of enabling bad programmers to be able to accomplish something where without those tools they would fail miserably. As good as these tools are, they cannot overcome a bad programmer, and in my experience, these are causing more bad programmers to enter the field. For example, virtually every year 2000 bug I found on or after 1 Jan 2000 was written in a language like this, or otherwise used some tools. In my opinion, entry into the field needs to be restricted by some people to those who are smart enough to not do the mistakes in applying their efforts the wrong way.
I'm not sure how that can be applied to electricians. Maybe what is needed is to split the NEC into code specific to certain levels of qualifications (with the bottom rung being the residential DIY-er).