OT Genny transfer switches

I've been wondering if "UL approval" really means anything anymore, after I bought some desk lights to use as task lights for my mill/drill. There was a circle of 1/4" ventilation holes on the back of the shade, and you could see both terminals on the light socket through the holes. Or reach them with a screwdriver, aluminum chip or whatever. Nice UL seal on the inside of the shade, holographic and very impressive.

Took 'em back.

Tove

I live in the Soviet Republic of Oregon and I can tell you that the UL label means a lot here.

The commercial sale of any product that is connected to commercial electric power must have a UL label. Moreover, if a non-UL labeled device connected to electric power causes damage to person or property, our insurance companies will not pay for the damage.

Two cases in point from the past: Remember Heathkit? They wanted to have a store in Portland in the worst way. Couldn't do it because of the UL requirement. Had to set up across the river in Vancouver.

Local phone company built a new high-rise building in downtown Portland. Was going to house all their new switching equipment. They had a big open house celebration and invited the all the bigwigs. One invited guest happened to be a local electrical inspector. He wandered around the building and eventually made his way to the basement where the backup generators were housed. Further inspection showed the units did not bear the UL certificate.

He immediately wrote them up and tagged the equipment. They had to disconnect the generators from the commercial power transfer switches until the could get UL approval from the manufacture. They could not get this and eventually had to remove the generators piece-by-piece to get them out of the basement. They had to move in replacement, approved, genereators the same way.

I guess a third and more personal experience comes to mind. I was programming for a computer service bureau in Portland. They used Burroughs computers. Burroughs computers did not have UL labels. A new, expensive, computer was installed in a new building. When it came time to hook it up to power, the electricians looked for the UL label and refused to hook it up. The Burroughs field engineering people refused to hook it up because of liability. Eventually some one from the bank that owned the service company came to the rescue and someone from the Burroughs company came and hooked up the power.

So, in short, sometimes the label is important.

Paul

Our city is the same way, no UL label, no using it here! The city is just playing CYA in case something goes wrong down the road. No label, the city takes on some responsibility. A UL label, UL takes some share of the responsibility if something goes wrong. Greg

The generator breaker has almost no chance of welding closed, as the generator couldn't possibly provide the kind of fault currents that can do that. The mains breaker would be tested to break 10,000 amps of fault current several times (that's the standard interrupting rating of residential breakers). It is pretty unlikely that your pole transformer would be able to source 10,000 Amps, in fact it is designed to keep faults below that level.

It may be a counterfeit UL label. My mother in law had a nice UL labeled outlet strip/surge protector that she was having trouble with. You push a standard plug in the socket, turn it upside down and the plugs fall out from their own weight. I even wrote a letter to UL describing the unit in detail, with their listing and file number. I never heard back from them. I had to change out all the duplex outlets in it. The back of the outlets had no marking, label or listing. So, the whole unit could NEVER have been listed by UL, because major components were not UL listed. I assume either the entire UL listing label was counterfeit, or the maker changed component parts to crap after getting the UL listing on a good sample part.

UL has something on their page about counterfeit UL labels, so they are aware of this problem, in the general sense.

Jon

Absolutely correct, but such techno-triva is not nearly as convincing as a LABEL to most authorities.

Got any relatives in/from Cinci area?

I'm 3 down the tree from Rahns in Cinci area.

Byrd