On 08/21/05 03:03 ET, Larry Fine said...
The NEC is not law, but is offered by the NFPA
for use as law by municipalities.
The NEC was designed for a minimum safety regualtion and was always to be left to interpritation by the local jurisidiction, however all of the states adopted this as the minimum standard therfore making it in effect enforceable by the law, not a law in its self. A home cannot be built today without conforming to NEC whether a contractor or a homeowner pulls the permit. (there are certain exceptions like ag use) In effect you are right that the NEC is not a law in its self, but the NEC is the minimum standard that is enforced across the board whether its the state, county, township or city. Violating the permit requirements of your area (if your electrical inspector requires an electrical license for pulling low voltage wiring, as which can be interperated by the NEC as their responsibility) (here again interperated is the key word, which is entirely up to the local juridiction) can be enforced as breaking the law. So depending how you look at things and how issues may be interperated, it is a gray area that can land you in hot water with the law, for if a certain inpectors belief that you willingfully violated their requirements of permiting and licensing, you will be in violation of the law by not adhearing to their procedures. I had this very conversation with a michigan inspector and the county sheriff once over a job where we refused to pull the hvac guys thermostat wire (because we did not agree with their interperation of the code). Granted this was 10 years ago, but I have heard of other instances just like this from friends in the industry where over zeleous inspectors make bad judgement calls about this area. Its not common, but it does happen occationally.
