National Electrical Code Articles and Information

Code Quiz: Article 400

Based on the 2014 NEC

Questions and answers written by Mark Lamendola, who has worked as a master electrician, electrical inspector, and design engineer. Mark is an IEEE Senior Member, and the Code article author for Codebookcity.com. Since 1996, he has been writing National Electrical Code articles for electrical trade magazines and has an extensive portfolio of hundreds of NEC articles.

Article 400 is the first Article in Chapter 4. But unlike some other 00 Articles, it doesn't lay out its Chapter (4) or serve as an introduction to it. Future revisions of the NEC may start numbering Articles at 1, which is where we actually start numbering things when we count them. The 00 designation would be an explanatory Article for that Chapter. No doubt, this is a long way off. In the meantime, we have this taxonomical error and we just have to live with it.

In Part 2 of this series, we looked at Uses Permitted [400.7]. That naturally (and in NEC structure) leads us to Uses Not Permitted [400.8].

1. Suppose you're wiring up a lighting system. Where can you use flexible cords and where not?
   

2. You need to supply an electric window awning with power. The awning is over a bedroom window, and there's a receptacle in the room and very near the window. Would there be any reason you can't just run the cord through the window? That will, after all, make it a short cord.
   
3. Back to the same scenario as our first question. Now the lights are in a suspended ceiling above an office. Does that matter?
   
4. You're also running 3 10AWG conductors in EMT. Do you need to run the flexible cord in there for the additional protection?
   
5. Just how many "Uses Not Permitted" are there?

Answers to this quiz are here: Answers to this quiz

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