Joe E.

Storing parts inside an electrical enclosure

4 posts in this topic

It's a common practice in our plant to store electrical spare parts in the bottom of control cabinet enclosures.  They're not in the way and don't interfere with troubleshooting the cabinet.  I've been told that this practice is a violation of NEC, but I can't find it anywhere in NEC or in NFPA 79.  Or on Mike Holt's site (I'm not a member there).

Is this a code violation?  If so, what section?

 

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Im not sure if it would be a code violation or not, if it is I have never heard of it and i have been to several NEC code classes through the years. I personaly woudn't care if it was if you have a system that works for your plant i don't see any problem with it. The stuff stored in the enclosure is probably stuff that would be used in that enclosure, it might not be a good idea to store earplugs in a panel

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I am not in the USA and not governed by NEC requirements but I do not like to see anything including (and especially) drawings/manuals stored in panels. This is because most of the major modes of failure that occur in panels are quite capable of destroying the items stored inside them which you might well need to repair the damage. In my experience these modes of failure tend to be:-

i) Water ingress - self explanatory.

ii) Arcing which can coat stored parts in carbon and sputtered copper.

iii) Fire, again self explanatory.

My point is that it may or may not be against code but you should think about the wisdom of doing it anyway.

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You make good points about damaging spare parts. It's not my preference at all, but we don't have a good system in place for securely storing them elsewhere.  Every time we set up shelves with parts, the shop gets rearranged and unqualified people decide what to keep without qualified people even being aware that the sorting is underway.  Protests land on deaf ears as tens of thousands of dollars of parts vanish overnight.  If they're in the cabinets, at least they're out of sight/out of mind until needed.  The same is true for drawings that electricians will need.  It's hard enough to keep track of them in the cabinets; anywhere else is impossible.

I wish our situation was different, but 6 years of trying to adjust the culture have been fruitless.

I was actually kind of hoping that it was an NEC violation so I could at least push for doing something else, but I may not have that "ammo". 

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