One Of The Strangest Things I Have Ever Seen

[Technician]

I have just visited a small business where I saw the most unusually

adapted enclosure.  I was not allowed to take a picture of it.

Imagine, if you will, a standard enclosure about the size of meter

box for outside mounting of a utility meter, made of steel, unaltered

it would meet the standard IP requirements.

It was adapted to be a connection box for a free-standing generator

so the generator connections came in from the left through a set of

suitble glands.

The incoming conductors from the generator were to be led though

an aperture cut into the side about 8" by 6" and two lengths of what

could be best described as heavy duty draught excluder were fixed

on screw mountings, vertically, on either side of the aperture. 

In mitigation, the draught excluder did cover the opening.

I asked the obvious question;  was this approved?

The answer?  need you guess;  it was.

 

[Technician]

Good post Canoe, but would there be any live parts inside this enclosure?

 

[Technician]

There were going to be in this, and no other barriers present.

 

[Technician]

That did cross my mind..............

 

[binky]

have used such stuff for data cable entries, but 240V - don't think so!

suppose you could argue as long as it passes long-finger test, it maybe acceptable, except you can probaly get half your hand in whilst holding a cup of tea.

 

[Technician]

No;  this would not have passed ANY finger test in

the form in which it was presented.

 

[ericmark]

It is surprising what does not pass finger test from consumer units where you can flick out blanks with your fingers to PLC's which were designed to be mounted inside a panel. I got in a lot of trouble for pointing this out in Uni. There was it seems a standard question paper which was given with every project which I had mistakenly thought was written for me. The question was is there any health and safety issues I thought that this was a prompt for me to find something which should be mentioned. So I carefully scrutinised and realised the holes to top were over 1mm diameter and the terminal guard could be lifted without a tool. I careful found the regulation and gave regulation number and link the Alan Bradley web site where they said only suitable for mounting within a panel.  

Well it turned out lecturer before had used 24 vdc PLC’s and new lecturer had fought hard to use Alan Bradley 230 vac units instead which had been pat tested for use and clearly were not suitable for public demonstrations where school children were shown was Uni was like. Truly cat amongst the pidgins was end of last year so don’t know final result.

[SIZE=12pt]I think the risk was very low and I was not worried it was only because I was asked that I reported it. I do think some times common sense should prevail and we do tend to go OTT in following regulations. [/SIZE]