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.

We last left off with a quesetion about Table 400.4, which is pretty big even by NEC standards. Let's begin by asking about another table.

1. You can use them to connect individual fixtures, where the cord would run a short distance from a box to the fixture. You can't run them from (for example) the distribution panel to the fixture because that would be using them as a substitute for fixed wiring [400.8(1)].
   

2. You can't run it through the window [4008(2)]. Remember, this isn't a portable cord for a temporary hookup such as to power your drill while you work on the fence outside that window (even then, through the window is problematic).
   
3. Yes, it really matters. In that space, rodents could chew the cable. You cannot run flexible cord in a suspended ceiling [400.8(5)]. Back in the mid-1990s, when I was an electrical maintenance manager for Frigidaire, some "we don't know the NEC" types wired up our new maintance lights exactly this way and I made them redo it.
   
4. No, you don't. In fact, you can't run flexible cords in any kind of raceway [400.8(6)].
   
5. There are seven of them. The seventh is the same old "Where subject to damage" that you find repeated for just about any wiring method throughout Chapter 3.

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