Mark C. Ode

Last month’s article covered the general requirements in the National Electrical Code for audio signal processing, amplification and sound equipment in Article 640. One of the most common mistakes many electricians and...

Have you ever walked into a room in your home, noticed dark, shadowy spots, and wished there was an easy way to add lighting in the drywall ceiling? Or have you ever wanted to add a speaker in a ceiling and connect it to your...

In 1950s and 1960s homes, lighting fixtures were often installed in the center of the ceiling with a wall switch at the room’s entrance. This worked when general lighting was required for cleaning and similar tasks that do...

When I was an electrical contractor, I tried to find a specialty where there was less competition and more profit than the normal building wiring. Many ECs doing electrical wiring for dwellings, commercial and industrial...

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, incandescent lamps and lighting were the new technology, and everyone was converting from natural gas lighting to electricity. By the beginning of the 1940s,...

With the advent of power over ethernet in the 2017 National Electrical Code (NEC) , in Article 393 of the 2014 NEC covering low-voltage ceiling grid power, and other applications dealing with power-limited circuits, there...

New lighting technology provides electrical contractors with a unique capability to redo an aging home and vastly improve the lighting system. At the same time, many aspects of an existing home, such as its construction, can...

Let’s assume a 120/208-volt (V), three-phase service was installed on a building a few years ago and the new owner of the building needs a standby generator for use during power outages. The electrical contractor installs a...

National Electrical Code (NEC) Panel 3 established the new Article 728 in the 2014 NEC. It deals with fire-resistive cabling systems, and it was marginally revised for the 2017 NEC . The article covers the installation of...

I have always been fascinated by cables and conductors—sometimes referred to as wires in the National Electrical Code (NEC) and other standards—and the insulation for these cables and conductors, as well as their multiple...

One of my passions, other than the National Electrical Code (NEC), has been fire alarm systems, as covered by NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code. When I was a licensed electrical contractor in the Phoenix area in...

Both the National Electrical Code (NEC) and NFPA 70E, Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace, use the phrase “arcing current.” It is located in 240.87(B)(5) and (B)(6) in the NEC and in many places within NFPA 70E....