"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 02:09:35 GMT, "Ivan Vegvary"
wrote:

Sorting and straightening my shop crap. Am about to run a lot of new
circuits in conduit. Have dozens of old electrical boxes all with
multiple
holes. Sacrificed some of the ugliest (rusty) ones and removed the
knockouts. Yep, welded them into the holes of the new boxes. Kept one
hole, you need one in any case. One quick zap of the wire feed is all it
takes. Is this really cheap, or can somebody give an example of stooping
lower?

If you are going to reuse steel boxes like that, inspect them
carefully for things like cracked or buggered threads on the screw
ears, and toss the questionable ones. You don't want to go through
all the trouble of building the conduit system and running all the
wires, and then have the screw ear break off or strip out.

I'm all for reusing good old parts, but you have to check them over
first - before you waste an hour or more installing them, finding out
they are bad, and then removing them to replace with a good one. That
$50 of labor time wasted just negated the savings of reusing a $1 box.

And building inspectors will get very picky when they see cheesy
stuff like that - one or two knockouts, okay, but more than that and
they start checking every little detail carefully...

When they see several 8-32 box holes reamed out to 10-32 or 1/4-20
with odd screws to mount the mud-rings, that sets off alarm bells.

I've seen installations where kids came in overnight and popped
/all/ the box knockouts on a house under construction, the electrician
bought two full cartons of snap-in hole plugs in all the holes to
close them, and the inspector made him change out all the boxes before
the house would pass electrical final. There is a rule he cited
covering the situation, don't ask me to quote it.


110.12

--

SVL