Ahead of the April close date for comments on the Second Draft of the 2026 revision of the NEC we examine thought trends on the following:
How does “high voltage” differ among electrotechnology professionals? Signaling and control systems workers have a much lower criteria than a merchant utility lineman than a campus bulk distribution engineer. In other words, “high voltage” is generally understood in practice and essential for worker safety. Labeling counts.
What is the origin of the apparent “confusion’ about high voltage in the IEEE, IEC, NFPA and TIA electrical safety catalogs? Is the distinction functionally acceptable — i.e. a term of art understood well enough in practice?
How can the 2026 NEC be improved for engineers, electricians and inspectors? There has been some considerable re-organization of low, medium and high voltage concepts in the 2023. It usually takes at least two NEC revision cycles for workable code to stabilize. Since education communities purchase and distribute higher voltage power on large campuses; how can power purchasing and customer distribution system best practice be improved?
The UL standards catalog is a useful starting point for electrical standards research because product safety requirements underpin much of the National Fire Protection Association catalog. Its extensive coverage of electrical equipment, components and systems reveals connections among product design, testing, certification and installation. It also provides a practical pathway to understanding the broader ANSI standards ecosystem.
“Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky” 1816 Benjamin West
Benjamin Franklin conducted his famous experiment with lightning on June 10, 1752.
He used a kite and a key to demonstrate that lightning was a form of electricity.
This experiment marked an important milestone in understanding the nature of electricity
and laid the foundation for the development of lightning rods and other lightning protection systems.
Seasonal extreme weather patterns in the United States, resulting in damages to education facilities and delays in outdoor athletic events — track meets; lacrosse games, swimming pool closures and the like — inspire a revisit of the relevant standards for the systems that contribute to safety from injury and physical damage to buildings: NFPA 780 Standard for the Installation of Lightning Protection Systems
This document shall cover traditional lightning protection system installation requirements for the following: (1) Ordinary structures (2) Miscellaneous structures and special occupancies (3) Heavy-duty stacks (4) Structures containing flammable vapors, flammable gases, or liquids with flammable vapors (5) Structures housing explosive materials (6) Wind turbines (7) Watercraft (8) Airfield lighting circuits (9) Solar arrays
This document shall address lightning protection of the structure but not the equipment or installation requirements for electric generating, transmission, and distribution systems except as given in Chapter 9 and Chapter 12.
(Electric generating facilities whose primary purpose is to generate electric power are excluded from this standard with regard to generation, transmission, and distribution of power. Most electrical utilities have standards covering the protection of their facilities and equipment. Installations not directly related to those areas and structures housing such installations can be protected against lightning by the provisions of this standard.)
This document shall not cover lightning protection system installation requirements for early streamer emission systems or charge dissipation systems.
“Down conductors” must be at least #2 AWG copper (0 AWG aluminum) for Class I materials in structures less than 75-ft in height
“Down conductors: must be at least 00 AWG copper (0000 AWG aluminum) for Class II Materials in structures greater than 75-ft in height.
Related grounding and bonding requirements appears in Chapters 2 and Chapter 3 of NFPA 70 National Electrical Code. This standard does not establish evacuation criteria.
University of Michigan | Washtenaw County (Photo by Kai Petainen)
The current edition is dated 2023 and, from the transcripts, you can observe concern about solar power and early emission streamer technologies tracking through the committee decision making. Education communities have significant activity in wide-open spaces; hence our attention to technical specifics.
Public input on the 2026 revision is receivable until 1 June 2023.
We always encourage our colleagues to key in their own ideas into the NFPA public input facility (CLICK HERE). We maintain NFPA 780 on our Power colloquia which collaborates with IEEE four times monthly in European and American time zones. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
Lightning flash density – 12 hourly averages over the year (NASA OTD/LIS) This shows that lightning is much more frequent in summer than in winter, and from noon to midnight compared to midnight to noon.
Issue: [14-105]
Category: Electrical, Telecommunication, Public Safety, Risk Management
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Jim Harvey, Kane Howard
Didn't really plan for all possibilities, did they. 🤓
Churches and chapels are more susceptible to lightning damage due to their height and design. Consider:
Height: Taller structures are more likely to be struck by lightning because they are closer to the cloud base where lightning originates.
Location: If a church or chapel is situated in an area with frequent thunderstorms, it will have a higher likelihood of being struck by lightning.
Construction Materials: The materials used in the construction of the building can affect its vulnerability. Metal structures, for instance, can conduct lightning strikes more readily than non-metallic materials.
Proximity to Other Structures: If the church or chapel is located near other taller structures like trees, utility poles, or buildings, it could increase the chances of lightning seeking a path through these objects before reaching the building.
Lightning Protection Systems: Installing lightning rods and other lightning protection systems can help to divert lightning strikes away from the structure, reducing the risk of damage.
Maintenance: Regular maintenance of lightning protection systems is essential to ensure their effectiveness. Neglecting maintenance could result in increased susceptibility to lightning damage.
Historical Significance: Older buildings might lack modern lightning protection systems, making them more vulnerable to lightning strikes.
The risk can be mitigated by proper design, installation of lightning protection systems, and regular maintenance.
Electrical grounding is vital for safety and system protection. It provides a path for excess electrical current to safely dissipate into the earth, reducing the risk of electric shock, fire, and equipment damage. Grounding stabilizes voltage levels, ensuring the proper operation of electrical systems and devices. It also protects against electrical surges and lightning strikes by diverting harmful currents away from sensitive components. Overall, grounding enhances the safety, reliability, and performance of electrical installations, making it a fundamental practice in electrical engineering and construction.
In other words, without grounding, electric energy does no useful work. Today we review the grounding principles for exterior lightning protection and building interior telecommunication and audio-visual systems. Use the login credentials at the upper right our home page.
“Railroad Sunset” | Edward Hopper
Grounding protects buildings from lightning by providing a safe path for the immense electrical energy of a lightning strike to travel into the earth, thereby minimizing damage. Here’s how it works:
Lightning Rods: Metal rods placed on top of buildings intercept lightning strikes. These rods are connected to a network of conductors.
Conductors: These metal cables or strips carry the electrical charge from the lightning rod to the ground.
Grounding System: The conductors are connected to grounding rods buried deep in the earth, dispersing the electrical charge safely into the ground.
This system prevents lightning from passing through the building’s structure, reducing the risk of fire, structural damage, and electrical hazards.
“Rain in Charleston” 1951 Thomas Fransioli
Grounding in telecommunication systems is crucial for ensuring safety and operational reliability. Here’s how it works:
Surge Protection: Grounding helps protect telecommunication equipment from voltage surges caused by lightning strikes, power line faults, or switching operations. By providing a direct path to the earth, grounding allows excess electrical energy to be safely dissipated, preventing damage to sensitive equipment.
Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) Reduction: Proper grounding minimizes EMI, which can disrupt communication signals. By creating a common reference point for electrical potentials, grounding reduces noise and interference, ensuring clearer and more reliable signal transmission.
Safety: Grounding protects personnel from electrical shocks by ensuring that any fault currents are directed away from equipment and safely into the ground. This is particularly important in environments with high-power transmission equipment.
System Stability: Grounding stabilizes voltage levels within the system, preventing fluctuations that could cause equipment malfunctions or failures. This stability is crucial for maintaining consistent and reliable telecommunications services.
Overall, grounding enhances the safety, performance, and reliability of telecommunication systems by managing electrical faults, reducing interference, and protecting both equipment and personnel.
“Telegraph Poles with Buildings” | Joseph Stella (1917)
Grounding in audio systems is essential for ensuring high-quality sound output and preventing various types of electrical noise and interference. Here’s how it works:
Noise Reduction: Proper grounding minimizes hums and buzzes often caused by ground loops, which occur when different pieces of equipment are grounded at different points. By ensuring a common ground point, the potential differences that cause these loops are eliminated, leading to cleaner audio signals.
Shielding: Grounding provides a reference point for the shielding in audio cables, which helps to block external electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency interference (RFI). This shielding prevents unwanted noise from being introduced into the audio signal.
Safety: Grounding protects both the equipment and users from electrical shocks. In the event of a fault, the grounding system directs the fault current safely to the earth, reducing the risk of electric shock and equipment damage.
Signal Integrity: By maintaining a consistent ground potential, grounding helps preserve the integrity of audio signals. This ensures that the signals are transmitted and received accurately without degradation, resulting in better sound quality.
Equipment Protection: Proper grounding can protect sensitive audio equipment from power surges and static discharge, extending the lifespan and reliability of the components.
Overall, grounding is a fundamental practice in audio systems to ensure high-quality sound, protect equipment, and maintain safety for users.
These are generally downloads. We are happy to pick through the changes to the Electrical stack depending upon interest.
Left Panel Of George Julian Zolnay’s Allegorical “Academic, Business & Manual Education” Granite Frieze At Francis L. Cardozo High School (Washington, DC)
All fifty United States have their own “signature” disaster with which to reckon; some more than others. California has earthquakes, Florida has hurricanes, Missouri has floods; and so on, Life and property loss are preventable; but losses will persist because technical solutions notwithstanding, culture determines human behavior. It is impossible to be alive and safe.
FM Global is one of several organizations that curate privately developed consensus products that set the standard of care for many industries; education communities among them. These standards contribute to the reduction in the risk of property loss due to fire, weather conditions, and failure of electrical or mechanical equipment. They incorporate nearly 200 years of property loss experience, research and engineering results, as well as input from consensus standards committees, equipment manufacturers and others.
If you want FMGlobal as your insurance carrier, or to supplement your organization’s self-insurance program, then you will likely be assigned an FMGlobal conformity professional.
A scan of its list data sheets indicate a number of noteworthy updates of documents establishing minimum requirements for safety technologies common in education facilities:
Note that the bulk of the safety concepts in the foregoing titles incorporate by reference the safety concepts that cross our radar every day FM Global provides direct access to the full span of its documents at this link:
To respond to calls for public consultation you will need to set up (free) access credentials.
We keep FMGlobal titles — and the literature of other property insurers involved in standards setting — on the standing agenda of our Risk, Snow and Prometheus colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next meeting.
“Neither party shall be liable for any failure or delay in performance of its obligations under this agreement due to events beyond its reasonable control, including but not limited to acts of God, war, terrorism, civil commotion, labor strikes, and natural disasters. The affected party shall promptly notify the other party of the force majeure event and take reasonable steps to mitigate its impact on performance. During the continuance of such events, the obligations of the affected party shall be suspended, and the time for performance shall be extended.”
Example 2: Detailed Force Majeure Clause
“In the event that either party is unable to perform its obligations under this agreement due to a force majeure event, the affected party shall promptly notify the other party in writing, specifying the nature and anticipated duration of the force majeure event. Force majeure events shall include, but are not limited to, acts of God, strikes, lockouts, government action or inaction, war, terrorism, epidemics, and natural disasters. The affected party shall use reasonable efforts to overcome or mitigate the effects of the force majeure event. If the force majeure event continues for a period of [specified duration], either party may terminate this agreement by providing written notice to the other party.”
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Page 522/523: 305.2 Group E, day care facilities for five or fewer children.
Page 624: Group E Security
Page 1440: Storm Shelters
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Today at the usual hour we review a selection of global building codes and standards that guide best practice for safety, accessibility, and functionality for day care facilities; with special interest in the possibilities for co-locating square footage into the (typically) lavish unused space in higher education facilities.
Use the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.
Safety and sustainability for any facility begins with an understanding of who shall occupy the built environment and how. University settings, with mixed-use phenomenon arising spontaneously and temporarily, often present challenges. Educational communities are a convergent settings for families; day care facilities among them. First principles regarding occupancy classifications for day care facilities appear in Section 308 of the International Building Code, Institutional Group I; linked below:
The ICC Institutional Group I-4 classification includes buildings and structures occupied by more than five persons of any age who received custodial care for fewer than 24 hours per day by persons other than parents or guardian, relatives by blood, marriage or adoption, and in a place other than the home of the person cared far. This group includes both adult and child day care.
We maintain focus on child day care. Many educational communities operate child day care enterprises for both academic study and/or as auxiliary (university employee benefit) enterprises.
Princeton University Child Care Center
Each of the International Code Council code development groups fetch back to a shared understanding of the nature of the facility; character of its occupants and prospective usage patterns.
The 2024 revision of the International Building code is in production now. Ahead of the formal, market release of the Group A tranche of titles you can sample the safety concepts in play during this revision with an examination of the documents linked below:
Search on the terms “day care” and “daycare” in the link at the top of this page to get a sample of the prevailing concepts; use of such facilities as storm shelters, for example.
“The Country School” | Winslow Homer
We encourage our safety and sustainability colleagues to participate directly in the ICC Code Development process. We slice horizontally through the disciplinary silos (“incumbent verticals”) created by hundreds of consensus product developers every week and we can say, upon considerable authority that the ICC consensus product development environment is one of the best in the world. Privately developed standards (for use by public agencies) is a far better way to discover and promulgate leading practice than originating technical specifics from legislative bodies. CLICK HERE to get started. Contact Kimberly Paarlberg (kpaarlberg@iccsafe.org) for more information.
There are competitor consensus products in this space — Chapter 18 Day-Care Occupancies in NFPA 5000 Building Construction and Safety Code, for example; a title we maintain the standing agenda of our Model Building Code teleconferences. It is developed from a different pool of expertise under a different due process regime. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, trans. Constance Garnett
“In 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a 17-year-old girl gave birth to a son. The school administrators had told her she couldn’t finish high school. She pushed back anyway.
Her name was Jacklyn Gise. And the baby she was determined to raise would one day become one of the most… pic.twitter.com/O1NYzRh1Gr
On Friday this group Facetimed me. This is their yearly get together. They tell me that they “are connected for life.” When you commit to something bigger than yourself you don’t just give yourself a better chance to win, the bonds you build are for life. pic.twitter.com/mSc4BECrb3
I can confirm that @GreenPlusAnE spent part of his wedding reception discussing entitlement reform. And the new Mrs. Greene is possibly the most elegant Tocqueville scholar in existence. https://t.co/XRfnxJ027G
In non soccer, non portal, non athletic news, our family just grew by one 😀 we gained a future son in law!!! So happy for Madison and Dylan. #weddingplanspic.twitter.com/3DNx0tNr5D
Congrats to my son for graduating with Honors from Eastern Michigan – don’t blink time flies – so so proud of what he’s accomplished & love him to pieces 💙🎉🥳 pic.twitter.com/qAj2ndRVwA
We need a reality dating show called “Average SEC Couples” that’s just 15 Average Joe’s from the South wooing 15 gorgeous women with generational wealth. pic.twitter.com/hhNGYUPw3S
Since I’m making happy announcements, Anne and I are expecting our first grandchild (a grandson we’re told) in February. We’re very proud of and happy for our oldest son Aedan and his wife Addy. Thanks be to God! pic.twitter.com/3xFXGYaes0
💙Last middle school dance💙
Time is flying, but I’ve loved every moment of this phase — shopping for his unique style, the cologne hunts, the late-night talks, and watching him chase what he loves. Keep being authentically you, GT!💥 pic.twitter.com/glH8AHyid4
One week postpartum with the sweetest baby ever. I am blessed beyond measure to have had my 5th successful home birth and a very smooth recovery. God is so good! pic.twitter.com/bWBqAtOUkj
A South African man who recently picked up an abandoned baby in Mpumalanga suburb of Emalahleni is now applying for court permission to adopt the boy and get him a birth certificate
Ten years after our wedding, our triplets have finally arrived… Thank you to everyone who sent us congratulations. These are our most precious treasures. #fblifestylepic.twitter.com/AXKOj7vL7Q
The body of 8-year-old Mystic camper Virginia Hollis was found along the Guadalupe River earlier this week, more than a week after the July 4 floods in Texas.
Yesterday, this angel’s favorite horse followed her casket through the streets to bid her farewell. 😭 pic.twitter.com/T8f8O6n4q3
After 15 years of marriage, the first child is actually twins! 🥳Maybe no one will say it, but we want to share this joy anyway. 🌹 pic.twitter.com/T60zPJZ0tT
He was with me almost every day for 12 years. The best living creature I’ve ever known including humans.
He protected children and loved his job out here.
I hope I can be half the man this dog was to our world. I buried him last evening in his beloved woods.
A heartfelt surprise for her best friend on graduation day.. She didn’t expect it because they hadn’t seen each other in so long, ever since her friend moved to another citypic.twitter.com/3pxswYFVNt
From couple matching to couple chief-ing!!!thrilled and honored to serve as chief residents together at the program that shaped us. Grateful for the journey and excited for what’s ahead! #HUHpic.twitter.com/lClrJpGABW
20th March 2010
A couple – just married – choose to cycle from the church to their reception.
From my book ‘Cambridge – Town & Gown’. pic.twitter.com/Y9zzcUsHh4
We got him moved into the new house! His bride-to-be is helping him decorate and put things away and will be joining him there on their wedding night! Today, only a few tears were shed (out of his sight). We are beyond happy for them! @BrandonLansdownpic.twitter.com/NSNmzg8hyG
Naistenpäivän kunniaksi haluan jakaa, että minulla on onni ja siunaus odottaa omaa tytärtä. Toivon näyttäväni hänelle samanlaista naisen mallia kuin oma äitini on näyttänyt minulle. Nainen voi olla vahva ja lempeä, sitkeä ja kaunis, herkkä ja periksiantamaton. Nainen voi olla… pic.twitter.com/MivsLRh1wJ
Syracuse University. Kissing Bench: This bench on the Quad is steeped in tradition. Legend has it that if a couple kisses on the bench, they will eventually marry. Conversely, if a single person sits there alone, they risk staying single forever.
University of Idaho. Hello Walk and Kissing Rock: While not a bench, this area on campus features a large rock where students have historically kissed. It’s a romantic tradition for couples at the university.
It is so rare for people to see a normal, white family that lefties think it gives ”Third Reich vibes”. This really tells us that we need to make it less rare.
New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwBpic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
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