In my 1950s-era garage, there is an ceiling outlet served by a 20A breaker that powers the garage door opener. Emerging from that surface-mounted box is a romex cable stapled to the ceiling and running down to the wall, where another surface-mounted outlet is installed with a duplex 20A outlet.
Is this to code? My wife’s grandfather, who lived here previously, was an electrical engineer, so I don’t think he’d have done anything unsafe. But code may have changed since he died in the 1970s.
The reason I ask is that I’d like to re-position the wall outlet, and simply stapling romex to the wall is something I can easily do. Installing it in conduit is probably beyond my abilities.
What say you?
I’m not an electrician, but I’ve seen similar installs in modern homes. I never thought of them as dangerous. I’ll wait to hear what the experts say.
Don’t know about codes in your area, you’ll have to check and see.
But PVC conduit is dead easy. Cuts easy, glues easily for turns. Forgiving to a point.
Getting into metal ones and it gets harder.
An EE could do something safe but not really conforming to code.
Even knob and tube wiring is “to code”, just not modern code.
An EE owned my house before I bought it. He didn’t have a clue about what he was doing. If I ever see him, I think I would probably punch him.
Exposed romex isn’t allowed because of the risk of physical damage. If you need to do this, wiremold raceway is easy enough to work with.
Is it a “finished” garage? In other words, can you see the trusses and framing, or are they covered with something (e.g. drywall, paneling)?
If it is a “finished” garage, then I don’t think exposed NM wiring is allowed. You’ll need to run the wiring behind the drywall/paneling/whatever, or run it in conduit.
I’m very much a novice about DIY electrical work, but I was able to install an outlet in my garage using EMT conduit. The hardest part is bending the conduit. You need a bender of course, and you may waste a few lengths of conduit making bad bends until you get the hang of it, but it’s not really too hard. Connecting the conduit to the junction boxes and attaching the conduit to the wall is very simple.
I have no idea if I was told correctly, but I was told that we aren’t supposed to use romex inside conduit because of heat concerns.
From what I have seen, real electricians use individual wires in conduit instead of romex.
That said, the guy who told me that we aren’t supposed to use romex in conduit is someone who I do not believe without outside supporting evidence. At the time he told me that, he was installing electrical wiring in a new commercial building using romex and none of it was in conduit.
Among other things that I saw him do is to hang the romex outside of the studs instead of through them and then the other workers nailed the rock wall sheets over it. Imagine what might happen if you were to put in a nail to hang a picture and drove it through the romex into the hot wire.
For what it’s worth, the builder for the project is now in a federal prison after being convicted of fraud involving several million dollars. That doesn’t include the people who wanted to build a new home, gave him the money in advance to secure their place in line, and ended up without the money and without the new home.
Some of the other issues with that building include:
- There is a shower for workers to come in and take a shower. It was installed without a trap so the sewer gas just came up into the building. They ended up having to jackhammer the concrete floor out, install a trap, and then repour the concrete.
- The builder decided to put all of the networking equipment up in the unvented attic. If you wanted to do anything, you would have to climb through the attic to the networking equipment. The company leasing the building moved the networking equipment into the bathroom. So now, you can sit on the crapper while working on the network.
- The company that leased the building wanted an electrical plugin in the floor of the office. So the builder punched out a trough in the concrete, put the electrical wire in (no conduit), and refilled on top of it. The outlet plate for the electrical plugin is just a regular plastic electrical outlet plate.
Building inspections? I asked the directory of city utilities about the building inspector for the area and was told that the building inspector is headquarter in a city about 70 miles away and rarely, if ever, comes here to inspect anything. You can pretty much do whatever you want.