# Transformer with the nameplate painted over



## five.five-six (Apr 9, 2013)

A long time customer of mine is doing a 4k sqft expansion on their office. I don't have prints or a contract but they only have 2 other ECs they use and I have been told quite clearly that neither of them are getting the job. I have been getting work from them for about 4 years. I do all their structured cabling and they pay me to fix everything these other 2 larger ECs screw up and wont fix. 

The project is going to entail moving a 200A panel and transformer that serve office space. The pannel feeds this junction box wich is a whole nother issue, because they want a walkway where the panel is. That crap has needed to be fixed for decades so I rather welcome the project. 

Now, the transformer has it's name plate painted over... several times. This job is being inspected, which is a first for this facility. I'm not going to pass inspection without a nameplate. Do I just replace the transformer or is there something I can do?


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## ponyboy (Nov 18, 2012)

Do you have any info at all on the transformer? You'd have to have a real prick inspector to fail a job for that. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Cow (Jan 16, 2008)

You don't want to try paint remover first before you replace it? Heat gun/putty knife?

I'm not entirely sure why you have to have a nameplate anyways on something existing like this.


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## five.five-six (Apr 9, 2013)

I was thinking to try and remove the paint, but it's been outside for at least 25 years, so I doubt I'll find any readable info.


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## freeagnt54 (Aug 6, 2008)

After 25 years the panel and xfrmr should probably be replaced if you are going through all the trouble to move and reinstall everything.


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## pete87 (Oct 22, 2012)

five.five-six said:


> I was thinking to try and remove the paint, but it's been outside for at least 25 years, so I doubt I'll find any readable info.




I thought that info is stamped in plate , then inked . I would clean it up a bit .



Pete


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## telsa (May 22, 2015)

NEMA standard dry-type transformers are made in but a handful of capacities.

So getting the capacity such a design is easy. A 200A 208Y120 panel is normally fed by a single 75 kVA transformer. (Just the most common scheme, you'll run into even larger transformers feeding side-by-side panels, too. )

In my area, the AHJ flatly prohibit the re-installation of used gear by ECs for inspected work.

It's an addendum to the NEC, hereabouts.

I suspect that this rule was established to stop haggling over the suitability of this or that second hand gear during the inspection process.

It also cuts short any brainstorming of how to re-use ancient electrical gear.

This prohibition does not extend to what the maintenance crew does -- un-inspected work projects.

This also goes a long ways towards explaining why second hand American gear usually ends up being sold overseas, electrical and otherwise. You would hardly believe the amount of American equipment still running on and on in the Third World. 

( Here and there, you'll find even British steam engines from the 1890's running on, and on, and on. )


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## 3DDesign (Oct 25, 2014)

lacquer thinner should remove the paint


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## 480sparky (Sep 20, 2007)

telsa said:


> .............In my area, the AHJ flatly prohibit the re-installation of used gear by ECs for inspected work.
> 
> It's an addendum to the NEC, hereabouts.
> 
> I suspect that this rule was established to stop haggling over the suitability of this or that second hand gear during the inspection process............



It must suck royally when you remove lights for a simple kitchen or bath remodel, then can't put them back up. What about pulling down the smoke in the basement so the space can be finished..... is a new smoke detector required then?

Does this also mean you can't re-use cover plates when you remove them to paint a wall?


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## EM1 (Oct 25, 2014)

I used to work in a motor shop and 5 seconds with a little vaseline before painting will result in a perfectly legible nameplate. But on a small transformer the only thing really stamped in is the Impedance, usually voltage, kva, etc. are kind of etched and hard to recover after painting. It sometimes can be restored with a little thinner and a very mild abrasive like fine or ultra-fine scotchbrite.


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## Bad Electrician (May 20, 2014)

480sparky said:


> It must suck royally when you remove lights for a simple kitchen or bath remodel, then can't put them back up. What about pulling down the smoke in the basement so the space can be finished..... is a new smoke detector required then?
> 
> Does this also mean you can't re-use cover plates when you remove them to paint a wall?


Typical stupid CA rule with no thought to common sense or there was an issue with whether or not used CB's were legal. 

In data centers it is fairly common to reocate equipment as the data center is redesigned. 

Does this law prohibit used generators, used CB's used transfomers.

What about for temporary?

Therre is no distribution equipment that cannot not be tested or refurbished to aceptabe use or be condemed by a quaified testing company. A much better approach in lieu of letting a politician or an inspector that has no background in inspecting equipment to determine zcceptable use acceptable use.

There are limits to all this but as I stated letting a tarined tech make this determinatin.

And yes I know the intent of the law was to prevent contracors from putting trash in houses but there are better approaches that a blanket covering all law.


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## Switched (Dec 23, 2012)

480sparky said:


> It must suck royally when you remove lights for a simple kitchen or bath remodel, then can't put them back up. What about pulling down the smoke in the basement so the space can be finished..... is a new smoke detector required then?
> 
> Does this also mean you can't re-use cover plates when you remove them to paint a wall?


I know you are joking, but we actually can not reuse old light fixtures in a lot of areas.... Everything has to be Title24 compliant, there are a lot of rules and run arounds to the laws, but it is sometimes cheaper just to go pick up a new fixture.

&&&&&&&&

We don't really have a lot of basements around here to finish! But yes, they may require you to install a new smoke detector.

&&&&&&&&

You may have to have the nameplate to show the transformer is hitting a required energy efficiency....

&&&&&&&&

This state is stupid crazy!:laughing:


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## hardworkingstiff (Jan 22, 2007)

Switched said:


> This state is stupid crazy!:laughing:


And it's spreading east. Last I checked, NC has the most strict UST regulations other than CA.


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## telsa (May 22, 2015)

480sparky said:


> It must suck royally when you remove lights for a simple kitchen or bath remodel, then can't put them back up. What about pulling down the smoke in the basement so the space can be finished..... is a new smoke detector required then?
> 
> Does this also mean you can't re-use cover plates when you remove them to paint a wall?


All of these matters are left entirely to the subjective judgment of the inspectors.

I can't speak to residential, it's not my end of the street.

In commercial work: YES it's the hard line -- all the way down the line. All that stuff goes into the trash... typically even the trims... yes, even the plates...EVERYTHING.

No-one even slows down to make a judgment call / clean up the old stuff -- it flies into the dumpster. Old devices in a remodel only survive if they never came off the wall in the first place. PERIOD. 

(Second hand electrical devices are a glut around here.)

Then, again, there's a small army of under-the-radar commercial re-hab that is performed without inspections.

BTW, Sacramento CITY has been SUED over their draconian NEC enforcement. Yes, it's highly politicized. 

And, you guessed it, the CITY lost the case. 

California -- over the years -- has 'imported' the talents of American electricians from all other states. Virtually to a man, they are shocked as to how stringent our inspectors are. 

( The guys from Chicago are not shocked. It has something to do with major cities being burned entirely to the ground. )

Do keep in mind that California is run by Jerry Brown.

Title 24 is slang for our building code -- and, most particularly, the energy efficiency standards within it. What Title 24 spec's is that ANY fixture that is not entirely up to current efficiency standards can't be installed during a remodel... REGARDLESS OF AGE. 

What this means is that NEW OLD STOCK lighting fixtures -- that were never put in any building -- became prohibited installs -- overnight.

Many of these were bought up by Home Depot and offered to the DIYer crowd to install on an un-inspected basis. I saw them all over the place. 

The stuff that would never fly in residential had to be shipped out of California and 'dumped' in Nevada and Arizona. 

{ Title 24 has different standards for Residential and Everything else, efficiency wise. Residential lags by at least one code cycle. }

&&&&&&

Due to the horrific expense of current kilowatts -- as high as $ 0.45 per kWHr -- NOT a typo -- virtually new lighting fixtures are coming down all over this state.

The tempo is FRANTIC.

This is all due to Green politics, economics be damned.


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## telsa (May 22, 2015)

Bad Electrician said:


> Typical stupid CA rule with no thought to common sense or there was an issue with whether or not used CB's were legal.
> 
> In data centers it is fairly common to reocate equipment as the data center is redesigned.
> 
> ...


The way this is ACTUALLY implemented is that a lot of slack occurs in residential inspections -- especially DIYers.

NO SLACK occurs in commercial installations.

To duck the expense and hassle, there are no end of re-habs that are performed entirely under the radar -- this is ESPECIALLY true inside the City of Sacramento.

The rules aren't bent for ECs -- any of them. So it does not affect their competitive situation.

BTW, you folks are wildly overrating the cost savings to be had by re-using old trims. If you were to perform a T&M analysis you'd quickly find that the labor burden associated with policing them up, protecting them until job's end, etc. destroys their economic utility. 

If the re-hab is really dinky, everyone just cheats, and never calls for an inspection.

Eliot Ness doesn't just chase Al Capone -- he creates him it the first place.:blink:


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## RIVETER (Sep 26, 2009)

five.five-six said:


> A long time customer of mine is doing a 4k sqft expansion on their office. I don't have prints or a contract but they only have 2 other ECs they use and I have been told quite clearly that neither of them are getting the job. I have been getting work from them for about 4 years. I do all their structured cabling and they pay me to fix everything these other 2 larger ECs screw up and wont fix.
> 
> The project is going to entail moving a 200A panel and transformer that serve office space. The pannel feeds this junction box wich is a whole nother issue, because they want a walkway where the panel is. That crap has needed to be fixed for decades so I rather welcome the project.
> 
> Now, the transformer has it's name plate painted over... several times. This job is being inspected, which is a first for this facility. I'm not going to pass inspection without a nameplate. Do I just replace the transformer or is there something I can do?


First...get a signed contract. Secondly, take a blade from your box knife and scrape the plate sideways.


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## telsa (May 22, 2015)

That is ONE ugly can!

Its rim makes me believe that its lid has been off for many years... so much dust and crud.

And, I hate that style of pipe running / circuiting... not that I haven't had to come behind and clean up such junk any number of times.

As one can see from the photo, once the complexity in a junction box/ can gets so high its practicality breaks down. What seemed to make sense when the box was entirely 'cold' -- during the original construction -- proves to be a nightmare when anyone has to revisit it with half of the circuits 'hot.'

The proper technique -- killing every circuit running into the can -- is something that the customer can't tolerate during a typical service call/ circuit modification.

And, the 'next guy' can't begin to fathom where the conductors go in such a rat's nest -- in the dark -- and with no prints in hand.

Perfect.:no:


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## Southeast Power (Jan 18, 2009)

I think it would be very manageable.
You could be only dealing with 30 circuits, maybe even less.
10 could be ground wires.
Number all of them, write the numbers on the EMT.
It isn't unusual to move a cabinet with 400 terminations.
It's just ugly, not impossible.


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## mitch65 (Mar 26, 2015)

telsa said:


> All of these matters are left entirely to the subjective judgment of the inspectors.
> 
> I can't speak to residential, it's not my end of the street.
> 
> ...


So there is no thought by the "Green" enforcement authority as to the amount of perfectly good equipment heading to the landfill? how green is that?


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## telsa (May 22, 2015)

jrannis said:


> I think it would be very manageable.
> You could be only dealing with 30 circuits, maybe even less.
> 10 could be ground wires.
> Number all of them, write the numbers on the EMT.
> ...


You're describing an NEC/ IBEW style job.

For the rest of the world, open cans -- like that in the photo -- are reality.

The rush to pull conductors, the general low experience levels, ...

Such jobs can't even be schemed like an NEC/ IBEW job... which typify industrial wiring practices.

100s of connections for a (control cabinet) NEVER happen in vanilla commercial settings. [ The modern practice is factory wired assemblies -- even wiring up a motor is an uncommon task. Custom, field built, control work just does not happen in vanilla commercial. -- It's a 'catfish' market, real bottom feeding. ] 

BTW, on any NEC/ IBEW job the general foreman would've had a cow over such open junction cans. 

It's nothing unusual for such cans to be left open ( _lost that lid _) from the first day of occupancy -- after construction -- for the typical commercial job. The lid probably went straight into the dumpster, BTW. This is a typical practice for the GC's clean up crews -- alcoholics from _Labor Unsteady_.

Jobs at this scale should not cram confusion into such cans. Unlike an industrial plant, documentation will be quite poor, working illumination for subsequent electricians will be lousy, and (above all) the customer will simply not tolerate having that many circuits shut off during business hours -- which will run long.

In modern industrial plants, such a junction can would be worked cold, as the processes involved would all have to come to a stop once work began in the middle of the flow. (assembly line or piped fluids -- it's an all or nothing scheme)

You're looking at two entirely different worlds, economic compulsions. 

BTW, such cans trigger shocks, ladder falls, OSHA visits, and paperwork. And, yes, I've seen just exactly that. The clever scheme totally falls apart in practice -- like an overly complicated military master plan.

{ You start with a simple clean scheme. Then every subordinate adds his own complications. (brainstorms) All too soon, you're left with a 'wire riot.' }:laughing::no::laughing::no:


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## Southeast Power (Jan 18, 2009)

telsa said:


> You're describing an NEC/ IBEW style job.
> 
> For the rest of the world, open cans -- like that in the photo -- are reality.
> 
> ...


Your writing bot is showing.


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## FaultCurrent (May 13, 2014)

Here in the Big City you are talking 2 different things. Lighting can stay as it is forever, but if you relocate and re-install, the fixtures must be energy efficient. This applies to non-residential work or residential kitchens or bathrooms.

Used equipment can be reused as long as it is serviceable. The transformer in question should be no problem, unless the inspector is a real a-hole.


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