# Office Safety Issue



## MDShunk (Jan 7, 2007)

Did you try to upsell them on total panel GFCI protection? :jester: 

File cabinet bonding? That would have prevented it too. 

I can see the code change proposal now... :laughing:


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## John (Jan 22, 2007)

The way they were acting when I showed up, I could of sold them the Brooklyn Bridge. :whistling2:


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## Jim (Jun 12, 2007)

For what it’s worth John, I think the best solution is bonding metal furniture in an office environment. 

A ground fault receptacle could be installed at the first outlet, but computer power supplies are notorious for leakage current, and with five or six stations it probably wouldn’t work. Which actually means it would work all too well.

A whole building GFCI, as I understand it, is generally set higher to protect equipment, and may not protect personal very well, if at all.

Please correct me if my understanding of these concepts is wrong.


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## MDShunk (Jan 7, 2007)

Jim said:


> Please correct me if my understanding of these concepts is wrong.


You're right, Jim. My comments were more tongue-in-cheek. Bonding the file cabinets would be the most reasonable prevention, but I don't think I've ever seen this done (or even proposed) in real life. Electrified cubicles, sure. File cabinets... never really seen it done.


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## John (Jan 22, 2007)

Jim said:


> For what it’s worth John, I think the best solution is bonding metal furniture in an office environment.
> 
> A ground fault receptacle could be installed at the first outlet, but computer power supplies are notorious for leakage current, and with five or six stations it probably wouldn’t work. Which actually means it would work all too well.
> 
> ...


In the real world of commercial installations it is almost impossible to bound office furniture. This place I got the call to has maybe 60,000 sf. of office space and it would be a herculean task to bond everything. The easiest way to eliminate this type of incident would for the employer of these people to embark on an electrical safety training program to educate their employees. A basic electrical education would be the best solution. The employees educated in workplace electrical safety would most likely take that knowledge home with them, which would be a definite plus. :thumbsup: 

Using GFCI and even AFCI protection would defiantly be a good ideal in theory but a PITA in the long run. I would be getting callbacks all the time to do resets! 

With whole building GFCI the only thing you have to watch out for are trip settings that are set too low. A couple years ago I was changing out a ballast in a light fixture while it was hot and accidentally grounded the hot. It tripped the main to building…oops


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## coderj (Aug 16, 2007)

Working maintenance in a mixed environment (entertainment, retail, office, industrial), I've seen many things like this. My favorite is the mysteriously shorting out pencil sharpener. Seems a bunch of entry-levels figured out if they stapled the zip cord that goes to the electric pencil sharpener, it'll blow up and blow out the outlet it's plugged into.

The funny part is after the third time this happened, somebody thought adding a GFCI breaker would fix that problem!


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