CHANGES IN NATIONAL ELECTRIC CODE REQUIRE CHANGES IN CONDUCT, LEASES
AND ACCESS LICENSE AGREEMENTS
BY GERARD LEDERER
THE CHALLENGE
The wires tenants have left in your raised floors, walls and ceilings, as well as the cables abandoned by
carriers in your risers, have always been a nuisance. Due to changes in the 2002 edition of the National
Electric Code (NEC), those same wires may now render your property out of code and jeopardize your
property’s fire insurance. This paper examines these NEC rules which make it a violation to have
abandoned wires in your building’s risers or plenums and mandate the use of specific flame-retardant
wiring for such deployments. The paper, while not to be relied upon as legal advice nor creating an
attorney-client relationship, suggests a step-by-step process to ensure that your building “meets code”
and that the fiscal impact of coming into compliance is borne by the appropriate party.
1. The NEC Process
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), updates the NEC every two to three years to ensure
that the electrical code is meeting real world challenges. While the NEC itself does not have the
authority of law, almost every jurisdiction in the United States adopts the NEC by reference in its
building and fire codes.
While the rules mandating the use of specific fire safe cable types and banning abandoned wires in risers
and plenums were adopted in late 2002, the debate has been ongoing for years. The new rules, in a
great many ways, are a compromise between those who wanted to ban any wires not in metal raceways
for fear that such wires promote the spread of fires and those that felt such deployments were perfectly
safe.
2. The Treatment of Plenum Wiring
The 2002 edition of the NEC is amended in at least nine locations to explicitly permit the deployment of
specific types of wires (telephone, fiber, cable, fire alarm, power) in risers and plenums without the
requirement of a metal raceway or conduit. Each such section also provides language