this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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On one hand, it bothers me how inaccessible clear guidance on electric work is. There are so few open resources, and online questions seem to devolve into electricians gatekeeping information to protect the trade. On the other hand, browsing ev charging forums reveals one melted socket after another (not necessarily the result of DIY). The average person can be pretty flippant about the various ways these installations can go up in flames.
If you are curious, the national electric code is freely available on the website, albeit in a slow and page by page online viewer. Equipment manufacturers will also often give installation manuals that can be reviewed and combined with the NEC for a decent understanding.
Ugly's and other companies do pretty affordable handbooks or small books that summarize electrical info/calculations, or wiring methods from the code.
But overall, national code standards are written in blood, and the NEC is made through the NFPA, National Fire Protection Agency. Their intentions are to prevent fires, and that guiding principle leads to code changes.
Eh what blood got AFCIs in there? Green blood from Siemens and Eaton as far as I can tell
You have to be careful about that too, the code isn't written to be easily understood by casual reading.
For example, the code will describe your hot, neutral, and ground wires as "ungrounded, grounded, and grounding" wires. Applying rules meant for a "grounding" wire to a "grounded" wire can have serious issues.
The whole code is written like that, where it's really easy to get confused if you don't understand the exact terminology it uses.
I mean it's better than nothing I guess but that is not what I'd call "freely available." In addition to requiring that you use their shitty online viewer, it appears to require users to sign in to an account even to do that. It's directly admitted on the website that they make it unusable in this way specifically because they rely on the revenue from selling real access to people who need it.