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  • Electric Control Panel Inspections

    Question for those breweries that have built your own control panel to operate the elements in the kettle/hlt.... Did you have any problems with your jurisdiction's inspectors rejecting it? Did you get it UL inspected? If you purchased a panel, is it UL listed and did you have any issues with the inspectors to get occupancy?

    Thanks for your feedback. We are trying to determine whether to have one built by an experienced electrician friend or purchase a prebuilt control panel.

    Thanks in advance for your feedback.

  • #2
    We had to have every panel UL listed. not just the components
    Manuel

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    • #3
      I plan on building my own control for my small electric nano, has anyone had any more experience with whether or not this will need to me UL listed. I am in Chicago, in case it matters.

      Thanks

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      • #4
        UL Controls

        To have or get a UL Certified control, it needs to be built by a UL Certified Panel Shop. Expect up to $300 per panel.
        All components in the panel must be UL recognized and labeled as such. Just using the UL labeled parts doesn't make it UL. There is a serialized certified sticker that will get put on the panel from the panel builder. This means that it has met the UL specs when it left their shop. Once you put a hole in it to wire up to it, it is no longer covered by them. It only means that it has met the criteria. UL does not inspect the circuitry design as to whether it will actually function, only that the components are wired and protected by UL standards and meets the NFPA.
        Typically, there would never be a UL inspection of a panel already installed in your facility. UL only inspects products being sold to the public.

        Whether the municipality will require it is up for debate. There probably isn't a single brewery out there that hasn't built it's own controls for something or other and those were never UL certified. If it's required, you now know how to do it.

        Hope this helps.
        Last edited by triple; 06-22-2016, 01:21 PM.

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        • #5
          I have been wondering about this myself? especially since many of the panels being prebuilt and sold by the likes of ebrewsupply do not mention UL certification... I have a friend that works for GM as an electrician and they build and modify panels all the time and I dont believe he has any UL credentials... Also I install and service large commercial printing equipment from various manufacturers and about 1/3 of this equipment is NOT UL listed some of it is CE certified only.. This has never been an issue that I know of?
          Does this really boil down to the local inspectors opinions on the matter?
          thanks.

          I have to chuckle a bit because when I went to my local city hall recently I noticed an old Ricoh wide format multifunction engineering printer/copier sitting in the next room over from the electrical inspector... I wonder if he knows that device is actually Ground switching and violates NEC code?...
          Last edited by augiedoggy; 01-31-2018, 07:08 AM.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by augiedoggy View Post
            I have been wondering about this myself? especially since many of the panels being prebuilt and sold by the likes of ebrewsupply do not mention UL certification... I have a friend that works for GM as an electrician and they build and modify panels all the time and I dont believe he has any UL credentials... Also I install and service large commercial printing equipment from various manufacturers and about 1/3 of this equipment is NOT UL listed some of it is CE certified only.. This has never been an issue that I know of?
            Does this really boil down to the local inspectors opinions on the matter?
            thanks.

            I have to chuckle a bit because when I went to my local city hall recently I noticed an old Ricoh wide format multifunction engineering printer/copier sitting in the next room over from the electrical inspector... I wonder if he knows that device is actually Ground switching and violates NEC code?...
            It's mostly up to the jurisdiction to interpret the rules. There's actually nothing in the code that says it has to be UL listed. UL is a private testing laboratory, like ETL is. The code says it has to be approved by a recognized testing laboratory, and there is a list of them somewhere that the NFPA publishes. When I worked on these things in the San Luis Obispo area, the rule was: If you're a licensed C-10 building something for a customer, or an industrial electrician under the employment of a company working on their own equipment, you did not need to have the work product listed/labeled. You did have to use RU (UL recognized) components, standard practices etc. And the inspectors would sometime look at my work itself. I did a LOT of work with European manufactured controls, and generally the inspectors gave me no trouble, as long as it carried some sort of label. But 90 miles to the south in Santa Barbara, it was an entirely different set of rules. It had to be UL, or nothing. I once had to replace an electrical load center that had been installed for decades, simply because it carried a Los Angeles Testing Labs label, not UL. The inspector wouldn't budge, and all I was doing was connecting a branch circuit to the panel.

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