I live in Massachusetts and I'm having my unfinished attic turned into living space; I failed the initial rough inspection for a variety of reasons. One of the things the inspector told me is that the NM cable that runs into the nonmetallic boxes needs to be stripped back to no more than 1/8" extending into the box. I am certain he said this, and more than once.
This seemed really odd to me and when I had a licensed electrician come in and make all the fixes that needed to be made, he left at least an inch of sheathing in each box. When I questioned him on it and told him what the inspector said, he pointed to NEC 314.17-C, which states that there should be a minimum of 1/4" sheathing in the box, which makes a lot more sense to me.
The inspector is coming back today for a re-inspection and I'm wondering if this is going to be an issue. Has anyone ever heard this, or do you think I must have misheard him? Or was he referring to some other 1/8" requirement related to wiring up nonmetallic boxes and I misunderstood? I know he said it, so it's possible he just misspoke (and I'm hoping that's the case).
Best Answer
In my state the inspector Shall cite the code to write a violation. Your electrician is correct there needs to be at least 1/4" of sheath left on the cable. This is to protect the wires from the sharp edges on the knock out type boxes and from the clamps on that style. My experience is inspectors don't like DIY home owners and pull all kinds of B.S. I recently moved to a diferent county and pulled some permits as a home owner, after the 3rd BS violation told him he needed to show me the code sections for each violation because the wiring was done by an electrician. He thought he was going to catch someone doing work on the side until I gave him my license number from memory let's just say he got very red in the face and after showing him my license he barely looked at the finish inspecton except for verifying the GFCI outlets functioned correctly.