Lamps and liability

[John Torchick]

Our Lions club has drawings for door prizes each meeting to raise additional $$$. I would like to use my woodworking and turning skills, which are basic, to donate as prizes. If I make a lamp with the base of either turned wood or a glued/nailed base and use a lamp kit from Lowe's, does anyone have any idea of the liability or where I go to find out????? Thanks in advance.

 

[Richard Findley]

Hi John

I'm based in the UK, so things may be a little different. The whole electrical applicance thing is a bit of a minefield that I had always avoided until about a year or so ago when I was approached to make some. Then I made it my business to find out!

Over here, anything that is electrical and can be unplugged and moved (that includeds everything from lamps to routers, fridges and microwaves etc) falls under the heading of 'Portable Appliance'. There are laws that apply to these portable applicances, such as not having leads longer than 3m, being stable, being able to resist pull on the cable etc. You don't have to be an electrician to wire a lamp, the law says it must be done by someone who is 'capable', which is suitably vague.

I am fortunate that my workshop is on a small industrial estate and 3 doors down is a firm of electricians. I decided I would stick to what I know - woodturning - and let those guys do what they know - electrical stuff - so now I make the lamps and take them round to them. They wire them and test them with a very expensive looking gizmo (known as a portable appliance tester) and then bring it back to me with a certificate saying it passed the test and was wired by a professional person. This way I haven't done the wiring, so can't be liable. I supply my lamps with this certificate and an instruction leaflet.

My electrician said that basically, as a maker, you are legally obliged to make items that are safe. You are unlikely to get in any trouble unless you supply a lamp that is unsafe (and burns someones house down), in which case you are in quite deep brown smelly stuff!

My suggestion is to call in to a local electrians and have a chat. They will probably be able to supply you with the electrical parts at competetive prices too.

Hope this helps

Richard

 

[john lucas]

I don't worry about it. I've probably made 50 lamps over the years. Most were either given away or donated to a charity for an auction. If you wire it according to UL code there really should not be a problem I go through the same thing with candlesticks. I don't worry about it. I mean look how many candlesticks Rude Osolnik made. Never heard of a single law suit

 

[Hu Lowery]

from what little I know

Our Lions club has drawings for door prizes each meeting to raise additional $$$. I would like to use my woodworking and turning skills, which are basic, to donate as prizes. If I make a lamp with the base of either turned wood or a glued/nailed base and use a lamp kit from Lowe's, does anyone have any idea of the liability or where I go to find out????? Thanks in advance.

John,

Pretty safe in terms of lawsuits and liability as others have pointed out. Generally, you use a kit, the kit maker is the one that has the liability to be safe. This goes out the window if the kit has not been installed according to instructions or it has been modified in an unsafe manner. If it is necessary to install it differently than instructions have called for you enter a gray area, If it has been modified and that modification is deemed the cause of failure you are toast!

A bit different over here and I think your chances of getting a local shop to certify your lamps as safe are near zero. I believe that there is little risk to building lamps from kits. One thing to be sure of is that there is a tie down of the wire from the wall so strain on the wire can not pull directly on wiring connections inside the lamp.

I would have little fear of legal issues building lamps but I would also say if you aren't comfortable doing it, don't. Lawsuits you win can cost hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands easily, and often you can not get this money back if you win.

Hu

 

[John Torchick]

Thanks for the info, both here and abroad. I'm a bit skeptical about building them. Yes, there has to be a strain relief to keep the cord from being pulled free. However......if I buy the lamp kit at Lowe's and use it to rebuild my lamp, I think it would be the kit manufacturer's liability, unless modified. We have a lamp shop in town. I just might turn the bodies and bases and let him carry the ball from there. Also, I'll ask him about liability. Good turning!

 

[john lucas]

John the Lamp shop where I bought most of my odd lamp parts bought a few lamps from me and I donated one to them for a charity auction. There never even asked about and liability or whether I had assembled it to some sort of code.

 

[John Torchick]

John Lucas, thanks for the info.

 

[nicksilva]

this is america where anyone can sue anyone else for anything.
So, don't lose any sleep over it.

 

[Bill Boehme]

Study how well made lamps are built. Go to The Lamp Shop website to learn about lamp making and buy materials. They sell wiring kits, rods, pipes, sockets, harps, shades, finials, books, etc. Use the correct type of wiring, plastic bushings and strain reliefs and other best practices to eliminate shock and fire hazards. Here is a link to an animation showing how to tie an Underwriter's Knot where the wires come out of the lamp rod beneath the socket. Strip the wires about a half inch using a wire stripping tool similar to this that also is able to crimp terminals. Twist the strands clockwise to keep them from splaying out when they are wrapped clockwise around the socket screws. Alternatively you can get crimp terminals that often make a cleaner installation.

 

[Geoff Whaling]

It all gets back to - can you sleep at night or will you worry about your potential liability. Laws are similar but can be very different across jurisdictions.

My understanding in Australia is that only licensed electricians or holders of certain classes of electrical tickets can lawfully wire 240v portable appliances etc. Our consumer safety and electrical legislation require that 240v appliances meet minimum codes and that items are certified as "electrically safe" before sale, even second hand items. It is the sellers responsibility to ensure they are electrically safe or to advise the purchaser that they have not been tested.

For low volume manufacturers here in Oz the only sure way to protect yourself would be to have a licensed electrician wire, then test & tag an item or to personally obtain a "restricted electrical work licence."

 

[Lloyd Butler]

Our club has been working on getting insurance coverage under it's group policy for members who sell items. One of the items the insurance company had issue with was making lamps. It is interesting in that they did not mention candle holders which you would think could potentially have many more issues.

Lloyd

 

[Bill Boehme]

I have too many horror stories of things that I have witnessed firsthand regarding electrical wiring that I would have to agree with Geoff about having a qualified licensed person do the electrical part of making a lamp. The problem would be finding such a qualified person who would put his neck on the line for you. Unfortunately, here in the USA things like this seem to fly under the radar when it comes to any sort of assurance about the qualifications and workmanship of the person making the product. Lloyd, I can certainly understand the position of the insurance company. Why would they risk insuring the work of somebody of unknown qualification when the stake are so high.

 

[John Torchick]

Very familiar with wiring- worked in R&D for two appliance manufacturers. Plus, worked in Lowe's electrical and lighting department. I have seen inconsistencies in codes or lack of codes. Louisiana allowed the ground and common wires to be put on the same bar in the panel box! Here in TN, they put outlets in upside down! I've decided not to make an entire lamp but approach our local lamp shop about supplying him with turnings. I can make a couple of samples for show & tell. Now, how to price them? Thanks to all.

 

[Bill Boehme]

... Louisiana allowed the ground and common wires to be put on the same bar in the panel box!...

The neutral and safety ground must be tied together in the service entrance panel. They must be kept separate in feeder panels. The reason for this rule in the National Electrical Code is to prevent ground loops and to prevent the safety ground from becoming a current carrying conductor.

 

[Robert Elliott]

Turn your fears into $

Back in the late 70's I was into making lamps. Both turned and flat-wood. I did my wiring (I was a licensed electrician) and sold, maybe a dozen a month. Then one day I took one to my Lions Club meeting to add to a charity auction that the club was arranging for one of the many charities we supported. A fellow Lion commented that his neighbor owned a lighting shop.

A few days later I joined my Lion frend and his neighbor for lunch. The Magic happen, I no longer made lamps to sell at craft fairs, I struck up a deal where I made the wood components and assembled the lights and sold them to his clientele for more than I expected. Within six months I was working with decorators making custom turned and flat-wood children's room lamps.

He knew the marketing and I did the custom work. He had his electrical department do all the wiring and installation. What I learned from him was a life lesson in marketing. I went from a craft turner to having a studio. Nothing changed on my side except I made triple the money but I still worked in my garage.

Moral: let someone else do the wiring and could also be a hidden source of sales. Offer them some turned samples to display and suggest that they could make money together.

 

[John Torchick]

Bill B., that is not how I was taught. I understand what you are saying but then why do we have two separate bars in a panel box? Black to the breaker, white to the common bar, green or bare ground to the ground bar. I also worked for two appliance manufacturers in R&D- the white and ground were separated on the terminal block- black, white, red, ground on separate locations in the terminal block. If we were working on a new project, it was possible to put the common and ground on the same terminal while testing and developing but UL wouldn't accept that for certification.

 

[Mark Hepburn]

The neutral and safety ground must be tied together in the service entrance panel. They must be kept separate in feeder panels. The reason for this rule in the National Electrical Code is to prevent ground loops and to prevent the safety ground from becoming a current carrying conductor.

Hey Bill,

If I read your post correctly, then Louisiana government is doing something correctly and on a rational basis? Hard to believe

 

[Bill Boehme]

Bill B., that is not how I was taught. I understand what you are saying but then why do we have two separate bars in a panel box? Black to the breaker, white to the common bar, green or bare ground to the ground bar. I also worked for two appliance manufacturers in R&D- the white and ground were separated on the terminal block- black, white, red, ground on separate locations in the terminal block. If we were working on a new project, it was possible to put the common and ground on the same terminal while testing and developing but UL wouldn't accept that for certification.

It would be good wiring practice to connect the bare.green ground wires to one bus and the white wires to the other just to keep things well organized, but the service entrance panel is the one and only place in the building where both are electrically bonded together. Having some good wiring practices like using separate buses keeps you from careless mistakes such as connecting neutral wire to the ground bus or ground wire to the neutral bus on a feeder panel. Tying them together at any other point outside of the service entrance panel leads to currents flowing in the ground wires which puts ground at different potentials throughout the installation. This obviously not good because it would be possible to get a shock in wet areas even from just a few volts. It is also possible to be electrocuted from a voltage as low as 28 volts although that much voltage wouldn't be likely unless there were other problems in addition to improper separation of ground and neutral. Another guaranteed result of tying ground and neutral together at locations outside of the service entrance would be nuisance tripping of ground fault breakers.