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Discovered additional product (firewall?) behind drywall. How to handle?

exactly

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 23, 2020
Messages
71
Location
Minnesota
I am getting ready to run a 6/3 feeder wire from my basement main panel, 20' across the ceiling, up through the subfloor and the sill plate sitting on top of the joists, and up into the garage wall, but I hit a snag. As it turns out, there is another board product behind the drywall along the one and a half walls shared with the house, presumably as an additional protection against fire. How do I deal with this? More specifically:


  1. How can I feed wire for outlets down the back garage wall (shared with house and thus has drywall + additional board) when the attic also has the board product on the attic side of the 2x4s?
  2. Once I get wires down into the wall, do I just cut holes in the drywall and additional board product where I will be placing outlets, much the same as if I were installing outlets in a common, drywall-only wall? Note this particular wall has only one outlet in it, which was installed in 1984 when the house was built.
  3. I am intending on the subpanel going in or on a 'bump in' on the partially-shared wall, which is from an interior front entry closet. First, should the subpanel be surface mounted? Or can it still go in the wall? Again, the other side of the wall is the inside of the front entryway closet.
  4. Clearance around a panel does not pertain to cars parked in the garage, right? For example, if the panel will be a foot or two from the front left side of the vehicle, the vehicle surely does not count as an obstruction, does it?
 
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Kaizen

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Jan 9, 2015
Messages
6,949
Location
New England
Check on local code to see if you can cut into that.
Or just run everything on the surface with emt. Panel can be surface mounted as well.


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Zeke

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Joined
Aug 13, 2009
Messages
17,176
Location
Long Beach CA, the sewer by the sea.
You are allowed so many penetrations in a fire wall and no 2 opposing should be in the same stud bay (24" min distance between, but you can distance them vertically with additional fire blocking). I'm not a code librarian if someone wants to cite that code. Some of this is in the UL code. It's wordy.

Metal boxes only attached to framing members, no larger than 16 sq in ea, and no more penetrations over 100 sq in total allowed in 100 sq feet of fire barrier.

And definitely no to the panel penetrating any fire wall.
 
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