I had this happen to me once in Kansas - it wasn’t cannabis, but it was a closed loop, potentially explosive process that required certification. I tried to fight them with specifics about design in IMC and IFC. I tried to fight them by showing them existing equipment in their city which had already been approved. Nothing appeared to work. In the end - I brought TUV (because they were available and a licensed NRTL) out, they did all the tests as prescribed and boom, certified and labeled the entire suite, all the equipment in the suite (which mostly was already labeled), and then I was able to actually hook everything up to utilities and my customer could start processing. Specifically, the generation of various azides which have seriously low ignition energy requirements and also just like to blow up whenever they get squirrely for no reason.
The time I lost trying to fight pushed me over my timeline and cost me stupid amounts of construction and engineering dollars. I don’t like being over budget and timeline. If I could do it over again, I would not fight, instead I would just call the NRTL and get them out here to certify what my team had designed.
Plus if you designed the booth yourself - then you can sell that same certified design to others as long as you do the FAT stuff that is defined.
Sure hope that you can get this through - I heard similar things to @moveweight about not going to OKC for many different reasons.
Here’s the sections I tried to use:
IFC 911.1 - Specifically design the enclosure to be surrounded by a barricade as defined here. Treated the enclosure and the equipment within the closure not as a standalone room, but as a modular attachment to the building. Showed that all surrounding surfaces met the requirements specific for walls, roofs, etc. We were not venting the potential explosion way, but instead had designed the building around it to contain the explosion. You’ll have to decide if its flammable gasses or potential for explosion, or both that you must contain here. But once you show that you have done so - then your building would meet the IFC and NFPA. The key here being that it is not “an enclosure” but it is instead an extension of the building. Probably they won’t let you, but you are fighting instead of bringing in NRTL or buying from someone else that has listed with NRTL.
I also tried to get them on “design of equipment” - that the equipment itself had all intrinsically safe components and that the reactor was explosion proof even if something failed. The equipment came from Germany so it was ATEX rated - and it was actually rated for almost 3 times the size of the explosion because the original design was for a different type of chemical reaction and ours was less explosive.
Amazingly enough - the UL guide that HAL has there stuff under, points to some of the same sections of the code that I ended up having to use when we brought out TUV. Including changing some of the electrical wiring and enhancing the barricade, instead of using the venting. I’m sure you saw that guide with all its references to different codes.
Please keep us up on how you get through this process. I’ve had two projects where it was actually cheaper to move the whole operation to a different place than it would have been to jump through the hoops of the local inspector. I sure hope that’s not what happens with your project.
