foreign folks Paul Abernathy here welcome to another episode here of coffee hour with Paul and we're going to do just a little bit of exam prep today we're gonna kind of look at some questions kind of talk about how you dissect the question give you some tips on how I might read a question especially if I'm in the stress of an exam we don't have access to the index electronically to share on the screen but of course you all should have your code book and here's the index and the index is not the Holy Grail but it can bail you out when you're having some trouble um so you want to make sure you get very fluent okay in using the index and of course we'll talk about that now a couple things I want to mention before we get into a couple questions today on this really quick lesson for you um we want to make sure that you understand that when you get access to a set of questions um whether it's 25 questions whether it's uh you know 100 questions 50 questions it doesn't really matter you need to take those questions and really beat them to death in other words I mean you look at a question you need to dissect every piece of that question you need to use the index you need to go back and forth you need to look at keywords and say well maybe I could have found the answer under that keyword or maybe I could have found it in that keyword and then you're going to go to the index and you're going to come back and you're going to go back and come back now the misconception that people have and I've have over 32 years of teaching how to maneuver and understand the NEC and I've tried to keep it as simple as possible in order to learn you have to train the brain and you'll learn what's in the index and what is not in the index but you'll learn how it's second nature to go to the index it's again not the Holy Grail but it can help you out of a real bind if you understand how it works every question on an exam should have some point of it that will get you somewhere and it's not going to be exact but something in it should lend you to knowing where you might go into the index or you just have to use what we call Trade knowledge now of course there's scanning techniques we call bold scanning and we'll kind of show you that and there's deductive reasoning it's removing the obvious and then increasing your odds and of course there's another video I have out called the three wave method it kind of shows you the right way that you need to tackle an electrical exam but if anybody ever tells you that if you get a set of questions if they tell you that you have to try to time yourself when you first sit down with these questions if they tell you you have to time yourself so that you do them in under two minutes um don't listen to that educator uh they're they're setting you up for failure now if you've been studying if you're in a structured program like our fast tracks program which gives you extensive training on the NEC then that's fine you can use exam questions to test your skill right there in the last two weeks or so before your exam to really start honing those last minute skills and give you that confidence but up until that point you do not want to take a question for uh uh Advantage you don't want to take it and and this not use it for its full value I guess what I should say and so we're going to show you how you would do that and you need to do that with every question and it might get frustrating at first you might say well I feel like I'm spending too much time on a question that's okay because you're learning how to look at a question and start focusing on a question and the number one thing that people have trouble with is reading comprehension so if you can fix that reading comprehension the ability to look at a question to read it understand that there are triggers in there and even the answers may be relevant triggers we'll see that probably on a couple questions today and it's okay if it takes you a long time that's all right you're still learning so let's jump on into a couple questions I gave you a little bit of a pep talk there but let's go and jump into some and see what we got okay first question we're going to look at here today it says a metal underground water pipe may serve as a grounding electrode where it is in direct contact with the Earth at least blank feet or more okay now remember you may know the answer right off the top of your head and if you were doing my three wave method then you're going to answer that question and you're going to move on okay that's fine because in that first wave you're going to answer what you know you're going to Mark electronically ones that you take a minute or so that you can't find just Market electronically and go on to the next one do not get bogged down on a question you will have time if you follow that process you only have time to spend a little more time with that question and you might find that you find the answer why you're looking up other questions throughout your exam so that's what we want to focus on so let's look at this real quick so a couple things that stick out to me here is we're talking about a metal underground water pipe electrode okay that's a grounding electrode and it tells us right here grounding electrode and it's asking about what does it take for a metal underground water pipe to be a grounding electrode so one of the things you can do if you had no idea well I'm sure you all know okay that this is in going to be in article 250 but that's not good enough for us we need to Dig Down Deeper and say okay metal underground water pipe grounding electrodes okay those are key triggers that we want to use for the index so you want to pause this video that's fine you can go to the index I'm going to let it roll and I'm going to go to the index as well I have an index right here I do not have an electronic one because NFPA does not make the index available that's because it has a search feature but that doesn't do much for us Educators who like to use the electronic version okay so we need to use the index so the first thing I'm going to say here's how we dissect you ready now this is a simple one to dissect but um I want to use it because it kind of illustrates what we're talking about so the first thing that will dissect is metal underground water pipe sounds that is exactly a type of electrode so we're going to go back to the index and we're going to see if there's anything under metal underground water pipe so I'm going to go back in here and see if there is anything in here that might have to do with a metal underground water pipe now it may or may not be in here but that's the whole point of why we're doing it all right so we're going to look here and say is there anything it looks like metal underground water pipe okay I don't see anything that says that and you're saying Paul I knew that wouldn't be back there but that's okay now you always will know that if you get a question about Metal underground water pipe you know later you're going to know exactly what section to go to in the NEC because you'll just get better I promise you you'll get better and if you're a fast track student I know you've gotten better so in this case the metal underground water pipe didn't help us in the index so the next we would look at and say okay well what about Browning electrodes okay so I'm going to go into the index and you need to do it too I encourage people when they're studying with me in these episodes that you have your code book in front of you and you can pause the video or you can just do it along with me and see if you beat me to it all right so I'm going to go into grounding see if there's anything under G for grounding electrodes any index and so I'm down here in it and I'm going to look and see if there's anything under grounding electrodes and you do it too so let's see here I have grounding conductors I have a grounding Electro conductors I have grounding electrodes which says to see electrodes Okay so we've learned that our electrodes and some may be specific have references in here but we're learning that we needed to when we're thinking about grounding electrodes we need to go to where we need to go to electrodes so we're going to go to electrodes that's in E let's go on and go there uh you know now granted if you already have some knowledge of the Articles and the sections uh I know I serve on code panel five I know exactly where to go that doesn't help you if you're new to this and you need to learn the skills of dissecting a question remember when you're starting out it's not about the time it's about being able to learn the index learn what may or may not be in there and we've already learned some key things here that metal underground water pipe isn't in the back and then grounding electrodes is not in there it sends you to electrodes so we're going to go look under electrodes see what we see and I see electrodes and under electrodes I notice that it's going to sit different ones and I see metal water piping all right and I'm looking under it now here's this is interesting okay so if you're used to this and you're looking following along with me you look in there and you see there's a DOT 30 under metal water piping and then you see there's also Dot 52. so you'll get better trust me you'll learn that the dot 30s is talking about separately derived systems and things like that in the dot 52s or the dot 52 is under grounding electrodes right it just takes you time but you will because what you're going to do is you're going to dissect this here it says metal water pipe so you would have gone to 250.30 and looked at it you would have said okay I get it that's separately giraffe system then you would have gone to 250.52 and you were gone you were gone hey that's grounding electrode types different ones different list of ones and A1 happens to be the water pipe type grounding electrode so that's how you would do it now we don't stop there those are just two and that's how it would have got us there we look to see if there's anything else that would have would have helped us in here um maybe uh under you know what else might be in the back so I see it's about the best we can do with that I see I got electrodes I don't see anything else in there that would would help us so I think those are probably the best two we're gonna we're gonna go to okay so in our case we would go to the code and I wanted to show you if you had gone to those two where you would be so the dot 30 let's go to there just to show you and once you show you you will forever understand so we'll go to 250.30 and so if my question in 250.30 had been about separately Drive systems then I now know the difference right so 250.30 here it says separately derived systems alternating current so if I'm dealing with simply drive system Transformers things like that then I know now when I'm talking about a water pipe ground and I see the dot 30 in 250 I know that that's simply derived systems and it could be for Transformers and things like key here is now you know and it makes it easier and you'll forever remember okay I get a question I'm stressed out if it's separately dry system it's talking about a separately drive system and it's asking me about the grounding system okay then I know for those I know that it's not 30. now let's go on to the the dot 52 A1 and you'll see the difference sorry for my scrolling if some reason link is not working with the little drops underneath it I don't know what's work what's what's going on with it today but uh that's okay we'll get there all right so here is 52. and this is the grounding electrodes okay and here's a one and that's what it was in your index A1 250.52 A1 and here's your order five now when we say additional triggers once you get their bold scanning would be if we were if we hadn't gotten here and we're looking for metal underground water pipe we would have scanned it scanned it and we would have seen metal underground water pipe and then the next we would use the answers and we know it's got to be an 8 a 6 a 12 or 10 and really quickly looking through here we see 10. okay so that would tell us trigger 10 so we go back to the question and we answer 10. and there we go all right remember this technique is if you want to do time and somebody tells you to do time that's great do that in the last two three weeks before you're ready to take your exam until then relax dissect the question look up all the possible ways beat that question to death that's the best way to learn I've been giving this advice for over 30 years helped thousands and thousands of people pass their exams and learn the NEC this is how you do it you dissect it we've learned some critical things about the index while we did that little exercise okay so let's go on to the to the next one okay so this one it says when calculating the demand load for a one family dwelling what total minimum volt amperes must be included in the calculation for the required small appliance in laundry circuit loads okay so again typical question it comes on exams wanting to make sure that you understand and by the way this wouldn't matter if it was a single family dwelling two individual dwellings of a two family dwelling or if it was the individual dwelling units of a multi-family dwelling okay same concept and it also doesn't matter whether it's an optional or the standard the same VA values are going to be utilized for both so this is something you just ingrain in your head but we're talking about a calculation right so we're in the code talks about calculations you got it article 220. that's our calculations article gives you everything for branch feeders and services that you would need for standard method optional method everything in there things to commit to memory calcs now if your question is about the branch circuits itself for these small appliance and laundry then that would be 210 right because that's Branch circuits they didn't mention anything in here about the branch circuits so the most important takeaway from me here right is that it wanted to calculate the demand load okay there's a load involved in this so it wants you to know that so when I see that load and it was no mention about a branch circuit or anything like that then I know that we're going to be looking at 220. right now you can go to the index and Shuffle around for it small appliance maybe that's the dissect it and use small appliance branch circuit and look in the back maybe you look for laundry circuit in the back but me I know that this is in 220. and I also noted it's kind of fairly close to the front of 220 right so we're going to kind of go look at that so let's go on and go into 220. so I've got my code book here and I'll go into it there's 220. all right so interesting thing about this pictograph here this this infogram here that you see um you'll notice that the general is General Provisions it's in part one brand circuit load so brand circuit load calculations right right here right here and our question is asking about the calculate the demand load for a one family dwelling so we're not asking about the brand circuit we're asking about the one family dwelling right so key things to remember here is that unless they stayed optional you're going to always use the standard of course in this case the VA values are not going to matter but you should always remember that that they're going to they have to give you the information but it's always considered the standard unless they State otherwise to use an optional method so standard being the the general way to do it in part three and then the optional is in part four okay so let's go on so at this point we can go on because we're looking specifically for what we're looking for small appliance and we're looking for laundry so we can go to part three of this so I've gone in and jump us down here and get us to part three because we're doing a load calc if I can let's see here get me back to the beginning of it bear with me okay so first of all let's stop it too so here's our branch right there okay and you'll get all the individual things that you need right first for doing the load calculation and everything right here right and office Hotel dwelling units you'll get everything here okay and then you get to part three all right so part three you'll see all your general requirements and you're kind of bold scan you'll get down and boom you'll see small appliance and laundry loads for dwelling unit right that's bold scanning we went there to the beginning and we knew it was in part three because it's a standard method it's asking for the demand for one family dwelling but it only wants the values for the small appliance and laundry now some people ask me well what about the 3va per square foot that's not what it asked and it didn't give me the square footage so there's no way I could ever calculate that so don't let that creep into your head that's irrelevant to the way the question always answer just the question that's it don't try to put reasoning into it in logic just just answer the questions so in this case here we see what it says it says he's dwelling in it okay for the small appliance says each dwelling unit the load shall be calculated 1500 VA for each two hour small appliance brand circuit covered in 210.11 C1 of course if you know 210.11c1 that's the one that requires a minimum of two right that's in brand circuit tells you the number you got minimum of two because you have more than two absolutely but have to have a minimum of two and it tells me that they are what 1500 1500 VA each so we have to have a minimum of two so that's 150 that's 3 000 right there just for the two 1500 small appliance brand circuits okay and then you go down here remember it said for laundry here's the laundry the laundry says a load of not less than 1500 VA shall be included for each two-wire laundry brand circuit and remember if you install more than two that's 1500 each same with the small appliance two minimum if you put three in it's 1500 times three remember that now so in this case it's just the bare minimum so we had 1500 since they're all 1500 we can just do 1500 times three and that's forty five hundred okay so let's come back to the question here we're at the question and let's go on click that and there you go that's correct and there's the Math logic right there two small appliances 1500 each that's three thousand and then you have the one laundry fifteen hundred okay so 4 500 total and that was our answer all that question did folks was ask me what are my minimum what is the demand load that I have to contribute for the um the uh two the small appliance in the laundry loads well we don't have enough information to do anything other than pull the VA value specifically directly from uh the NEC and that's it there's nothing we can apply we can't apply any real demands we can't do any of that because we don't have all the variables all we're doing is answering the question and that's all you need to do for that okay so that answer there is 4 500. okay you're doing great all right the next question is underwater Luminaires installed in swimming pools are required to have GFCI protection if they operate at a voltage greater than blank okay so you have greater than the the low voltage contact limit 50 volts 120 volts or 15 volts so the question here is talking about GFCI right and it's talking about underwater Luminaires right those are triggers and it's obviously swimming pools so swimming pools are going to tell me that this is going to be in what article that's right it's going to be in 680. but where in 680 well obviously the trigger here is for underwater Luminaires that are installed in swimming pools and then it's dealing with the GFCI protection so we could use our index and let's say we can look up what remember we're dissecting it's not about speed you might already know the answer to this one but you need to get used to the index you need to get familiar with it so let's say I'm going to use the first thing I'm going to do is underwater Luminaires so I'm going to go to my index and I'm going to go and see if there's anything under underwater Luminaires and this is what we mean by dissecting out the question okay if you don't think this works uh then you obviously uh have never taught code or understand the learning train that people have to go through in order to lock something long term and remember that's why going to these weekend crash courses just don't work they work for a brief moment then you forget everything you're not banging it into the head you're not locking it in there so it becomes repetitious okay the ballistic approach to learning the national electrical code takes a little time up front but it pays dividends in the end so let's see here so we're looking for underwater Luminaires so I'm going to go down here and look and see if I see anything for underwater Luminaires you may or may not see something I see under ground I see underground wiring okay so I don't see anything that says uh underwater Luminaires okay now we're not done because we could look up Luminaires while we're here uh instead of going to the obvious swimming pool but we're just kind of looking so you're not going to find anything about underwater Luminaire so if you're on an exam and they start asking you questions about underwater Luminaires wet niches things like that going to underwater Lumineers is not going to help you so you've learned that it trusts me it does help reduce the stress in an exam you kind of know what's there and how the word the questions so next let's go look at Luminaire just to look and see what we have so I'm over here and I'm looking at Luminaires and I'm going to go down and see if I see anything that says underwater so I'm going to look down and I see swimming pools okay that's important and then I don't see I see wet niche which is the housing frame that is actually underwater for underwater Luminaire so I see kind of a pattern of where I need to be inside of 680. in fact Swimming Pool Spas and similar installations you see there's there's quite a few in here uh but they seem to range from dot 22 up 2.26 anything higher than that's probably going to be for things like Spas hot tubs and all that kind of other stuff and right here we're talking about underwater Luminaires so we're going to kind of stick with this logic we're at okay so I see it now you also get down you see wet Niche and you have to know what a wet Niche is you have wet Niche dry Niche and no Niche types of Luminaires but you'll notice that the wet Niche is also dot 23. so it's right around that dot 23 is where we're gonna we would do our bold scanning type of thing but we're not done we're not done so let's see where else we might look here let's see here um next thing we might bold scan out is is uh swimming pools so let's go to swimming pools and again you might have already gone to 680 you might have already started and you might have already found the answer okay but we're going to be dissecting it and you need to do it too so let's see here let's go down and I'm going under swimming pools all right here's swimming pools mountains and whatnot and I'm gonna go down and here is Luminaires all right and it says 680.24 oh excuse me it's under that one 680.22b 680.23 okay so it's all right there 22 and 23. okay um and I'm looking and see if while I'm here you're looking to see if there's anything else that would be beneficial and you see illuminaires it's still dot 22 still.23 so no we're still in the same ballpark okay all the way at the end you see underwater Luminaires Dot 23.26.33 and Dot 43. okay so all you need to remember is when you're in an exam you get scratch paper one of the techniques that I used when I was doing exams is that I know that I'm in 680 but all I'll do is I'll write down DOT 22.23 just like that oh you can't see it but I'd write that down on my scratch paper so that I remember where I'm at and so then I'm done at that point I know that I need to be so I'm going to go to dot 22 and I'm going to start bold scanning and I'm going to look for the reference to GFCI I'm going to look for the reference to the voltage uh all that type of stuff are triggers for me so get your code book and I'm going to go with us we're going to go over to the code book and we're going to go to 680.20 22. so we're right here and let's see here go to 680.22 and scroll down be careful when you're going there you want to be right now so okay so here we go 680.22. all right all right so the question is about gfcis very specific so here I am and I'm looking and here it's talking about receptacles all right so obviously that GFCI is for receptacles here's the Luminaires all right GFCI protection okay all this right here now again this is distances and things like that I'm looking for voltage okay so voltage listed low volts are not required grounding not exceeding logo just kind of attack limit okay all that type of information so I'm kind of just looking looking down now 23. that is underwater Luminaires very specific to what we were looking for right so now my trigger is the voltage GFCI protection ground fault interrupted protection for personnel shall be installed in the brand circuits applying Luminaires operating at voltages greater than the low voltage contact limit okay now it also says no Luminaires shall be installed for operating on Supply circuits over 150 volts between conductors so which one did our question ask us about well personally there's no 150 in there so that didn't matter but we know that it says greater than the low voltage contact limit so that was our answer and we found that as we dissected the question out so we'll just click here and get our answer there it is right there 680.23a3 the other neat thing about our fast tracks program and we buy these questions um we don't write these we buy this package to make them available to you there's over 800 of them plus there's another 500 or so that are in our competency reviews so those are only available to people that are in our course um that type of thing so so here that's the answer and the neat thing here is 2017 and 22 2020 excuse me both of those have the same code reference so there was no change for that one all right I think you're doing great where you're learning how to dissect it breaking it down piece by piece using the index and you're learning what is and what is not in the index and you're getting your money's worth for each question okay all right next question and the last one for this episode here it says any one cord and plug connected portable Appliance connected to 120 volt 20 amp rated branch circuit shall have a maximum rating of blank amperes so any one cord and plug connected portable Appliance okay anyone okay any one Cordon plug connected portable Appliance connected to a 120 volt 20 amp year rated brand circuit shall have a maximum rating of blank amps where would we find that okay so a couple things that we want to look at here um again this is talking about what a branch circuit so that's going to send me a trigger that okay sounds like a brand circuit and I'm plugging this Cordon plug connected Appliance into this branch circuit okay makes sense and so I need to be looking in brand circuits now how do I dissect this one other than you know to go to what article 210 because you've done your flash cards you've gotten from familiar with doing that you've probably gotten really good at it but we'll go to the index again and just look because again we're going to get our money's worth out of a question first thing I want to do is I'm going to go look at Branch circuits and see what it says and it might say something like the maximum rating or something like that that have triggered that so let's go look at Branch circuits you'll see that there's almost two and a half Columns of Branch circuits so I'm going to look at it and go down here and just kind of give it a quick skim down see if there's anything in here that would help us okay now you'll notice you see maximum loads 220.18 okay so it's kind of asking us this is maximum rating okay and the rating is whatever the over current device is rated at so again it's talking about okay to have a maximum rating of cord plug so okay that looks like that is something that's that's going to be beneficial to me so I'm going to mark that down I'm going to finish it out and you also see something so that Max loads is 220.18 and you also see something called permissible loads 210.22 and 210.23 so on your paper you're going to have written that you're going to write dot 18 and you're going to do what is it dot 22 and Dot 23 right you're going to write it down that way you you're in here and you've got it right and then you're going to go through with it okay so basically that's it so what I'm going to do is in the code I'm going to go over and I'm going to start my journey at Dot 18. now you might know the answer to this you select it and you move on but if you don't then you need to dissect it okay so we're going to go to Kobo and we'll go back into the code and we'll just go back over here to 210 like I said it's not really letting me look at the different things here so I have to do them manually and there we go all right and let's see here so I'm gonna go to dot 18 first and read what that says and remembering we're bold scanning along the way as we get to when we get to about 18. okay branch circuit ratings here we go okay all right so we're looking at here in the question just so we can kind of regather the question again real quick it says any one chord and plug connected portable Appliance connected to 120 volt 20 ampere rated brand circuit it's out of the maximum rating of blank amperes okay all right just so we got it maximum rating all right so in the 18 it says brand circuits recognize an article child have a rating in accordance with the maximum permitted Ampere rating or setting of The over current device okay so the rating of the over current uh the rating other than individual Shelby 15 20 30 40 and 50. any that type of thing so it looks like we're gonna pick 20 because that's the rating of the brand circuit and according plug connected can't exceed that but we're not stopping there because we saw permissible loads okay so this is talking about the maximum rating but we're gonna finish this out unless you're just ready to to click it and move on but we want to go look real quick and we're just going to jump 2.22 okay permissible loads it says an individual brand circuit now this didn't say anything about an individual brand Circuit by the way but it said the individual brand circuit should be permitted to supply any load for which it is rated but in okay shut the load exceed the branch circuit and pure rating okay it sounds sounds good to me so far okay what do you see here 15 and 20 amp circuit this was a 20 amp circuit remember we said reason for writing these things down right here cord and plug connected equipment not fastened in place all right so this says any one Cordon plug portable okay so it's obviously not fastened in place said it's portable it says the rating of any one cord plug connected utilization equipment not fastened in place shall not exceed 80 percent of the brand circuits rated amperes okay so we are ready to click this 20. but reading that I'm going to do 20 times 80 percent and that is 16. so I'm going to choose 16. whoops got to bring it back to me so you can see what we're doing here okay so we originally clicked 20 because we're thinking okay it says that the brand circuit rating and that's true 20 amp you can put 20 amps on it but if you have a cord plug connected portable Appliance and you're plugging it into a 20 amp we just read what that said and it basically said in 210.23 A1 that for anyone that you got to limit it to 80 percent of that so that 20 times 80 is actually 16. so let's see if we're right there you go 20 times 80 now why was this a trigger this one well because it said cord and plug connected portable so that tells me it's not fixed in place that's not to confuse with any branch circuit typically in a house if it's 15 amps I can put 15 amps on it if it's 28 I can put 20 amps on it but since this is a cord plug connected portable Appliance that's going to be plugged into that then we have this this threshold we have to follow and it's not to exceed 80 percent and that's what we got in 210.23 A1 so you kind of got to go through that logic train and we kind of did that that's why we had the 18 the 22 and the 23 because we had to make sure that we're we're already there once we went in the index you might as well write them all down uh in that area that might be beneficial to you and then you want to remember how important it is to bold scan we want to use what's in the question to help us get where we need to get okay hopefully that's helped you out made it a little easier for you foreign s are not not easy they're not designed to be easy they're the Gateway right they're the gateway to get you pass from one level to the next and we want to help you do that if you find that you struggle with questions you struggle with understanding and dissecting um and you need that little extra effort then think about our fast tracks program and I can tell you right now there is no better program on the market for the money you get access to me on Wednesday nights you get all these questions you get the access to the Sparky Hub to post your questions um you got the Wednesday night where you can come and join us and ask your questions I'm always there to help you anytime you might have any trouble in the program and I can tell you we put a lot into this program every competency review you do and these aren't the companies competency reviews aren't these they're not multiple choice you have to actually fill them out it's a struggle but it's supposed to be that way it's going to make you better we cover calculations the general info Nation we cover one two family multi-family other than dwellings we really get into the weeds and it's tough but people come out of that successful so hopefully you'll check it out again the addresses was right there fasttracksystem.com we have a demo watch our demo and you can see what's in the program and see if it's beneficial to you I'm always here to answer any questions just go to our website fasttracksystem.com more than happy to answer those questions for you all right folks hopefully you got something out of a quick lesson today dissect the questions take the time don't let anybody tell you you have to rush through them they're your questions take your time there will always be time for you to speed test yourself but that's usually the last three or two or three weeks before your exam just to build that confidence in your speed till then learn how to be able to look at a question and dissect it identify it that's going to help you become a better test taker and in the end you'll retain it better and you'll become a better electrician alright folks stay safe and God bless