Single-Family Dwelling Service Calculations

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frank1972

Member
Location
Upstate NY
I know you must use a minimum of two small appliance branch circuits when performing service calculations and every example I see always lists two for 3000VA. If my residence example contains four small appliance branch circuits in the kitchen, must I use 6000VA or is the max. I use still 3000? I can't seem to find an answer for this in the NEC or in my text. My thoughts would be that I would use 3000 regardless of how many branch circuits there are in the kitchen since the chances of all those circuits drawing all at once is slim to none.
Thanks!
Frank
 

Dennis Alwon

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Chapel Hill, NC
Occupation
Retired Electrical Contractor
You must use the number of small appliance branch circuit's that you are using. In your case 4 x 1500 = 6000 must be used, IMO.
 

Dennis Alwon

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Chapel Hill, NC
Occupation
Retired Electrical Contractor
Here is the section. I am sure someone will argue this one.

220.52 Small-Appliance and Laundry Loads — Dwelling Unit.
(A) Small-Appliance Circuit Load. In each dwelling unit, the
load shall be calculated at 1500 volt-amperes for each 2-wire
small-appliance branch circuit as covered by 210.11(C)(1).
Where the load is subdivided through two or more feeders, the
calculated load for each shall include not less than 1500 volt amperes
for each 2-wire small-appliance branch circuit. These
loads shall be permitted to be included with the general lighting
load and subjected to the demand factors provided in Table
220.42


210.11(C) Dwelling Units.(1) Small-Appliance Branch Circuits. In addition to the
number of branch circuits required by other parts of this
section, two or more 20-ampere small-appliance branch circuits
shall be provided for all receptacle outlets specified by
210.52(B).
 

frank1972

Member
Location
Upstate NY
Load Calcs

Load Calcs

Ok, thanks for all your responses. I will use 6000VA for my calculations.
I did search thru two of my texts including Annex D of the NEC and all examples for calculating loads always use only two circuits for the kitchen. I know that this is the minimum but in good practice it is wise to include more circuits so you would think at least one example would show three or more circuits for the kitchen, especially with modern kitchen floor plans getting so much larger than in the past.
 

LarryFine

Master Electrician Electric Contractor Richmond VA
Location
Henrico County, VA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
I did search thru two of my texts including Annex D of the NEC and all examples for calculating loads always use only two circuits for the kitchen. I know that this is the minimum but in good practice it is wise to include more circuits so you would think at least one example would show three or more circuits for the kitchen, especially with modern kitchen floor plans getting so much larger than in the past.
They use only two circuits in the examples because that's code minimum, and haven't "updated" them to modern trends because there's no reason to do so in examples.

When using examples as templates for real-world calcs, it's up to you to substitute your real-world numbers.
 
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