NEC STUDY GROUP - CHICAGO AREA

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steven2020

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Hi , I am an electrical engineer with 4 years of high rise commercial/residential design experience, my problem is that every time I open the National Electric Code "NEC" to read , I cannot handle it for more than 30 minutes , part of the reason is that the language doesn?t seem to be English , and the fact that it is very boring to read , so my solution to this problem is to create a study group of people who are interested in reading the code, I live in the Chicago area , and would love to organize Saturday or Sunday or even weekday group sessions where the group can meet and go through the whole damn book once and for all.

This post is open for any one who wants to read the code , experienced or not

Anyone who is interested please post your email and I will get in touch with you

thnx
 
The City of Chicago electrical code is based on the NEC from 1999, so you may need 2 study groups.:D
 
Jim , I rarely do any work in Chicago , most of my projects come from china these days , so hopefully this will be a study group based solely on the latest NEC 2011
 
Please don't tell me you're an engineer and have a hard time reading the NEC. The NEC is actually written to a college reading level. The reason most people have a hard time reading it is that most people in this country and especially the last couple of generations, don't read to nearly that level and it is written in legalese. Now what a bunch of electricians know about legalese, is another subject.
 
Yes Cowboyjwc , am an engineer who have hard time reading the NEC , I agree the English is written to a college level , what I have a problem with is the technical language that tends to confuse me , and you know most electrical engineers don?t study these stuff is school , so again to whoever is interested , feel free to post

thnx
 
The NEC is not written in college-level English. Nor is it written in legalese. It is written in language that conforms to its own manual of style. More importantly, the location in which any specific requirement can be found is a matter of historical development, rather than any sensible pattern or logical flow of thought.

I once worked in the field of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. Some of their rules are revised periodically, as is the NEC. But each time they publish a new set of rules, they use a new system of article, paragraph, and subparagraph numbering. So if you had a vessel that conformed with the requirements of ?article 115.13.42,? when it was first commissioned 20 years ago, then you can?t look up that article in today?s version of the rule book, since there won?t be article with that number. It is very confusing.

In the NEC, for the most part anyway, article numbers very seldom change. If you used to be able to look up an EGC size in table 250.122, when you were a ?young electrician,? you can look it up in the same table today. That makes the NEC more convenient in one sense, but it makes it less and less easy to read for the first time, whether you be an electrician or an engineer.

My advice to a novice electrician or engineer is to use this forum as a study guide. When someone posts a question or an opinion about an NEC interpretation, then get out your copy of the book and look up the article yourself. You wind up learning your way through the book in a piecemeal fashion, but it is also a practical way to learn, in that you would be dealing with real-world situations, and not just artificially generated test questions.
 
charlie b said:
...In the NEC, for the most part anyway, article numbers very seldom change. If you used to be able to look up an EGC size in table 250.122, when you were a ?young electrician,? you can look it up in the same table today. That makes the NEC more convenient in one sense, but it makes it less and less easy to read for the first time, whether you be an electrician or an engineer.
...
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Charlie,
You didn't pick a very good example...prior to the 96 code you would have to look at 250-95 for the rules on using equipment grounding conductors.
 
An engineer saying he's having trouble reading the NEC .... why am I not surprised? :D

Where to begin? Well, I might as well start with the most polite response: Look to the very beginning, to "Article 90." Among other things, that introduction plainly states that you are expected to already know the trade before you start reading the code, that it is not an instruction manual.

That's an engineer's first problem: coming out of school, he hasn't learned squat about actually making things - and we are a construction trade.

Accenting the point, a lot of things in the code make sense only if you look at them in the context of general construction. For example, a lot of the restrictions on the use of Romex (NM) sem arbitrary, unless you already know that the method was originally intended for use in simple wood-framed houses. (To this day, there's no "3-phase" NM).

In a more general way, a lot of the bad prose within the NEC can be laid squarely at the feet of engineers who got involved in writing it - especially in Article 250. If there's anything worse than an engineer, it's an engineer who thinks he's a lawyer. Then, to top it off, much of 250 is based upon theories, models, that have since been discarded. Small wonder there are conflicts and confusions.

Finally, engineers are handicapped by their education. Make the slightest reference to the murkyness of engineering texts, and you're met with some snide remark that "they're not supposed to be novels." That might make the speaker feel proud, but misses the point that the texts often do a poor job of imparting information. Maybe that's why the general public has a greater understanding of the "time machine" in "Back to the Future" than they do of the operations of their local power company.

End result: engineers who are functionally illiterate and technical papers that leave you more confused than you were when you began.

I mean ... how else could the fraud of the AFCI been perpetrated for over a decade, based upon a phenomenon (sustained copper to copper arc at household voltages) that simply cannot happen by the laws of physics? The answer is: a lot of very smart, well meaning folks got baffled and led astray by their good intentions. The very murkiness of the technical material had everyone believing there were 'flux capacitors.'

My advice to budding engineers? Learn construction first, enough to understand what's "normal" and what isn't. Then the code will make much more sense.
 
My advice to budding engineers? Learn construction first, enough to understand what's "normal" and what isn't. Then the code will make much more sense.
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I have always had the opinion that before an engineer could become licensed they must spend at least one year in the field. Down in the ditches, in the crawl space real world experience. Then they would understand just because you can draw it on paper it doesn't always work in the real world.
 
charlie b said:
The NEC is not written in college-level English. Nor is it written in legalese. It is written in language that conforms to its own manual of style. More importantly, the location in which any specific requirement can be found is a matter of historical development, rather than any sensible pattern or logical flow of thought.

I once worked in the field of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. Some of their rules are revised periodically, as is the NEC. But each time they publish a new set of rules, they use a new system of article, paragraph, and subparagraph numbering. So if you had a vessel that conformed with the requirements of ?article 115.13.42,? when it was first commissioned 20 years ago, then you can?t look up that article in today?s version of the rule book, since there won?t be article with that number. It is very confusing.

In the NEC, for the most part anyway, article numbers very seldom change. If you used to be able to look up an EGC size in table 250.122, when you were a ?young electrician,? you can look it up in the same table today. That makes the NEC more convenient in one sense, but it makes it less and less easy to read for the first time, whether you be an electrician or an engineer.

My advice to a novice electrician or engineer is to use this forum as a study guide. When someone posts a question or an opinion about an NEC interpretation, then get out your copy of the book and look up the article yourself. You wind up learning your way through the book in a piecemeal fashion, but it is also a practical way to learn, in that you would be dealing with real-world situations, and not just artificially generated test questions.
Click to expand...

Ummmmm, I could have sworn that some knowing people from the NFPA, told me that.
 
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