let's talk about why residential plans are not
accurate and Commercial plans are always accurate [Music]
all right so the first thing that we need to think about when we think residential commercial is that
the stakes are usually a lot higher as well as the usage of the building a lot more monitored
typically with commercial environments than it is for residential environments so when you get into
a residential setting the majority of the time even really large homes the entire electrical is
done by an architect Architects don't know code I mean they might some might know a little bit
of code but like by and large they're thinking about the use of the space how it looks how it
functions as you're living there whereas Engineers are like extremely to the code what kind of load
can we put on the circuit are we past our load capacity how's this going to affect the utility
so like the the electrical side of things is usually done by an MEP engineer or mechanical
electrical and plumbing mechanical is HVAC so they will do the entire system design it and these are
engineers and they stamp them and they're very accurate and a lot of times every single device
is figured out what needs to be on what circuit that's fully calculated load so
there's no deviation from that or that you can have deviations I mean you're always going to have
hey I need you to add a plug over here or whatever but for the most part the whole system has figured
out in commercial they give you an entire panel schedule and it's like this is what breaker on a
phase breaker one you know three five all of these things this is what this needs to be because this
is what we calculated it at with residential you don't get any of that kind of stuff there's
no panel schedules there's no nothing it's just for looks so let's open up a residential plan and
talk about whatever look at what I'm talking about so first thing with any residential plan is that
you're gonna see that there is a stamp on the plan and it's usually going to be on every single page
so it lets you know who the architect is that Drew all of these with a residential plan most of your
um pages are going to be a A is for architectural now they might change a one a two a three a four
a five but you'll see on this one uh all of the pages are drawn up by an architect
so with this residential drawing we've got a power plant it's still an architectural drawing
foreign it still has a registered architect as the person that Drew the entire drawing but now
look at the actual drawing itself there's no circuits drawn in it doesn't say what circuit
numbers things are if this is circuit one panel a there's no like this needs to be with this and
this and this it's just like hey dummy we need some plugs in the area so I'm gonna just like pop
a few over here because I'm trying to think of how Mr and Mrs homeowner are thinking about living in
their house and these are some things that we've talked about they want to put a lamp over in the
corner by their fancy little couch that they got so most of the time when I get a residential plan
I know I'm not looking for accuracy here I know that like most of this is where they want things
so I'm going to go through and I'm going to lay the what they want and where they want things out
first and then when I'm done with that then I'm going to go with a code mine through the entire
thing and I'm gonna start being like okay within an entry do we have a receptacle within six feet
of the door are we every you know within every 12 feet after that do we have at least one in the
hallway because like right here they didn't draw a receptacle anywhere in the hallway so we need
to make sure we have a receptacle in that hallway the garage they don't have anything drawn well it
does say existing to remain but you know most of this house is being remodeled so I would go into
the garage and be like all right do we at least have GFI circuits out there you know like do we
have uh like how many GFI circuits are we going to need for this entire kitchen we need at least
two maybe three there's a huge island over here there's like this other kind of Island space half
wall thing so you're gonna have to constantly go through and change stuff and make sure yourself
that it is done to code so the inspection process is usually a little bit more detailed like they're
going to check and make sure that everything is to code they're not making sure everything is
nice and friendly to whatever the homeowners want now if we look at a commercial plan
we've got all of our stamps down here at the bottom
but we notice there's a pages and then as we move on there's e-pages and there's going to
be paid om Pages ease for electrical M is for mechanical P is for plumbing so we've got all
of these different MEP drawings if you look closely at all of the schedules you'll see
the P's there's a professional engineer that's licensed for plumbing and then there's a m and
that's the same guy he's doing the mechanical and the plumbing but on the electrical there's
a different engineer so they're all licensed and these are Engineers that are drawing up these
plans so when they draw up plans they're going to tell you this receptacle needs to be wired to this
receptacle and then from there it needs to wire to this receptacle this is the circuit number this
is the anticipated load on the entire circuit this is what we've derated it based off of its
usage all of that stuff and then you're going to have one line diagrams that show how the service
flow should go you might have stuff on from the utility Transformer specifically conductor sizes
for grounding what feeders what service entrance conductors all of it all of it is figured out for
you because the utility company has to monitor and be really really careful how commercial build
things are used because it affects on the Utility side the rest of the grid and it can affect an
entire area so a lot of times commercial buildings will have a lot of inductive loads motor loads
things like that so it ends up having this uh the shift in power factor there's a lot of reactants
so a lot of inductive reactants or it could be a huge data center it could be a lot of capacitive
reactants so basically whatever power is being supplied to the building they are wasting a whole
bunch of power the more inductive loads that they have or the more capacitive loads they have when
you don't have a situation where you've got a power factor problem every time you push
voltage you you know add pressure to a system the current moves with it but when you have a reactive
situation where you have a bad power factor it means that every time the electrical or the the
EMF is pushed through the circuit there's a little bit of a delay and then when it stops pushing then
things move and it's just this like really weird inefficient way of trying to do work so there's
a lot of waste and you end up paying for a whole bunch of power that you're not even able to use
so you're using twice as much energy and only getting you know half as much out of it so it's
just really really inefficient and the more that happens with multiple commercial buildings in an
area the utility company has to really really watch that because there's things they need to
do on their side at the utility Generation Plant they might have to add certain kind of capacitor
Banks or they might have to have different kind of like synchronous generators or things that'll
try to balance out the reactants in the circuit because they don't want to be over generating
power or and not being able to get the money for it it's just useless waste to them so MEPS manage
these environments because there's just it needs to be very very precise or else there's a huge
impact on the rest of the system whereas like most houses people do the same thing in a house they
wake up every day they turn some lights on they go make coffee their air conditioners kind of kicking
on they might watch some TV go for swim in their pool like you know cook some food but like all
of us are doing the same thing so we generally even when we're figuring out a service there's
no service calculations and one-line drawings for how a service should be built most of us know how
to build a service you put a panel you put a meter you either run it underground or overhead that's
like that's it you as the electrician have to figure out what conductors you're bringing
into it we don't have the fortune of having an engineer doing the drawing and an architect's not
going to know all that stuff they're not going to figure all that out so that is the reason why in
commercial your boss is probably telling you don't deviate from this plan do it exactly how it is
designed and when you're in residential there are like dude how did you not put that on there and
you can't be like well it wasn't on the plan well yeah it's a house you know some person that likes
to draw for a living Drew up the stuff so like you have to know all of these things so that's
why a lot of people too will say like oh you know commercial electricians don't know code there's
like nothing to know because everything's figured out for you that's not true that's really not
true I'd say commercial service electricians are probably the best electricians out there because
they run across so many things and they have to run across like fixing all of these environments
um and I think that like probably residential construction has the most amount of different
varying codes that some a type of electrician needs to know so your ability to know what needs
to happen because everything's always going to be missing and you just have to cover the basis
that generally in construction is the residue guys especially when you're talking like 40
000 square foot Custom Homes there's just a lot of weird stuff they have massive showers as big
as mine's Studio that have like Steam members in them they have pools they have like Butler's
quarters and guests houses and you know Big Ass Fans they got like welders all kinds of crazy
stuff can go into these really big houses so you have to know a lot about code um to be able to do
something like that whereas you do need to know a lot of code in commercial but most of the time
all that's been figured out for you so it's just kind of going around and double checking things
but even that on the commercial side the use of a commercial building is way different than it is of
residential use like you're just doing Commerce most of the time you just need lights and plugs
everywhere that's it you might have an elevator sure but that's like a thing for code that you're
gonna need to know something about but like the majority of it's really not all that difficult
um industrial is kind of like a mix of the two it's I mean well not really it's it's a
industrial is more a lot of depends on your if you're in the maintenance or the construction
side but if you're like doing construction um there's a high amount of code that you need to
know but it's typically that's similar to commercial you're just using a little bit
different materials that's more Industrials more knowing like logic how to program a PLC or how
to work with a variable frequency drive and be able to start and stop Motors and there's a lot
of circuit logic to get things interlocked and working together in a certain way and getting
Motors to start up in a weird sequence or slow down and speed up and if they experience a certain
load you know there's just a lot of logic and components and things so like the people that
know that stuff that know motor controls lighting automation building automation all that kind of
stuff there's a lot to know and I'm not saying there's not it's just not necessarily a lot
of code to know it's more of a bank of like how can you make this craziness function so
um all that to say uh when you're doing residential you just gotta you gotta know
your code you really do because it's you that has to come up and make sure everything's fine
commercial a lot of that's already figured out for you so that's the difference that's why so thank
you guys so much I appreciate your attention love you crazy people I'll see in the next one