today's question apprentice here i was wondering if you could make a video about
how to look through and label your code book to find things more easily i saw how neatly
labeled your code book is and wanted to do something similar patrick [ __ ] from youtube
all right so my code books um had a couple of different options here that i've done
um even like today i still every code book i get i tab all of it there's some tabs i don't use
like you'll notice this one's got every tab on all sides i like to kind of go through the top and the
sides and then in the back the back things i kind of keep those a little bit separately
nowadays i just go through on the front and then the back tables that i need at the
very end of the book i keep tabs up here but notice that there are different tabs so this
set of tabs is color coordinated so we've got all these different colors they kind of keep each
color separate you know so like all of chapter three is gonna be one thing it's
gonna be like one color like yellow and all of chapter four is gonna be orange
but there are cabs out there that are cheaper um and they still work just fine but they're
all yellow so it makes looking through things when you don't really know code very well and
you don't know where things are it can make it a little bit more arduous to sit and look through
i like the color coding just because it's like i know through flipping through this book so many
times that everything in chapter three is going to be yellow so i already know i'm like if i'm
looking for conductors like 310 i'm looking yellow when i'm looking chapter three that's all i care
about so like none of this stuff i know if i'm behind it i know if i'm in front of it it just
makes it a lot easier uh when you do the colors but it's okay to get these tabs too it's just
a little bit more difficult to see and then these are pretty much the same thing as these this is
just a lot older this is a 2014 book but i do find that putting the tabs up here and down here
actually makes it harder for you to find things because there's some things that are like really
close to other things but then you've run out of space down here and you had to go all the way up
over here so i find that you're like looking and then you have to look up again and it's like oh
[ __ ] i missed it you got to look back down here so i don't recommend doing it i've actually got
code books where i've gone on the bottom too where i've just gone like one row all the way around the
bottom like another row all the way around i don't recommend doing that at all so my more recent code
book um this is how i do it so i try to go pretty close like i i leave maybe an eighth of an inch
in between each tab and as i'm going i just lay one an eighth of an inch away from the other ones
and i make sure that i don't grab the tab and flip the tab open to find the page i like to put
my finger on the tab and flip open all the pages before it so that when i open it the tab is still
like right here on this page if i'm looking for another thing i'm going to like 215 on feeders i
just flip all the pages and boom it's right there on that page so that's just my personal preference
now the next thing i do once i've tabbed my entire book is i like to go highlight certain things just
so it's easier for me to find those things so the first thing i usually do is go to all of my
relevant tables so i like to go to grounding and bonding so we've gotten 250 grinding and bonding
we've got figure 250.1 there's grounding and bonding there's a table i like to just like
highlight the part 5 for bonding the part three for grounding electrode conductor
the part six for equipment grounding and equipment grounding conductors that just lets
me know that's where those things are if i'm ever in 250 and i'm trying to figure that out
then uh i go into 250.66 there's a table table 250.66 i highlight that table
um i used to highlight the entire column for copper uh on both sides just to let me know like
that was where i was looking for information but i've been doing this long enough that i know what
this table's got in it so i don't really worry about that anymore next one i go to table 250.122
and i highlight the name of that table again you could highlight the entire left hand column and
the entire middle column for all of your copper just lets you know what breaker sizes go with what
conductor if you're doing an equipment grounding conductor table three 10.16 again i'm in the 2020
code so if you're in the 2017 it's probably 310.15 b16 if your 2014 code it's probably still 310.16.
but i like to highlight that entire table i like to highlight right in the middle between all of
the copper conductors and all of the aluminum conductors so the first four columns are one
thing it's all talking about copper conductors the next four columns are all talking about
aluminum conductors so i usually highlight right down the middle of that then i flip back
one page right before that we've got table 310.15 c1 adjustment factors for more than three current
carrying conductors i like to highlight that one because you're using that a lot to figure out
how many however many current carrying conductors you've got in a conduit you might have to de-rate
the opacity of those conductors so i like to i even write in there does not apply to nipples
and then i put in parentheses 24 inches just so that reminds me that this is not for nipples
specifically then i go back one more page and we've got table 310.15 b2 and b1 i usually
highlight the title for both of these just so i know that these are my ambient correction factor
tables and that lets me know very quickly when i'm flipping through here when i'm highlighting
this stuff and i go to the same places a lot the highlighting just draws me right to it so i don't
have to waste time flipping in pages so even if i'm like flipping through the general area any
highlighting i see is probably something important that i use all of the time so that's what i would
do now i'm not going to go through every single one of these but there are some relevant tables
uh if you go into the 430s into motors 430.247 248 249 and 250 i would highlight those at
least the three phase alternating current and the single phase alternating current
because you're going to use those quite a bit the other thing is i'll take a different highlighter
and i will highlight all of the parts in all of the articles that seems like
a really arduous crazy thing to do but when you first start learning about code
knowing that you're in the right part is crucial the amount of time that you're going to spend
looking at something and reading it and be like no if it says right there and then somebody's going
to be like no you're completely wrong that's not right and you're like no i'm telling you
and they're yeah flip back and look at what part you're in you're in part four that's like over a
thousand volt systems it's not it doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about so
highlighting the parts in every single article right we've got chapters code book has chapters
chapters one through nine within a chapter you have tons of articles so in chapter
three we have article 300 wiring methods we have article 310 conductors we have article uh 314 so
314.16 specifically is box filled but if you go into a article specifically like 250 article 250
is long there's so much information in 250 that in 430 is the same way so they've put multiple parts
to kind of separate all of the information so that you know like all of this code applies to one
kind of thing and then the next part is another kind of thing so i like to highlight all of the
parts throughout the entire book just so i know flipping through it like oh i've just entered into
a new part so if i haven't found the code by now i can read that that part has nothing to do with
what i'm talking about so i need to go back but that's pretty much everything i would highlight
i like to keep the tabs up here the white you know last few that's my index my annex d tables which
is all of your examples and xd's full of examples that you can practice doing dwelling calculations
and sizing neutrals and all kinds of stuff like that annex c is your conduit and tubing table
so anytime that you're trying to figure out how many conductors you can put in a piece of conduit
that's something we use all the time and then chapter nine tables one through twelve so again
you might be sizing conductors trying to figure out how many differently sized conductors you
can put in a certain conduit or something like that but it gives the dimensions so uh all four
of those you're going to use the crap out of so i like to just separate them and put them up here at
the top and that's pretty much it there's certain things that i'll write in here and write in little
notes or i'll highlight you know as i come across information if i come across something all the
time especially now that i'm teaching code and i'm talking to people in the community about code
there's certain stuff that i come across and i'm like oh yeah that's right i've heard that before
and i've never i can never find it i'm always digging around trying to figure out where it is
so i like to highlight stuff like that just so it's like obvious and it sticks out to me when
i'm flipping through all of this stuff so hope that answers your question my dude uh really
appreciate the questions so this year uh i'm gonna be spending the entire year pretty much
just answering your guys's questions because i haven't done that in the past i've always just
kind of figured out like these are the videos i think you'll like but meanwhile i've built
up this catalog of like 5 000 questions so let me know in the comments below if there's any kind of
questions of other content you think that i should do be realistic with it i mean think about what i
do for a living and still work out in the field and make videos um like realistic videos that i
can make not like you should go to space and see what these electrical systems of nasa are
so anyways go check out the you dot com and while you're there sign up for some continuing education
or some live classes we have instructors standing by literally doing nothing with
their life other than just standing there like right there standing just standing there waiting
for you to sign up for a class so uh give them purpose let them have something to do come and
come and take some classes from electrician all right guys and girls love you crazies
see in the next one
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