Texas Electrician ExamTexas journeyman & master

Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

Four circuits exist by rule, and three of them may carry nothing else

Which circuits a dwelling has to have is the easy half, and most study material stops there. The restriction sitting under each of those requirements is a separate sentence, and it is where the points are.

On this page
  1. The four Article 100 labels, and what each one buys
  2. What a dwelling has to have
  3. The restriction is a separate sentence, and it is the tested one
  4. Where these circuits turn back up in the calculation
  5. Two navigation changes in Article 210
  6. What this page cites

The four Article 100 labels, and what each one buys

A branch circuit is the circuit conductors between the final overcurrent protective device protecting the circuit and the outlets. The 2026 edition rewrote that definition to say overcurrent protective device rather than overcurrent device, matching a term this edition defined.

Four subtypes hang off it, and each label pulls a different set of rules onto the same piece of wire.

Items get written on the labels rather than on the numbers, because the label is the thing that decides which sentence in Article 210 applies. When a stem says supplies only, or names the circuit as individual, that phrase is doing more work than any figure in the question.

What a dwelling has to have

NEC 210.11(C) lists circuits that go in regardless of what anybody asked for, and it is four entries long.

The small-appliance and laundry circuits are 2-wire circuits, which the code says in as many words when it counts them in a load calculation. The garage circuit is the one most often missing from older material, because it arrived in the 2017 edition and a great deal of what is still being sold predates it.

General lighting circuits are not on that list because they are not a fixed count. Their number falls out of floor area, at a minimum unit load of 3 volt-amperes per square foot for the purpose of counting branch circuits (NEC 120.13). Article 120 is the article that used to be Article 220, and the figure it uses for a service is a different one.

All of these are minimums. Nothing stops more being installed, and a stem offering a larger number is checking whether you can tell a requirement from a permission.

The restriction is a separate sentence, and it is the tested one

Three of the four required circuits carry a limit on what else they may supply, written as its own sentence after the requirement. Skipping it is the single most common way to lose an item in this group.

The small-appliance circuits have no other outlets on them. Lighting is not one of the things they may feed, and neither is anything in a room they do not serve. NEC 210.52(B) carries the restriction along with the narrow exceptions to it, which are worth reading in your own book because each one is a plausible-sounding answer if you half remember it.

The bathroom circuit is the one with a genuine fork in it. The required 20-ampere circuit supplies bathroom receptacle outlets and has no other outlets, so it may serve the receptacles in more than one bathroom. The exception runs the other way: where that circuit supplies a single bathroom, it is permitted to serve other equipment inside that same bathroom as well. So one circuit for several bathrooms, or one circuit for everything in one bathroom, and never both at once.

The garage circuit has no other outlets either, with an exception that lets it pick up readily accessible outdoor receptacle outlets.

Read each of those as a pair. The sentence that requires the circuit and the sentence that limits it are answering two different questions, and an item almost always asks the second one.

Where these circuits turn back up in the calculation

The required circuits are not only an installation rule. They enter the load calculation as fixed values you add whether or not the question mentions them.

Each 2-wire small-appliance branch circuit goes in at 1500 volt-amperes and so does each 2-wire laundry branch circuit (NEC 120.52). Those are minimums, they are per circuit rather than per dwelling, and a candidate who works a dwelling load from floor area alone is short by a known amount every time.

The bathroom and garage circuits are not added the same way, which surprises people who expect symmetry. Read 120.52 for what is on the list rather than assuming every required circuit brings a number with it.

That is why the required circuits and the load calculation get studied together even though they sit in different articles and, since this edition, in different chapters.

Two navigation changes in Article 210

The 2026 edition ran a template through many articles, putting Listing Requirements at .2 and Reconditioned Equipment at .3. Article 210 took it, so NEC 210.3 is Reconditioned Equipment now.

The Other Articles table that used to sit at 210.3, the one that sends you off to the article governing a specific-purpose circuit, moved to 210.14. If you have ever used that table to find which article owns a piece of equipment, its address changed and the old address holds real text about something else.

Ratings, permitted loads by rating and receptacle ratings all live further into Article 210 and are a subject of their own. They are worth working through separately, because every one of them reads off the overcurrent device rather than off the wire, and getting that direction backwards quietly breaks the rest.

What this page cites

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