Texas Electrician ExamTexas journeyman & master

Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

Six disconnects are still permitted. Six handles in one panelboard are not

Article 230 is laid out in the order the power arrives, which is the fastest way to find anything in it. Two of its rules changed shape for this edition and one of them changes where a house disconnect gets installed.

On this page
  1. How many disconnects, and what counts as one
  2. The 2026 rule that moves a house disconnect outdoors
  3. Clearances are a question about what is underneath
  4. Sizing the conductors, and why the rules here are stricter
  5. The shapes these items come in
  6. What this page cites

How many disconnects, and what counts as one

Each service gets one service disconnecting means, except where NEC 230.71(B) permits more. That subsection permits two to six.

The part that decides items is not the number. It is the arrangement. The permitted arrangements all have the same shape: one disconnect per enclosure, per panelboard, per switchboard vertical section with barriers between sections, or per compartment in switchgear or a metering center. What is not on the list is the arrangement most people picture, which is six breakers sharing one panelboard with no main.

So a stem describing six two-pole breakers in a single main-lug panelboard as the service disconnecting means is describing an installation the current code does not permit, and an option saying it is compliant because there are only six is built on the old rule.

There is an exception, and it is about time rather than about equipment. Service equipment that was installed in compliance with an earlier edition, back when multiple disconnects in a single enclosure were permitted, is allowed to keep up to six of them. That covers the panel you are standing in front of on a service change and not the one you are about to install.

NEC 230.71 also names a category of device that is not counted as a service disconnecting means at all, which is how a listed assembly can contain something that looks like a seventh handle and still comply. Read that list in your own book, because the items in it are specific and an item can be built on any one of them.

Grouping is a different section. NEC 230.72 requires the two to six disconnects to be grouped and each one marked to indicate the load it serves. A question about where they sit relative to each other is answered there, not in 230.71, and the two sit close enough together in the book to be confused under a clock.

The 2026 rule that moves a house disconnect outdoors

For a one-family or two-family dwelling, NEC 230.70(A)(1) now requires the service disconnecting means to be installed in a readily accessible outdoor location, either on the dwelling unit or within sight of it.

That is a change of substance rather than of address. The 2020 and 2023 editions put an emergency disconnect outdoors at 230.85, separately from wherever the service disconnect itself sat. In the 2026 book 230.85 is gone, and the outdoor requirement is written into the location rule for the service disconnect, with 230.70(D) picking up the identification material that used to sit in 230.85.

The section also carries an exception tied to NEC 225.41, which is the emergency disconnect rule for a building supplied by a feeder rather than by a service. Read it before you call an installation non-compliant, because a dwelling fed from another structure is the case it covers.

Two consequences follow for anyone reading questions written before this edition. An option pointing at 230.85 is pointing at a section that is not in the current book. And an answer that puts the only disconnect for a house inside the garage, which was fine for decades, is now wrong on its own.

Clearances are a question about what is underneath

Overhead clearances are graded by the surface below the conductors and by the voltage, so the first move is to identify the surface the stem describes and then read the value for it.

Over a roof, NEC 230.24(A) asks for 8 feet 6 inches of vertical clearance above the roof surface, held for 3 feet in all directions from the edge. That section carries several exceptions and they are the reason a roof question is rarely answered by the headline number alone.

Vertical clearance elsewhere is NEC 230.24(B), and it is a graded list running from the service entrance itself up to conductors over a public street. Read the list rather than remembering one value from it, because every entry on it is a plausible-looking answer for the wrong surface.

Two more clearances are easy to miss because they are not in 230.24. NEC 230.9 keeps overhead service conductors 3 feet from windows that open, doors, porches, balconies, ladders, stairs and fire escapes. NEC 230.26 sets a floor on the point of attachment itself, which is not permitted to be less than 10 feet above finished grade.

Underground service conductors have their own part of the article, but the cover depths are not in it. Article 230 sends them to Article 300 for protection against damage, and minimum cover is a table there. Looking for a burial depth inside Article 230 is a minute you do not get back.

Sizing the conductors, and why the rules here are stricter

Service-entrance conductors are sized at NEC 230.42(A)(1). Where they supply continuous loads or any combination of continuous and noncontinuous, the minimum size has an ampacity not less than the sum of the noncontinuous loads plus 125 percent of the continuous loads.

The exception is the same one that appears wherever this rule appears. Conductors may be sized at 100 percent of the sum where they terminate on an overcurrent device, and both the device and its assembly are listed for operation at 100 percent of their rating. The listing is on the assembly, so a breaker alone does not get you there.

What makes this article different from Article 215 is what sits ahead of the conductors, which is nothing. Service-entrance conductors are on the supply side of the service disconnect, so there is no overcurrent device upstream to open on a fault in them. The utility transformer is the only thing that will clear it.

That single fact is the reason for a stack of rules that look arbitrary until you see it. Bonding at service raceways and enclosures is treated more seriously than at an ordinary feeder. The grounded conductor has to be run to the service equipment even where nothing downstream needs a neutral, because it is the return path a fault needs (NEC 250.24(D)). Splices are restricted, and the wiring methods permitted for the run are a named list.

New for this edition, and a navigation problem rather than a design one: NEC 230.2 is now Listing Requirements and holds the rule that service equipment be listed or field evaluated, which was 230.66(A). Number of Services moved from 230.2 to NEC 230.4, and the rule about one building not being supplied through another moved from 230.3 to NEC 230.5.

The shapes these items come in

Tab 230.70, 230.71 and 230.72 as a block. Between them they generate more items than the rest of the article, they now carry a requirement that used to live two hundred sections away, and they are adjacent enough that landing on the wrong one costs a re-read rather than an error you notice.

What this page cites

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