Customer Reviews

Illustrated Guide to the National Electric Code (Illustrated Guide to the National Electrical Code)

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I notice that other reviewers are complaining about this book's technical language. Balderdash! For anyone familiar with the actual National Electrical Code, I assure you that this guide is ten times easier to read and apply.

The author takes a "situational" approach to explaining the NEC. When addressing swimming pools, for example, he provides an illustration of a typical installation, including every reasonable electrical requirement and likely customer request. Then he surrounds the illustration with every pertinent code requirement, each with an arrow pointing to the part of the drawing it's addressing. Instead of having to flip back and forth through the book, every code reference you need is right there, gathered together on one page, with an illustration to boot! Beautiful!

Have trouble with motor calculations? His drawings and explanations on this subject alone is worth the price of this book.

Perhaps what other reviewers have misunderstood is that this is not a "how-to" book. It was not intended to be something to explain to a homeowner how to wire a 3-way switch. For that, go to Lowes and buy "You Can Do It!--Wiring For Novices", or "How To Burn Your Own House Down!", or whatever it's called.

This is an illustrated guide, intended to aid professionals (and reasonably bright laymen) in the application of what can seem like the arcane requirements of the NRC.

I am a career electrician, with over 30 years of professional experience. I have also taught the trade to high school tech students, and have used this book with amazing success. I highly recommend it to anyone who has to use the regular Codebook in any way.

By the way, "Luminaire" is a designation for the trusty old "light fixture" that was foisted upon us by the NEC in the 2002 Code revamping. In an attempt to make the Code more "international" (read: more book sales abroad) they adopted this ludicrous nomenclature, evidently to appease the French. How about "Yo, mes amis. It's "LIGHT FIXTURE" from now on. Cappish?"

They also took this opportunity to inflict the cursed metric system on us, to the great annoyance and inconvenience of everyone (Man, don't even get me started).

Bon Chance, Bruce

According to admittedly subjective analysis of said text, it is my conclusion that the syntactical arrangement of information is unnecessarily convoluted.

In other words (which ought to be the title of the study guide), the language is far too elevated. I have to read over three-quarters of the sections several times in order to understand it. And I'm no dummy. I have BA in English, and I am a writer/editor. I am a layman electrician and I have to spend twice as long trying to get my questions answered than I think I should have to spend. If "luminaries" mean "lighting fixtures," then why not just say "lighting fixtures!" Now I have to mentally insert "lighting fixtures" whenever I read "luminaries." Why?! The NEC may be illustrated in this book, but text that explains the diagrams are poorly written and sometimes cryptic.

I understand I am a layman, but even if I were a electrician in training, I would be very upset with this book. I have to spend half of my time trying to decipher the language instead of simply learning the information.

In summary, I do not recommend this book. To author, Charles Miller, do us all a favor and bring the language down a notch or two. Just because the subject matter is technical, doesn't mean the language has to. The true mark of one who has mastered a craft is the ability to teach the concepts and practices in terms anyone can understand, not just other masters.

This book is the most well written guide to the NEC I have ever read. The information is well presented, well written, and devoid of grammatical or printing errors. To a working electrician, its layout is extremely logical, in that it takes the information of the NEC, and lays it out in a very practical manner. In other words, it teaches concepts of the NEC as they would be applied in the real world. I highly recommend this book to the working electrician, and others interested in learning about how the NEC is meant to be applied.

Idon't think that I'll be using this site again because I've never receive the book that I bought more than one month ago.......

This is ridiculus........I'm no even able to call whoever sold this book to me......

JEREMIE