Customer Reviews

National Electrical Code 1999

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In all states that I have held an electrician's license (20 years), it was mandatory to pass an electrical exam based on the current NEC. This is an invaluable resource and a must have if you are an electrician. But it is not a training manual. Homeowners and do-it-yourselfers are best served picking up a how to electrical book based on the current National Electrical Code. There are several here at Amazon.

Here's a book that begs the question, "What were these guys thinking?" At NFPA, it seems the voltage is on but nobody's home. The new large format doesn't make the book any easier to interpret or information easier to find, perpetually sore subjects among users of past code books. The text might be larger, which is fine for us aging boomers with reading deficiencies, but that's not a good enough reason to radically alter a long-established format. Further, it seems NFPA intended this edition for office use, not field use. Those of us who carry the books in our trucks have ready-made spots for the old 5x7.5 editions. This big book is klutzy and subject to vastly more damage in everyday use.

And finally there's the price of this "deluxe" edition. The 1978 code book was $8, the 1996 book was about $35. There is simply no justification for the 1999 book, a virtual requirement for every informed electrician, to be scraping the $50 level. Will somebody please check the NFPA's grounding?

The National Electrical Code (NEC)is published every 3 years by the National Fire Protection Association. It is offered as the minimum safety standard for electrical installations, but is not a law until adopted by the respective state or municipal governing body. The 1999 NEC has undergone some major revisions since the 1996 edition in order to improve the readability and understandability of a document which is not written in lay-mans terms. The NEC states that it does not intend to provide a design specification nor an instruction manual for the untrained. This re-write has been successful in helping to clarify and improve many areas, particular Article 250 on Grounding. Many exceptions have been removed from the 1996 version and re-written into a "positive" text in the 1999 edition, helping to reduce some of the confusion. The larger format of the 1999 NEC makes it easier reading, and makes the tables much more usable.

Certainly, additional study and supplemental references are essential in order to fully comprehend the meaning of the NEC and the intended application in our every day wiring installations. As a certified electrical instructor and licensed electrial inspector, I use the NEC every day and have found that the 1999 edition is an improvement over the 1996 edition.

The index is so poorly written that you need a FIRMS FAST FINDER to locate any code passage in a reasonable amount of time. The book is so unreadable that you need the NEC HANDBOOK to understand it. The book has more exceptions than rules. It is so confusing that electrical inspectors argue about its interpretation. After reading it I am personally sickened that any state would adopt any new editon of this book as the standard. Sincerely,J.Adams

What can I say? If you are an electrician, YOU NEED THIS BOOK !!! If you do your work "In a workman-like manner", and you take pride in your electrical work,then this is the book for you. If you do any kind of electrical work at all, please refer to this book to complete your work safely.Remember,there are people`s lives at stake here,so please do it correctly -- do it according to the "Code".

Dear Amazon, nice to see you carry this all important book, but as a Massachusetts Electrician it is useless to me. We are required to follow the NEC with the Massachusetts supplement. That would be nice to see on your list.

I'm learning the Code to take the electrician's exam and I bought the out of 1999 NEC book because it's out of date and all I had to do was pay for shipping plus 25 cents which is all I can afford for right now. It was used but in good shape as advertised, having originally come from a library Missouri. I also bought the 1999 NEC Handbook for about [...] plus shipping and I decided when I buy a newer version, I'll only buy the handbook because it contains the full text of the Code plus a lot of explanations, definitions and illustrations that make it much more useful than the Code book by itself. As for the NEC book, it's an outstanding body of work, without which we'd have a lot more electrical fires and electrocutions, like it was in the days when electricity was an emerging technology and there were no standards.

I had to buy this book to study for and use to take the state licence test! It was perfect!

The book cost to much but you got to have it