The four branch circuits a Texas dwelling has to have, and the sentence under each one that gets tested

Where this sits on the paper

The PSI content outline for the Texas journeyman examination prints an item count beside every subject area, so the weight of this material is published and you can plan against it. On the NEC Knowledge portion, branch circuits and conductors carries 10 of the 56 scored items, which ties it with wiring methods and materials and with equipment and devices for the heaviest area on that half. On the Calculations portion, branch circuit calculations and conductors carries 4 of the 24 scored items.

About one scored item in six on each half comes out of this subject. Services carries 6 knowledge items and feeders carries 3, so branch circuits outweigh both of them on the knowledge side.

Our own 500-question bank points the same way. Eighty-six of the 500 name a branch circuit somewhere in the stem, the options or the working, and they turn up in six of the eight subject areas the bank uses. The load calculation area holds 42 questions on its own, and 13 of those turn on a branch circuit.

Each portion is scored on its own at 70 percent, and in fiscal year 2025 the knowledge portion passed 1,402 of 5,731 candidates. A handful of branch circuit items sends people back for a retake at $78 a sitting.

The four circuits a dwelling has to have

NEC 210.11(C) lists the branch circuits a dwelling unit gets whether or not anybody asked for them, and the list runs four entries long.

• At least two 20-ampere small-appliance branch circuits for the kitchen, pantry, dining room and similar areas, at 210.11(C)(1).
• At least one 20-ampere laundry branch circuit, at 210.11(C)(2).
• At least one 20-ampere bathroom branch circuit, at 210.11(C)(3).
• At least one 20-ampere garage branch circuit, at 210.11(C)(4).

General lighting circuits sit outside that list because their count falls out of floor area. The minimum unit load for counting the branch circuits a dwelling needs is 3 volt-amperes per square foot at NEC 120.13, and Article 120 is the article that was Article 220 before this edition.

Every entry is a minimum. A stem offering a larger number of small-appliance circuits is checking whether you can tell a requirement from a permission, and a third circuit installed voluntarily is lawful and adds a figure to the load calculation.

The garage circuit is the entry most often missing from older study material, because it arrived in the 2017 edition. Plenty of what is still sold in Texas predates it, which matters if you're revising from a book somebody handed down to you.

The restriction is a separate sentence

Three of the four required circuits carry a limit on what else they may supply, and that limit is written as its own sentence after the requirement. The requirement answers how many. The restriction answers what else may ride along. Items get written on the second one, and a candidate who reads the first one and stops has answered a question nobody asked.

The small-appliance circuits carry no other outlets, at NEC 210.52(B), and the narrow exceptions to that are worth reading in your own book because each one reads like a plausible answer when you half remember it. Lighting sits outside what they may feed, and so does anything in a room they do not serve.

The garage circuit carries the same shape of limit, with an exception letting it pick up readily accessible outdoor receptacle outlets. Tab each requirement with its restriction, because 2.2 minutes an item is enough time to land on the requirement sentence, feel satisfied, and mark the wrong option.

Which of them bring a number

The required circuits show up again in the load calculation, and this is where the two halves of the exam meet. NEC 120.52 puts 1500 volt-amperes on each 2-wire small-appliance branch circuit and 1500 volt-amperes on each 2-wire laundry branch circuit.

Read the words each and 2-wire carefully, because the distractor data says that is exactly where people go. One question in our load calculation set offers 1500 volt-amperes as the figure for the whole dwelling, and the trap line records the error in a phrase: the figure was read as a total when the section writes it per circuit, so two small-appliance circuits is two allowances and a third one installed voluntarily is a third.

The rule runs the other way too. Another bank question puts a dwelling unit in a multifamily building where laundry facilities serve all occupants, so the receptacle requirement is excused and no laundry circuit goes in. The allowance follows the circuit, so that calculation carries nothing for laundry, and the wrong answer people reach for is 1500 volt-amperes.

The bathroom and garage circuits bring no figure of their own into 120.52. Read the section for what is on the list. The dwelling load calculation page walks the whole sequence, and kitchen and laundry circuits takes the two that carry a figure.

The four, side by side

What the 2026 edition moved

Texas adopted the 2026 National Electrical Code effective 1 September 2026 under 16 TAC 73.100, and PSI references the examinations to that edition from the same date. Two things inside Article 210 shifted, and both cost you clock time before they cost you an answer.

NEC 210.3 is Reconditioned Equipment now, because the 2026 edition put Listing Requirements at .2 and Reconditioned Equipment at .3 across many articles. The Other Articles table that used to sit at 210.3 is at NEC 210.14. Both addresses hold real code text in both editions, so landing on the old number hands you a confident answer to a different question.

The larger move is the load calculation article itself. Article 220 became Article 120 and went to the front of the book. The unit load figures moved with it and one of them split in two: 3 volt-amperes per square foot at 120.13 for counting branch circuits, and 2 volt-amperes per square foot at 120.41 for feeders and services.

One documented conflict is worth carrying into the room. As read on 24 August 2026, the reference material list inside the PSI bulletin still named the 2023 edition, and so did TDLR's examination page, while the dated line in that same bulletin, updated 9 July 2026, puts the examinations on the 2026 edition from 1 September 2026. The dated line is the one that governs your appointment, and which code edition applies works through what to buy and what to re-tab.

The wrong answers people pick

Every question in our bank carries a trap line for each option, one sentence saying what a person who chose it did wrong. On branch circuit items those lines cluster into four families.

• Reading an allowance as a total. 1500 volt-amperes offered as the figure for the dwelling, where 120.52 writes it for each 2-wire circuit.
• Using the branch circuit unit load on a service. One bank question puts a 1,320 square foot dwelling in front of you and offers 3,960 volt-amperes, which is the 3 volt-ampere figure applied where the 2 volt-ampere figure belongs. The trap line names it as the branch circuit figure, correct for a different question.
• Answering the requirement when the stem asked about the restriction. The option that is true of 210.11(C) and silent on 210.52(B) reads well and scores zero.
• Counting receptacle faces. A commercial item counts 96 general purpose receptacle outlets at 180 volt-amperes under 120.14 and offers double the answer to anyone who counts each face of a duplex. The section assigns the figure to the yoke, so a duplex is one outlet.

Three of those four are reading errors made on a sentence the candidate could have found in under a minute. An open book does nothing for a question you already answered in your head, and the exam day and code use hub covers the habits that slow that down.

What it costs on the job

An inspector walks the same three sentences you just read. A small-appliance circuit that picked up the dining room luminaire, a garage circuit carrying the freezer plus a hallway receptacle, a bathroom circuit serving two bathrooms plus the exhaust fan in one of them: each is a correction notice and a return trip, and none of them shows up anywhere on a load calculation.

The calculation errors cost in a different currency. Working a dwelling from floor area alone and leaving out the small-appliance and laundry allowances leaves the total short by a known amount every single time, and a service sized off that total gets caught at plan review or gets replaced later at somebody's expense.

Texas gives those rules local teeth. Cities keep their amendment power under Tex. Occ. Code 1305.201(c) and their inspection power under 1305.201(d), so the governing text on any job is the state-adopted edition plus that city's amendments, and local rules sets out what a city may still require of you.

What to do before test day

Four things, and none of them takes a whole evening.

• Tab 210.11(C) and 210.52(B) on adjacent flags. PSI accepts tabs only where the code book publisher manufactured or provided them, so a month spent building a personal index flag system buys you nothing at the door.
• Write the four required circuits out from memory once, check them against the book, and mark which two carry a 120.52 allowance.
• Put a second tab at 120.13 and 120.41, and write on it which figure belongs to branch circuits and which belongs to feeders and services. That split is new to everybody sitting in the room this cycle.
• Work the arithmetic separately from the code reading. The worked numbers for this topic live in the question set, which answers what the code says and shows the calculation; this page is about how Texas puts it in front of you and what it costs when you miss.

Then put it on a clock. Thirty free timed questions will tell you inside ten minutes whether you're reading the restriction sentence or answering from the requirement, and fixing that habit is worth more here than another slow pass through Article 210.

Questions people ask

How many Texas journeyman exam questions cover branch circuits?

The PSI content outline prints the count. On the NEC Knowledge portion, branch circuits and conductors carries 10 of the 56 scored items, which ties it for the heaviest subject area on that half. On the Calculations portion, branch circuit calculations and conductors carries 4 of the 24 scored items. So roughly one scored item in six on each half comes from this material. For comparison, services carries 6 knowledge items and feeders carries 3, which makes branch circuits the largest single block of code reading on the knowledge paper.

Do the bathroom and garage circuits add volt-amperes to a dwelling load calculation?

No. NEC 120.52 puts 1500 volt-amperes on each 2-wire small-appliance branch circuit and on each 2-wire laundry branch circuit, and those are the required circuits that bring a figure with them. The bathroom circuit at 210.11(C)(3) and the garage circuit at 210.11(C)(4) are installation requirements with no matching entry in 120.52. Candidates expect the four required circuits to behave alike and they do not, so read 120.52 for what is actually on the list before you start adding.

Can one 20-ampere circuit serve the receptacles in two bathrooms?

Yes. The required bathroom branch circuit supplies bathroom receptacle outlets and carries no other outlets, so it may cover the receptacles in more than one bathroom. The exception works the other direction: where that circuit supplies a single bathroom, it is permitted to serve other equipment inside that same bathroom as well. You choose one arrangement or the other. A stem that puts one circuit across two bathrooms and then hangs a fan or a light on it is describing a violation, and that is a common item shape.

What changed in Article 210 for the 2026 edition?

Two navigation changes. NEC 210.3 is Reconditioned Equipment now, because the 2026 edition put Listing Requirements at .2 and Reconditioned Equipment at .3 across many articles. The Other Articles table that used to sit at 210.3 moved to NEC 210.14. Separately, the load calculation article left Chapter 2 entirely: Article 220 became Article 120, and the dwelling unit load split into 3 volt-amperes per square foot at 120.13 for branch circuits and 2 volt-amperes per square foot at 120.41 for feeders and services.

Which edition is my Texas exam written against?

The date you sit decides it. Through 31 August 2026 the examinations are referenced to the 2023 edition, and from 1 September 2026 they are referenced to the 2026 edition, which is the line PSI prints in the bulletin updated 9 July 2026. Texas adopted the 2026 code on the same day under 16 TAC 73.100. One caution: as read on 24 August 2026, the reference material list inside that same bulletin and TDLR's examination page both still named the 2023 edition. The dated line governs your appointment.

How much does a retake cost if I lose the knowledge portion?

The examination fee is $78 and it covers both portions, and a retake is $78 as well whether you lost one portion or both. Because the two portions are scored separately at 70 percent each, passing one and failing the other means rebooking only the half you lost. TDLR sets no published ceiling on attempts. What does bound you is the department's one-year window, counted from the day it received your application, to satisfy every licensing requirement including the examination.