Grounding and bonding on the Texas journeyman exam

The area with no line on the outline

Look down the ten subject areas PSI publishes for the journeyman knowledge portion and you will find no heading for grounding. Services and separately derived systems carries six of the fifty-six scored items and four of the twenty-four calculation items, and the rest of the grounding content is distributed across the other areas. Our own bank puts sixty-six questions here, thirteen percent of the five hundred, and forty-seven of those sixty-six sit in the top two difficulty bands against three hundred and thirty-two of five hundred bank-wide.

The Texas journeyman exam is two separately scored papers taken in one sitting. NEC Knowledge is 56 scored items inside 59 sat, with 130 minutes on the clock. Calculations is 24 scored inside 26 sat, with 110 minutes. Each half passes at 70 percent on its own, so you can clear one and rebook the other. For fiscal 2025 TDLR reports 24.46 percent passing the knowledge portion and 20.56 percent passing calculations, out of 26,303 attempts across every Texas electrical exam that produced 6,181 passes.

The distinction that decides most of them

250.4 gives grounding and bonding two different jobs. Grounding connects a system or equipment to earth and limits voltage imposed by lightning, line surges and contact with higher voltage lines. Bonding connects conductive parts together so a fault current has a low impedance path back to its source and the overcurrent device opens. Earth is a poor fault path and the code says so in as many words.

The eight topics

• Grounding and bonding on the Texas journeyman exam, and the split that decides the item. 250.4 splits the two jobs, and almost every wrong answer swaps them.
• Grounding electrodes on the Texas exam, and the condition hiding inside every entry in 250.52. What the code counts as an electrode, and the gas pipe that is barred and bonded at once.
• Sizing the grounding electrode conductor for the Texas exam, and the three ceilings that cut the answer short. 250.66, the 6 AWG protection hinge, and the two opposite 18 inch rules.
• Sizing the equipment grounding conductor for the Texas exam, in the order that keeps you out of the traps. 250.122 sizing, the proportional increase, and the letters that moved in 2026.
• Where the neutral to ground bond belongs, and how a Texas exam checks that you know it. One bond, in one place, and the invented conditions the item writers hang on it.
• Separately derived systems, and the one reading that decides every item built on them. Whether the neutral is switched decides the whole question.
• The four bonding jumpers, and why sorting them by name loses the item. Main, system and supply side, sized by different rules that look alike.
• GFCI and AFCI locations, the Texas amendment, and the sentence that decides the item. Rating first, then room, and the Texas amendment that outlives the national one.

How the exam actually asks it

Forty-one of the sixty-six questions mention a fault, forty-six mention an electrode, thirty-two name the equipment grounding conductor and seventeen name the grounding electrode conductor. Nine touch water piping and five touch gas piping. The shape that repeats is a scenario with one invented condition attached: an ampere threshold that the code does not set, a wiring method that does not change the rule, or a piece of installer discretion that the code does not grant. The neutral to ground bond collects more of these than any other topic here.

Two places our sources disagree

Two questions in our bank cite 250.122(B) for the proportional increase in equipment grounding conductor size, which is the 2023 address, while the 2026 edition carries that rule at 250.122(D) after three subdivisions moved to the front of the section. Both describe the same requirement. We print the disagreement and leave it open, and the practical answer is to find the subdivision by its title.

The second one sits inside the code itself, with both sections correct. 250.52(B) bars underground metal gas piping from being used as a grounding electrode, and 250.104(B) requires that same piping to be bonded. Both are correct and they answer different questions, which is why an item can put them side by side and look contradictory.

What to do with this before test day

Tab 250.4, 250.52, 250.66, 250.122 and 250.30. Those five sections answer a large share of the sixty-six. Then work a timed set and watch for the items where you knew the rule and picked the answer that had earth doing the bonding job. That specific error is the one this area is built to find. Thirty free questions, timed will surface it in an evening.

The worked sizing arithmetic for 250.66 and 250.122, with the numbers shown, is in the question set.

Questions people ask

Is there a grounding section on the Texas journeyman exam?

There is no subject area named grounding in the content outline PSI publishes. Services and separately derived systems carries six of the fifty-six scored knowledge items and four of the twenty-four calculation items, and grounding content is distributed through the other areas as well, appearing inside questions about services, equipment, wiring methods and special occupancies. That distribution is the reason the topic feels bigger than its published weight. Our own bank puts sixty-six of five hundred questions here.

What is the actual difference between grounding and bonding?

250.4 separates them by job. Grounding connects a system or equipment to earth, and its purpose is limiting the voltage that lightning, line surges and accidental contact with a higher voltage line can impose. Bonding connects conductive parts together so that fault current has a low impedance path back to its source, which is what lets the overcurrent device open. Earth does not serve as that fault path. An answer choice that has earth clearing a fault is a distractor every time it appears.

How many places does the neutral bond to ground?

One, at the service, and the exam tests the edges of that rule harder than the rule itself. The questions in our bank attach invented conditions to it: an ampere threshold, a particular wiring method, a replacement panel, or a claim that the installer chooses. None of those change the answer. The cases worth understanding are the ones where a second bond is legitimate, which is separately derived systems, and that is a different section with its own rules at 250.30.

Why do two of my sources give different numbers for the same grounding rule?

Because the 2026 edition moved three subdivisions to the front of 250.122, which shifted the letters after them. The proportional increase that a 2023 book carries at 250.122(B) sits at 250.122(D) in the adopted 2026 text, and the equipment grounding conductor increase that was 250.122(F) is now 250.122(H). The rule text held still in both cases. Finding the subdivision by its title in the table of contents survives the renumbering, and memorizing a letter does not.

Can underground gas piping be used as a grounding electrode?

250.52(B) bars it from being used as a grounding electrode. 250.104(B) requires that same interior metal gas piping to be bonded when it is likely to become energized. Both statements are in the code and both are correct, because they answer two different questions: what may serve as an electrode, and what has to be connected to the grounding system. An item that puts the two beside each other is testing whether you noticed that they are separate requirements.