10 MIND BLOWING Things DIYers Don't Know About Outlets But SHOULD

I'm going to show you some built-in features on these receptacles and light switches that I bet the majority of you had no idea even existed so let's go ahead and Jump Right In let's go all right so let's talk about different kinds of outlets because this is one thing that a lot of people don't realize is that there is a choice between what kind of receptacles that you want to buy that being said just by looking at these can you tell a difference well some of you may have noticed that this one over here on the right seems to be a little bit more robust and that's because it is the one over here on the left is the one that you're probably finding the most in your house or ones very similar to it but a bunch of them depending on brand will have this blue back here and the colors don't necessarily mean anything but pretty much every time I've ever seen one with one of these blue backs on it I know that it is the same grade as this one which is residential grade these are incredibly inexpensive which is why they're installed in so many residences just because it allows for contractors in order to keep their pricing down and they're approved to use however if you ever go to a store and you're looking at different receptacles I'd really invite you to pick up a residential grade and then pick up one of these commercial grade or they might say spec grade on them and just hold them in your hand and you're going to feel a massive difference between the two the commercial grade receptacles just have much better components in them they're a lot more heavy duty they will last longer and they also have some features on them that will we'll get into later that are just far superior to the residential grade now have you ever noticed on receptacles these little dimples here that basically go down towards where you plug in your prongs for your plug and then you may notice that others are just completely flat like this one here well these dimples here are to help guide the plug down into the receptacle so for instance you're trying to plug in a lamp behind a nightstand or something you're just trying to Fumble with the plug well those dimples help to catch those prongs on the plug and help funnel them down to the slots for the plug to plug into whereas on this receptacle here where it's completely flat you're just going to be fumbling around all day now while this isn't a huge deal you're going to eventually find where those prongs are going to insert in but with that being said I will say that when you're trying to search for where your plug goes into a receptacle the ones with the dimples on it make it a lot easier and way way faster so that you're not just fumbling around and getting irritated try trying to insert your plug into the receptacle now another cool feature on a lot of your receptacles but not all of them if we flip it over here to where this ground screw is you'll see where there's this little hole down underneath of the ground screw now what that is for is you can just take your ground wire you can insert it into that hole there underneath of the ground screw and have a little bit of it sticking out the bottom part there and then all you have to do from there since it's anchored in that hole is you just have to wrap it around the ground screw and as you can see now I have a nice tight Loop or j-hook going around that ground screw and now at this point I can tighten it down this is essentially allowing us to easily make a very tight hook without having to use our wire strippers or whatever we normally use to make the hooks for going around the terminal screws now that ground screw method brings us to this next trick that I bet a lot of you did not realize is even on these receptacles and a lot of electricians will use these just because it is so fast to wire these up if we look over here on the the side of the receptacle do you see this little point or nodule here that's towards the back of the receptacle kind of looks a little bit like a claw well kind of like the ground screw method what we'll do is we'll take our wire we'll put it in over the top like this because again we want to make sure that it's wrapping around the screw in a clockwise Direction then we're going to use leverage and we're going to start wrapping it around that terminal screw and we want to make sure that we're keeping nice pressure up against the terminal Screw As we wrap it around and then once we're done we're left with a very tight J hook and so then once we've got it wrapped around that terminal screw in a clockwise Direction then we just tighten down the terminal screw and we did all this without having to make any hooks using our wire strippers or anything else now not all receptacles will have this particular feature it just depends on the brand and the type now another difference that you might see between these two and again this is a residential grade and this is a commercial grade is up here at the top where you see these ears well do you see how they're completely different down towards the bottom if we take take a closer look at these ears here you'll see these little gaps that are down here below the ears here and what these are is they're basically built in wire strippers and I know it's incredibly hard to read this but on each side on these ears it'll actually say which wire size the strippers are for so over here it actually says strip 14 and over here it says strip 12. so I've got some 14 gauge wire here all I'm going to do is I'm going to put it up in that Gap there and I found it works best to kind of twist it around it a little bit first we'll just take our wire and at an angle pull that receptacle away and there you go you have a stripped 14 gauge wire so now I've got some 12 gauge wire I'll put it on the Strip 12 wire side push it up into that slot again I'm just going to twist it around it a little bit and then I'm just going to strip that insulation off and there you go it's as easy as that and this is another feature that it completely depends on the brand and type for me personally I've noticed it's only on Eaton brand receptacles and switches and while this is a commercial grade it's also on residential grade receptacles as well this is another Eaton residential grade receptacle and as you can see it also has the wire stripping slots up at the top now for the next feature of receptacles both residential and commercial grade will have this so we'll flip it over here to the side and you can see this little Bridge or piece of metal here that's connecting these two terminals together so in your normal function when you install a receptacle and you want both of these receptacles to work or have power at all times you would do nothing with that bridge at all but if you wanted this to be a switched receptacle where you had power going to one of them at all times and then you had power going to say the top one here that's attached to a light switch or operated by a light switch that is when you would break break that tab off and that would separate the two terminals so that they can work independently of each other so now they will require their own power sources whether that's just a standard line wire bringing in electricity at all times or a wire that's bringing it in from a light switch hey really quickly if you're finding this video to be of shockingly good value or maybe it has sparked some inspiration if you could do me a huge favor hit that thumbs up button right down below or leave me a comment down the comment section it really does help the video out to spread out to other people and hopefully be able to help them out with this as well I really appreciate it let's get back into it so another feature on receptacles and every single one of them has them are these ears that are on the top and on the bottom of every receptacle but what these are for is when you install this into a new workbox you need these ears to rest up against the drywall or the plaster or whatever your walls are made of these need to be able to stick out past the top of the box and sit flush on your walls that is what basically when you go to screw these down into a box that's what keeps them out and flush with your wall so you get that nice neat look when you put your cover plate on well conversely when you go to install them in one of these old work boxes so say you're adding a receptacle somewhere or a light switch that's when you would then want to remove these ears and like the bridge that connected the terminals together it's as easy as just going back and forth on each of the ears and it usually takes two to three twists before they just fall right off all right so we got our ears off and we've got our old work box here and these old work boxes are designed to accommodate for those ears to be missing if you look at this old work box here there's this little Notch out here that allows for this receptacle to sit in there and sit perfectly flush with the top side of this box you see how it's recessed in if you didn't remove the ears off when you install into one of these old work boxes and you go put your cover plate on this would not set up flush with the wall it would actually leave a gap between the cover plate and the wall and it just would not look good at all which then these ears lead us into the next feature of these receptacles and that's after you remove any of these ears off of receptacles go ahead and keep them because what you can do is you can use these as spacers so that if your box is sunken in and you need to have that receptacle pushed out a little ways you can take your screw that's on your receptacle and push those little spacers or those little ears onto there and you've got yourself some spacers here in order to bring some separation between the receptacle and the box that sunk in to make it more flush with the wall they're not the best at doing this because they are quite thin typically that's where you use some of these instead of the ears these are actually design spacers that stack kind of like Legos and then create that space to bring that receptacle flush with the wall but if these are all you've got and it brings the receptacle out enough then the these will work perfectly now another key feature between receptacles again we've got a residential grade if we turn it over here to the side we've already gone over and shown wrapping the wires around these terminal screws and that does provide for a very good connection these residential grades will also have these little holes Here For Speed wiring that's where you just take your wire you stick it in one of those holes and it holds it in place now this is a highly debated topic even amongst electricians all the electricians I have spoken to personally do not recommend using the speed wiring holes a lot of their service calls with things that are going wrong with arcing amongst other issues a lot of times stem from people or electricians using the speed wiring holes the piece of metal inside that holds the wire in is very thin over time it can get worn and that allows for that wire to move or in some rare cases even completely release the wire so that is a feature on residential grade that are approved per code and they are UL listed but in my opinion and all all the electricians that I've spoken to but their recommendation has always been to use the side terminals to wire up your receptacles but that feature leads into this feature on these commercial grade receptacles and that's if we flip it over here to the back you will see we do not have any of those speed wiring holes instead we have what is called back wiring you'll see these little holes here and this plate right here on top so the way that these work is you insert your wire here into the back of the receptacle like you would if you were speed wiring but then once that's inserted into the back it's not held into place so that's when you then tighten it down using the terminal screw that you inserted the wire underneath what this essentially does is it creates a vise for the wire to where it cannot be pulled out and in my opinion it is a far superior method than using the speed wiring on your residential grade receptacles another really cool feature that pretty much all receptacles have both residential and your commercial or spec grade are is if you flip them over to the back they will all have strip gauges but something that really needs to be paid attention to if you're going to use these is if you look really closely it says strip gauge but then it says push wire so this particular strip gauge is for the quick connects and not the terminal screws wrapping the wire around the terminal screws now you will have receptacles that will also have strip gauges showing how much insulation to strip off of the wire for the side terminal screws here so it's always important to always pay attention to some extra words don't just pay attention to where it says strip gauge but see if it says what that strip gauge is specifically for and just as a bonus tip these tips that I'm using in my screwdriver everybody asks about them these are just far superior to use than your standard phillips head that so many people are using this particular one is made by Klein this is their combination bit then there's also this one which is very similar to the Klein combination bit they have their subtle differences but this is is the Milwaukee ECX bit but these particular bits are designed specifically for these terminal screws on these receptacles and light switches they fit into the terminal screws perfectly and when you go to tighten them down there's no slippage where you would have with a flat headed screwdriver a slotted screwdriver where it just slides out and with a Phillips head you have camming out where the Phillips head just wants to come out of the terminal screw once things start getting tight this one will stay in there to where you can make sure you can get the torque that you need in order to tighten down the screws properly it's just in my opinion that the ECX bit by Milwaukee and the combination bit by Klein are just far superior to anything out there when it comes down to tightening down the terminal screws on receptacles and switches or at the very least have a Robertson screwdriver or bit and if you'd like to see more I'll post a link to a video right over here where I go over how to make better connections so I hope that you found this video to be helpful and if you did if you could do me a huge favor hit that thumbs up button right down below and of course if you have any questions or comments still you can leave those down in the comment section and I'll catch you all in the next one see ya

Channel: How To Home

Views: 164,411

Keywords: how to wire outlets, outlet features, how outlets work, how switches work, how to wire switches, light switch, Receptacle, how to wire a receptacle, Receptacle built in features, outlets, how to wire an outlet, how to install an outlet

Id: WvSRBynMj2w

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 15 2023