10 Mistakes EVERYONE Makes When Doing DIY Electrics!💥

electric shock burnt cables houses on fire all of these things can be a result of dodgy DIY electrics so in today's video we're going to show you the top 10 DIY mistakes that people make when working on electrics and I think you'll be surprised by the last one let's go it's the first DIY mistake that we see quite often as electricians is when people do this they strip the wire back take the ends off to expose the copper all good so far and they want to join two wires together so what do they do they get the wires and they do the old twisty twisty twisting the wires together I've seen it with stranded conductors I've seen it with copper solid conductors but the worst is when you try and mix the two try to twist solid copper conductors and Stranded conductors together so I can't even do it I'm just trying but I'm just allergic to it so why do they do this well because they think think it's a good solid connection which to be fair twisting wires together can be a solid connection but there are various issues with it first of all if you try to twist solid and and Stranded together like that it never quite sticks together well now some countries actually put solder on to hold them together that's an interesting way of doing it but the issue is it's very hard then to get them apart you have to cut all the wires loose and take them apart so the best way is to connect them using proper wire connectors in the US they use what's called uh wire nuts which I'm not a big fan of in the UK we use Vargo pushfit connectors or little snapdown connectors or just the traditional screw fit connectors but you need to connect wires together properly and twisting them together is a big no no another classic faux part when changing a light fitting is connecting all the Reds and blacks together or the blues and Browns together people think that red and red goes together and black and black but has not always the case sometimes a black wire is actually sleeved as red and it could be a live conductor and if you put it in together with a live you're going to have a big bang or vice versa connecting a neutral in with a live conductor can create a big problem so if you don't know what you're doing always call an electrician our next DIY disaster comes when people try to wire up a plug or connect cable into some kind of junction box and we see this a lot what happens is they this so add a wire upper plug like this and they leave loads of slack on the wire on the cable there we go lovely jely ah we won't bother with the cord grip just Chuck the cover on there we go that'll do what's the problem this is the problem the outer sheath of the cable should be inside the plug it should be secured properly with a cord grip cuz otherwise what happens is you've got all these single insulated wires here which exposed they they can get damage and there's no secondary layer of protection this outer sheath rubber that is what's protecting the cable the wires within this is just insulation and that can be easily damaged exposing bare copper and potentially opening you up to having an electric shock the other thing is this should be inside the plug because it should be secured by a cord grip the cord grip goes here and it clamps that on nicely so that if there's any strain on the plug the wires don't all pull out and cause a short C circuit now we see this a lot in another situation too when wiring up a junction box like this there's two ways that they often do it they'll either punch a hole in it like that and just shove the wires through now the problem with that is there's no cord grip there so you can easily pull the wire out but the other thing that we often see is it's like this just hanging out of the junction box stuff that on the wall and again you've got an issue here with no strain relief and exposed single insulated conductors not a good idea here so the best way to do it is to use a compression gland like this that wires into there the compression gland tightens up on the outer sheath of the cable you connect your wires Inside the Box put the lid on and that is not going anywhere that's how to avoid that DIY disaster another classic mistake that people make is plugging in too many extension leads let me show you what I mean we got an extension lead plugged in this socket then from that socket we got multiple things running off some of things should be hardwired but they're not and then you plug another extension lead into here run something else and what happens is you've got a daisy chain of extension leads and unfortunately it can really create the opportunity for overloading the extension lead and catching fire another DIY classic that we see a lot is using the wrong siiz cable for example and this is one of the worst ones wiring lights in Bell wire now Bell wire is designed for exactly what it says WI ing up doorbells it's not designed for any kind of heavy power or voltage it's just designed for like 12 or 24 volt signals for doorbells but the amount of times I've seen people wiring up their shared or their Loft lights with bell wire is beyond belief what is the potential danger well if you overload this wire it will overheat and potentially Catch Fire also it's only single insulated there's no outer sheath so it's easily damaged exposing be copper and putting you at risk of electric shock or Burns now Bell wire is not the only time we see people putting the wrong size Cable in we often see people doing it with twin and Earth cable putting in two smaller cable for a cooker circuit or a shower circuit for example even upgrading the shower to a more powerful one on the same size cable we've even seen it with using Flex cables to run outside sockets and things like that there's loads of scenarios where people use the wrong siiz cable and it can create create serious danger so if you're not sure what size cable to use always consult an electrician another one we see a lot is people installing cables but not clipping them up properly it's not difficult to clip a cable or put in drunking but people seem to love just stringing cables along through Lofts or on the outside of houses and it's really not safe because somebody could trip or pull it off it puts strain on the cable cables should be adequately secured so if you're installing cables make sure you clip them up another classic DIY mistake that a lot of people make is not turning the power off and that is a fundamental mistake because you put yourself at risk of electric shock and burns so for example you know you're swapping a socket or something this socket is live but how do you know it's Live Well you only know if you got a proper test device like this so I'll leave a link in the description below where you can get one of these but it's very simple to turn off the the power just find the circuit in the consumer unit flick it off and make sure using your voltage testing device that the circuit is dead before you do any electrical work if the circuit is not dead then you might be another classic mistake that we see DIYs make a lot is tightening wires up too tight or not tightening them up enough in this terminal block we want to connect our wire it's fine stranded wire we tighten it up like this but it's just not tight enough over time what can happen it it vibrates because AC current vibrates comes loose starts to Arc and it can create a fire on the Other Extreme what we see too is people overtightening terminals where they tighten them up as tight as I can possibly get and it basically cuts through the wire and can damage the wire in order to know how tight you should do your connections often a torque screwdriver is recommended but if you're not able to use a torque screwdriver best thing to do is just tighten it up to a reasonable degree not too tight and not too loose and if you're worried that the connection might be loose the best thing to do is to do the tug test give it a little pull if it pulls out you know it's too loose another classic DIY electrical mistake that we see a lot is people stripping the wires back too much so they strip the outer sheet like that and then they strip the bare proper like that then they bodge the wires into the terminals like so and they leave lots of bare cover now you might ask what's wrong with this well this is going to be enclosed in a junction box so nobody can touch these terminals right or maybe this is in the back of a socket or a light fitting or something okay so if it's enclosed technically there's no life Parts exposed it could be worse but the issue is it's just bad bad practice common good practice should be to strip these wies back just enough to make contact with the brass terminals Inside So to avoid this common mistake it's very simple all you need to do is follow the instructions in the accessory that you're connecting usually they have uh instructions about how long the wire should be left stripped back either on the plug top instructions or the light fitting instructions or the accessory instructions and usually it's a lot less like this so in this particular case so we just put enough bare copper to get into those Terminals and there's no excess copper exposed outside of the terminals and the final and worst DIY mistake with electrics that I've ever seen is this one and it's quite a common one not unwinding the extension lead fully and plugging something in what happens if you do that let's try it now one fact that not a lot of people know is that if you're plugging in anything that uses a lot of power to an extent extension lead you should uncoil the extension lead fully before plugging in that heavy load so this extension lead here says that we can plug a maximum of 4 amps fully wound or 13 amps Unwound and we're going to plunk in this 2 1/2 Kow heater which is about 10 amps and see what happens with it fully wound so we've turned our heater on at 2 and 1/2 KW and what happens basically is we create like an induction coil because this wire is wound up it's going to create a magnetic field and get very very hot now whether it catches fire or not is going to be down to the design of the extension lead have they got any built-in safety precautions or will this burst into flames now I can start to feel the wires are getting very hot inductance is starting to build up and a fire hazard is imminent well just as we thought this was about to burst into flames something happened happened the little red button here has clicked it's a thermal overload cutout and what it does is trips out the internal circuit breaker in this plug when it gets too hot that protects it from Catching Fire however older extension leads that don't have that thermal cutout will burst into flames if you overload them while they're fully coiled up so this is something you need to be really careful about and if you're buying a new extension lead it's definitely worth getting one with a cut out just to avoid mistakes so that was the 10 biggest mistakes diyers make with electrics let us know all of your worst DIY mistakes in the comments below or if you're a professional electrician let us know the worst things you've ever found I saw one of the worst DIY disasters I've ever seen in my electrical career and I made a video about it up here so if you've enjoyed this video why not settle in and watch another one and like And subscribe see you soon

Channel: Artisan Electrics

Views: 159,142

Keywords: artisan electrics, electrician life, DIY, mistakes, electrics

Id: RBuHJNYcc7k

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 08 2024