2 Most Common Issues DIYers Make With Metal Electrical Boxes

you won't make it too far in your diy electrical journey without running into metal electrical boxes i think these can sometimes be a little intimidating to diy-ers when you go to the home improvement store there's a bunch of different options some look to be exactly the same with small differences and because of that these components can be kind of avoided and inferior products can be used like a plastic junction box maybe up in your attic or in your basement these metal electrical boxes are robust they're almost indestructible they're going to hold up to heat and if you have a fire much much better they're not going to melt they're not going to crack if somebody steps on them so they do have a place and it is something that you're going to want to be familiar with for your projects around the house but there are two big mistakes that i see diyers make when working with these boxes and i do want to be clear i am not immune to this one of these mistakes i made on a prior video and the viewers called me out pretty quickly on not doing things correctly and not doing things up to code so let's jump in to show you these two things that you need to avoid to make sure you're comfortable with this type of component and that you're doing safely and up to code so showing an example where i use these metal junction boxes this is on one of our projects where i was doing some updating to home and i was installing led recessed lights in a living space for the first time and using some of the existing wires so what i was doing is i was taking the 14 2 wire coming in from the bottom and i was passing the hot to the black conductor on the 14 3 and then passing back the switched along the red conductor and then passing that to the 14 2 that i just brought into that junction box this way everything's contained easy to access if it needs servicing later on and just a classic example so this little mock-up is fairly similar to what i just showed you and demonstrates the first of the two most common issues so we have three pieces of twelve two romex coming in two of them are properly clamped down and then one is just passing through the four by four box with no method of securing which is unfortunately more common than you'd like to see in a lot of homes so the two big things here is you do not have any strain relief right i can push and pull the romex and that is going to push and pull the either wire connectors or if we had switches or outlets in here that would push and pull right on the screw terminals that is obviously no good you want strain relief that's connected to your 4x4 electrical box and then two you're gonna have your non-metallic sheathing possibly rubbing right on a sharp edge here which could easily cut through that sheathing and then possibly into your hot conductor which would lead to a short or depending on your wiring in your home could lead to a bigger issue like this one so here was an older home i picked up last year and this was in the basement it was a three-way light switch for the lights in the basement if you look closely you can see this was knob and tube and kind of frankenstein set up you can see that hot conductor coming in and making contact with a handy box the kicker to that one is because it was an older house these were ungrounded boxes so when that hot conductor touched the metal electrical box it actually sets that electrical box to be live and even the screws to the face plate so when i first went into that basement went to flip on the switch touched the screw i got a little bit of a kick from that hot side that was electrifying anything touching that metal electrical box so beware and that is exactly why when we're passing wires into a metal electrical box we have the clamps in place to protect from something like that so it's not complex and there's really no reason why you shouldn't be installing clamps or some type of bushing in here to protect your romex this is also why i like hybrid wire strippers this one they can wire strip and they have the broader head so i don't have to get out my pair of clients to knock these out so you simply just go on the side that is away from the small piece of metal still holding that in just hit that once we'll do two of them all you got to do is bend those in then you take that same pair of hybrids and just go ahead and break those off with just a few turns i do prefer these kind of classic clamps this is a 3 8 it's going to fit your 14 gauge romex your 12 gauge romex and fit about 95 percent of applications that's di wires do now with this nut you can take this is an old beat up slotted flat head you can take that and tighten the nut you'll see guys taking their linesmans and tapping that in to tighten it if i have access to both sides like this what i actually do is i'll i'll hand tighten to where i'm about 45 degrees off of where i want it and then usually that nut will cinch on and then i can just take my slotted and rotate that into place so now i have it where i want it i have access to the two screws i need to tighten to cinch down that clamp and that's all you need to do and then alternatively you might have seen these small plastic they're called connectors but it's kind of a bushing and it does have strain relief as well on the inside so you actually just press that into place and it locks it in place and then this is a 12-3 romex you slide that in and then you have strain relief pulling out now technically you can just keep pushing in because the way the tabs work so this is not my favorite but it definitely is easier to use i can see why it'd be a little bit more ideal for di wires opposed to your more classic metal clamp this is what i use this is what i carry all the time on me but those are your two most common examples and i'll put links in the description to the two different types of clamps i keep calling them clamps but they're actually connectors just for your reference in your own projects also down in the description i will have a link to our amazon store and that's going to be my recommendations for all the different tools you'll need across your diy projects of your house and that is adapting over time as i find new things like this little guy if you guys have watched any of my videos before you know i like the wago 221 lever nuts opposed to wire nuts for diyers and this is a new 221-2401 and it is an in-line splice with a little test port in the middle so kind of cool for a few different applications i'm sure it'll be a topic of discussion in the future but as i find new things like this i will add that to the store as it becomes available so that's down there for your reference and include pretty much any tool i use across these videos now for the second most common thing that i see and this is a mistake that i have made such as if we jump back to the led recessed lighting project and i'm finishing up this junction box this was where i left something out now if you have some experience you can probably guess and that was i did not ground the electrical box itself now why we want to ground these things goes back to what we just talked about if you properly ground the metal electrical box and for whatever reason the hot conductor the actual copper comes in contact with the metal then that will short and because you have a ground that will trip your breaker if you do not ground then just like the application we talked about before that housing can become energized from the hot side and then whoever touches that will create a ground path and they can get a small jolt injury or possibly even death so we need to avoid that at all cost let me show you how easy that is to install so taking a look at our example again from this mock-up you can see i have my three bare copper ground wires coming into my wago 221 from each of the strands of romax but i did not ground that to the box now there is a specific bump back here that has a threaded hole in it that matches up to these 632 grounding screws now you can either get these grounding screws and make up your own pigtail to tie into it or you can get these pre-made pigtails that have your 632 screw they have a shepherd's hook already in the clockwise direction and are ready to tie in to your other grounds so all you have to do is place that screw in the threaded hole tighten that down one thing i wish is the screws would fit robertson or ecx but they actually don't they only fit a phillips or a flathead screwdriver okay so that's tightened up and now i'm going to take the wago the beautiful part about the wagos i'm just going to take this three pin off and that is going to be reusable so i'll throw that back in my box and i'm going to swap it out to a 5 pin so that's all there is to it we now have that screw you can see coming through the back side which is flush to the enclosure and we are now bonded so now our electrical box is bounded to our grounds and we are good to go so hopefully that information will get you a little bit more comfortable with metal electrical boxes and also help you avoid those common mistakes that diy-ers make now if you want to dive deeper into that project we featured with the led recessed lights which i think bang for the buck if you have a 1950 60s 70s 80s home those led wafer recess lights are one of the best upgrades you can do you can check out this video right here and it will walk you through the complete step-by-step process so thanks for joining me on this video and we'll catch you on that next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 1,452,430

Keywords: metal electrical box installation, metal junction box, everyday home repairs, diy electrical projects, DIWire

Id: 6GUODvOVz10

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 05 2022