5 MAJOR Violations DIYers Are Making When Installing Metal Electrical Boxes! MOST Are Guilty Of #3!

on this episode I'm going to show you some of the biggest mistakes diy-ers are making when it comes to installing these electrical metal boxes so stay tuned [Music] hi friends welcome to fix this house if you're new to the channel consider pressing the Subscribe notification Bell so you can always be in tune on DIYs how-to videos and product reviews that I did within this channel just a quick disclaimer we are going to be working with electrical components on today's episode my electrical codes and your Electrical Codes might be different so always make sure that you're always current and up to date with your current electrical codes please turn off the power from your circuit breaker whenever you're working with any type of electrical and if you're unconfident with working on any type of electrical please hire a qualified certified electrician with that being said my full disclaimer is on the description down below let's get into this episode so if your brand new DIY and this is your first time working with metal electrical boxes some of these mistakes I'll be showing you will be a good one to look out for this one that I want to talk to you about is not using NM clamp connectors so I've been guilty of this in the past when I was installing pop lights on my ceiling and I fed the NM cable through these metal boxes I forgot to put these NM cable connectors reason why you want to put these NM meaning non-metallic cable connector these things right here are fairly sharp especially when this gets into an angle and notice that even though I just rub it like this it's going to cut right through especially this is just made out of plastic easiest way to prevent this from happening is to install NM cable connector there are many different types of NM cable connectors but these are the ones that I have available and this ones are all 3 8. you have the metal type and the plastic type now these two are fairly different one is a screw-on type like so take out one of these Knockouts out insert this just like so the other version is a snap lock it's a lot easier because all you have to do is pretty much just push it in just like so just locks into place you don't have to worry about tightening this or coming loose because it's already set like that little tab right there that you push out and same one like there and it comes off fairly easy just like that just take your NM cable feed it right through [Music] feed your cable and you're ready to go screw that right in and then tighten it to loosen it you can use your flat head and just push down on one of these locks and it will loosen you have this plastic NM cable connector it's the same thing as the other one right here where it's a push in version to right through like that makes it easy and inside there's a little stopper right there so all you got to do is push your wire right through feed it and it makes it hard for that wire to pull out in my honest opinion I like to use these metal push in versions rather than the screw one types like this one because sometimes this has the tendency of getting loose this one as you can see it just kind of doesn't feel like it's that stable and this one is a lot more sturdy and a lot faster to put on but that's just my honest opinion if you're interested on any of these three that I just talked to you about I'll leave the link on the description down below along with all the tools and materials that I use within this video so in this example there are two mistakes I'll give you a few seconds to see if you can spot those two mistakes all right so if you said that the sheathing and the ground wire then you got it right so let's first start off with the sheeting common mistake not only applies on metal boxes but it also applies on Old work new work plastic J boxes fiberglass boxes and that is the amount of sheeting that is exposed on the inside of the box coming out to about an inch and a half now per coat you have to have a quarter inch of sheeting that is inside the Box any more than that you are out of code two ways you can solve this you can either get your knife cut on the back slice it off take out that sheeting and leave a quarter inch or and just pull it back like so and leave it to about quarter inch if you said grounding on the second mistake then you're absolutely correct now you want to ground your metal box all the time is because let's say one of your conductors say your hot wire gets disconnected from one of the outlet Terminals and now it is touching the metal box that whole box now without the ground wire is fully energized and let's just say you end up touching it you are going to get shocked and it's very very dangerous now as you can see right here there's a little Mound on top of these boxes I kind of call it an ant hill there is a threaded hole through there you can buy these ground screws that just thread it through that hole like that let's take a piece of ground wire and then use your Shepherd hook right here so again a lot of people have been asking about this tool right here this is actually a volt claw so I'll leave the link on the description down below for this tool as well hook a ground wire in here like so all your ground wires and connect them all together and all the grounds is finally grounding onto this metal box the reason why you want to ground your electrical box is because to say that this hot wire got disconnected from one of the terminals of the outlet or switch and now it's touching the metal box without the ground wire this whole box now is energized so if you can accidentally touch this box you are going to get shocked so if this box was grounded and this hot wire touches the box now it will trip the circuit breaker and pretty much shut off the power so that is the safety feature that you need so make sure that your boxes are grounded and this next one is the amount of wiring you're supposed to have inside the box now it doesn't matter again which kind of electrical box that you have metal or plastic old work or new work and that is the minimum amount of wire that you're supposed to have in there is six inches from the end of the sheeting some of them are only around three inches now per code minimum amount that you should have that is coming out from this J box that is going breaking the plane right here to the edge of the box is three inches with an additional three inches going past the edge of the boxes so total of six inches from the end of that open sheathing all the way out is a minimum of six inches I kind of like to keep it around eight inches just so that you can give the next person or next DIY they're going to be super happy with you for leaving that amount but it gives them an extra spacious in case you want to change out the electrical box or they end up clipping that one they have enough to work with so here's a debatable one and let me know in the comment section down below what you think and that is what you see there's two different colored wire here one is a 12 gauge one is a 14 gauge some people are saying you can't connect the neutrals the hots and the grounds together because there are different gauges one's a lot smaller one's a lot thicker so make sure that if you're joining a 14 gauge with a 12 gauge you can't combine them as long as the circuit that it's feeding from again the circuit that is feeding from is 15 amp because from the 15 amp can only go up to 14 gauge so just to be safe when you're connecting wirings just connect the ones with the same color but it's totally up to you just make sure that you know what amps the power is coming from whether it be a 15 amp circuit or a 20 amp circuit but there you have it friends those are some of the biggest mistakes DIYs are making when they're selling these metal boxes hopefully you can catch some of this and use these tips on your future projects and let me know in the comment section down below if you have any other ones that I might have missed and make sure friends that if you found this video super helpful please hit that big thumbs up press the Subscribe notification Bell and I'll see your friends on the next video thanks [Music]

Channel: Fix This House

Views: 14,314

Keywords: electrical metal box, new work electrical box, old work electrical box, ground wire, neutral wire, line wire, hot wire, home electrical, Electrical DIY, electrical do it yourself, home wiring, home electrical how to, electrical fatal mistakes, electrical mistakes by DIYers, home renovation, house electrical, electrical work, house wiring, electrical outlet, electrical switch, 5 MAJOR Violations DIYers Are Making When Installing Metal Electrical Boxes! MOST Are Guilty Of #3!

Id: l9csY1Bma-E

Length: 8min 4sec (484 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 05 2023