6 MORE MISTAKES DIYers Make When Wiring Outlets

here are six more mistakes diy-ers make when wiring Outlets number six on our list is leaving Outlets recessed rather than bringing them flush with the outlet plate it's not at all uncommon to have an outlet situation like this where the outlet itself is recessed back a little bit as compared to the face plate that's matched up with the drywall or the outside wall whatever that may be you've got a few easy options to take care of this the first one is using little spacers like this these are like little Legos and you can stack as many of these as you need to but according to our National Electric Code you're only allowed to cover about a quarter inch anything over that if that recess is more than a quarter inch then you need to apply something else to protect the outside of the box here we'll take a look at some options but one of those is to use a box extender like this one the Box extender allows you to add on to the Box essentially and it gives you some protection for those wires around there and keeps everything in place another option is an extender plate like this one this gives you the option to put this plate on the outside of your wall surface and attach your outlet to that and therefore your plate to it putting everything flush with the wall itself now keep in mind that quarter inch really matters so if it's more than a quarter inch you definitely want to use an extension and not just one of these inserts or plates these spacers are really easy to work with they're basically like little Legos you've got 1 8 inch for each section and they fold really easily onto each other and then the opening is always oriented in the same direction because that wraps around these two screws so we're going to need two of those so an eighth of an inch plus an eighth there's a quarter if you needed to you could even go up to 3 8 but again at that point I'd recommend using a box extender instead they're easy to tear off so I'm going to take my quarter inch here and just tear it like that now I'm going to take my extender and slip it on to the screw here on the top and same thing here on the bottom and they have little tabs so they'll kind of hold in place and I can already see from my angle here that the outlet itself is protruding just a bit from the wall which is exactly what we want now we're looking way better we're within code here and if you wanted to again you can use that outlet box extender to get this perfectly flush with the faceplate just a reminder you can check out shirts like this one and a bunch of other DIY shirts I've got using the links in the description below number five on our list is rocking the wire strippers back and forth while stripping wire when we're using traditional wire strippers like these our tendency is to get the proper gauge like so pop it in and then we kind of rock it back and forth like this to get the sheathing off the wire now that does work but what that does is it introduces little Nicks and weaknesses in the copper solid wire here so when you're doing this the right way to do it is just to line it up get your length squeeze it and pull don't rock back and forth just pull it straight off towards the end of the wire and you're good to go number four on our list is not being careful as you strip the sheathing off of Romex or non-metallic cables this is a super common setup right here where I've got my receptacle box and some 14 2 Romex coming out and we need to strip the sheathing off this cable all the way up to the inside of the box here one of the issues that you're going to see a lot is people doing something that's going to compromise the wires inside here the hot or the neutral a common thing to do is you'll just take out your knife and then one thing that I've seen and I highly discourage anyone from doing is just kind of like cutting around the sheathing here and pull off the cables like that yes that works but that's definitely going to cause some issues with these wires in here at least very likely I've seen boxes where they're wired like that and what ends up happening is you go to work on them later and the wires actually snap because as soon as you bent these around it's caused them to be brittle inside here and that's just a break point and that causes all kinds of other issues an even more common scenario is to take your blade and run it down the length of the wire like this and it can slip off like that but you can just follow it down kind of pushing down to make sure I get through that sheathing and then from there I can peel it back and then you've got a few options at this point you can use some wire snippers to cut off that extra or a more common thing I see is people taking that same blade and cutting it there which is okay to do but what you've introduced now again is the possibility that you've scored the inside of these wires here we know we want to avoid damaging the wires inside our Romex cable here and so what do we do to avoid that I actually put this question out there on my Community page and got back some pretty interesting answers one of the answers was to use the ideal little Ripper and that's this guy here if you look inside the little Ripper stripper here I love that name by the way it's got this little hook on it that's got a blunt nose but a sharpened hook on the inside this is for getting underneath the jacket of your Romex cables and then cutting a nice clean line up as far as you need and the cool thing is this allows me to get right up into the box sorry I can now use this blade right here to cut off the excess jacket or sheathing even up inside the box which I love and cut that off deep inside on the other side we have this little v-shaped blade and that's intended for doing some wire stripping so I can score it around like that and pop it off I don't know that this is my favorite way to strip wires but it does get the job done and the cool thing is if you've got an outlet that requires a shepherd's hook you've also got the little holes right here for bending and then you can do your shepherd's hook just like that as well the other nice thing is this little opening here is actually perfect for putting your caps in like that and then you can use that as a twister to give you a little extra leverage when you're putting your wires together like this it should be noted that I found that these are least expensive when you buy them directly at your local Lowe's store I couldn't find them at Home Depot and on Amazon they cost three or four bucks more if you want to buy them from Lowe's they're about seven dollars so that's a pretty good deal a few of you mentioned using some automatic wire strippers and I've talked about this in other videos too because this can absolutely work for a thicker cable like this I'll just pop this in here squeeze and it pops that off so that works really great if you have to do that higher up it's going to separate it and then you just pull that sheathing off and it keeps everything intact inside here which is great so that's another good option to go with probably the method I've used the most is just to take your box cutter and then just score the very ends right here whether that's one score or two on there and then you can just peel this right up the box so it'll just break along like that and that works as well you can also use What's called the electrician's knife or a hawk Bill knife like this one it's a pretty gnarly looking tool here but the cool thing about this is unlike your box cutter blades this is much sturdier and much thicker and is going to have a nice sharp point on it it's sharpened all the way along the inside here and this is a sheathing knife it's meant for doing this type of work the other cool thing about it is you can actually purchase some replacement hawkbill blades like these and that way with if this one gets dull or you just need to replace it at some point you can do that and just like the Milwaukee Fastback and other blades like this you can just fold it and keep it in your pocket like this there are other blades that you can get like this one here this one has a nice little metal solid piece on the end that's meant for slipping inside the sheathing and that way it's not damaging it's kind of riding along the inside wires one of the things I didn't like about this is it requires a protective cover to be on it at all times and it's kind of big and bulky if you have the luxury of being able to de-sheath your wires before you put them in the box that's going to make life a lot easier for a few reasons one you can use a tool like this which has the sheathing strippers right on them so I can take my 14 2 line it up crimp it down and just like before pull that straight off and there we go so that came off and it's nice and clean it even takes the paper along with it in many cases which is awesome so that's definitely what I recommend if you have the option if you're like me and like to be smart 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our next DIY or mistake number three on our list is leaving too much or too little sheathing exposed inside the outlet or receptacle box here in the United States at least there is a very specific amount of sheathing that needs to be left on the Romex cable or non-metallic cable as it comes into the box the sheath shall extend not less than 6 six millimeters or a quarter inch inside the box and Beyond any cable clamp just to give you an idea a quarter inch is next to nothing this pencil is approximately a quarter inch wide that's the width that you need to work with at least that much inside the box as far as sheathing is concerned that leads us to number two which is cutting the wires too long or Too Short that come out of the outlet or receptacle box when you leave too much wire coming out of the box like this you might think that's great that gives people plenty of room to work with and it does but also what it does is causes a lot more bulk or volume to have to be shoved into the box that's going to cause a lot of problems when you have let's say a smart light switch or a GFCI outlet those are typically quite a bit larger than a traditional outlet and trying to fit that and everything else inside the box is going to be problematic dealing with wires that are too long is one thing you can always cut them shorter but when they're too short that can be a real hassle if you have to make Little Shepherd's hooks around the ends of these and then try to to fit your outlet in there that can be a real pain one little tip that makes this a lot easier than pulling out the measuring tape and measuring every time is just to figure out what that six inch measurement looks like on the tool that you're using to cut the wires so on my seven and ones here I can hold this up and say right there is six inches I can even count down that's two grip markers on here anything past that is going to be long enough so that's great so I can put that to my sheathing in here go to the mark there cut it a little bit extra and I've got my six inches and I'm ready to go as always a huge thank you to these guys right here for supporting our Channel each and every month you can learn more using the join button down below and our number one mistake on today's list is wiring your outlets in series rather than in parallel running wires in series is pretty common amongst di wires what it means is that we've got our incoming wire from the circuit breaker box this is coming into our first outlet and it's connected directly to the outlet that a hot the neutral and the ground are all plugged in then we have our outgoing wires our Romex going to the next outlet and once again they're all connected to the outlet now in some ways this is okay because it works right we do have power coming to each of these the downside if you think about it is that as we look at this if one of these fails let's say this this first one up here fails then this one is dead and this one is dead too it's bad news you're putting all of your Reliance on each individual Outlet instead we want to use what's called parallel for parallel what we're doing differently is as one comes in we're connecting all of the wires to the outgoing wires rather than to the outlet directly we're using what are called pigtails here and there's a few different ways you can do this I'm using some Wago connectors these 221s on this particular one so I've got both the incoming and the outgoing neutral wires going into this Wago and then I've got one short little pigtail going out to the outlet itself self same thing with our Hots and then for the grounds same exact situation with this if this particular Outlet fails the power will continue on to the next one and the next one and the next one if you don't want to use wagos you can of course use traditional wire caps like this and then again with the pigtails they're really just a section of Romex it's the same wire I've stripped both ends and then I'm just going to connect that in you can either pre-twist these together like a lot of people like to do or some of the instructions on these actually specify not doing that but that's a debate for another day and then I'll twist these together like so there we go so I know I've got a good connection there and then I can just connect this right into my outlet I'm going to screw that in with my ECX screwdriver there we go so now once again I've got incoming and outgoing all connected to each other but also one pigtail for each going out to the outlet it's going to do the job of making sure that the power continues regardless of what happens to the individual Outlets if you haven't already seen it here are the first mistakes diy-ers make when wiring outlets and here are some mistakes that we tend to make when wiring light switches I'm Nils with learn to DIY thanks for watching

Channel: LRN2DIY

Views: 83,877

Keywords: diy, how-to, lrn2diy

Id: xe3HziTR6p0

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 11 2022