Episode 13 - SCHEMATICS how a switch loop works

what's up guys this is Destin Stelzer with another episode of electrician U and today we're going to talk about how a switch loop works switch loops for apprentices these are like mysterious unicorns I remember like California threeways or illegal threeways or dead dead in three ways whatever you call them those types of three ways and switch loops were one of the hardest things for me to grasp my head around I'm like how in the hell are you making this work and every apprentice that I've trained it's like it's like a brick wall that hits them in the [ __ ] face it's just really hard for them to understand it without seeing it drawn so I'm gonna do my best to try to explain how a switch loop works today alright so let's talk about first like the reasons that you would use a switch loop so normally when you when you're wiring a room and you have your light switch and you've got a light normally how that switch works is that we bring our hot we bring our hot into here we bring a neutral which we just tie under a wire nut and then we have a separate 12-2 that goes from this switch box up to this light so you would have your switch leg that goes up and connects to the light and then you'd have your neutral that comes out of this wire nut and it goes up to the light so what you're creating is a path that comes from our panel let's just say panel hot neutral so we've got a path that goes through this switch it connects through here when you flip the switch on sends current all the way through this light goes through that ATB tiny little filament and comes out and goes through the neutral and it has a path all the way to the back remember in a electrical circuit you have to have a a constant loop you have to have a continuous path for current to be able to travel and an AC electricity it travels back and forth really really fast but if you break that at all if you turn the switch off current completely stops moving so with all of that in mind the whole idea behind wiring a regular switch just any old regular two gang three gang for gang single gang doesn't matter any switch even three ways the idea is that you run your hot into the switch first and then you run your switch leg out of there and go up to the light that's just the methodology so this is going to be our normal alright so the difference in a switch loop is that instead of bringing our incoming hot over to the switch first and then running our leg up and creating a loop that comes back to the panel we're gonna bring our hot into the light and this lights going to be up in the ceiling or wherever there's a lot of different places that it could be but the whole idea is that you're sending a hot and a neutral into here and you're leaving that neutral up you're not going to run a neutral down here because the switch doesn't need a neutral a switch just needs a hot in and hot out it's the same one piece of wire you can think of a switch is basically one wire that goes from the panel all the way up to a light and what you're doing is you're putting a switch in the middle of it to be able to turn that off and disconnect that wire and cut it in half basically so for a switch loop to work we don't need a neutral down here which is cool because that frees up one wire so normally when I wire a switch loop I have an incoming hot and I have an incoming neutral from here I'm gonna leave this neutral up in this box so I'm just gonna go like that to represent like that's where that stops it's just we're leaving the neutral up there because the actual light fixture that we're going to put up has a black and a white wire in it and a ground but you're gonna hook the fixtures neutral up to this neutral so you just leave it there for our hot we're gonna take and we're gonna use the white conductor that's in the 12 to that we're running down from this light box all the way down a wall to the switch we're gonna use the white conductor to send our hot down and we're gonna use the black conductor to send back up now to make this a little bit simpler I'm gonna draw these wires out you're gonna take your hot wire your black conductor that comes into this box your incoming power and you're gonna wire nut it with the white wire from this box that goes down to the switch so I'm gonna draw a little red wire not on there so that's your first joint that you're gonna make then you have your black wire coming back up that's in that 12-2 and that black wire is gonna hook up to your actual fixture so both of these are now what is gonna hook your fixture up when you take that chandelier that pendant or whatever you do a little bit of artistry for y'all say we've got some you've got a pennant that pennant is gonna have a black wire and it's gonna have the neutral that neutral is going to end up hooking up here and this black is gonna end up hooking up to there but that's it that's everything that's how a switch loop works all it is is switching from a different location and sending two conductors down to a switch they can be orange it doesn't matter it does there's codes local codes are gonna tell you like what conductors you need to use what colors you need to use but it's int it's the same thing a lot of people think that the light and conductor in a 12-2 is always neutral it's not it's just another conductor just because it's white get out of the get out of the habit of thinking is the white that completely neutral with white is always neutral it's not now there are some places I will say this in the country there's some places that do not let you do switch loops because what you're doing is you're potentially creating a dangerous situation you're sending your hot down on a white wire that goes down here and if you don't label it black or something that can actually put some sort of label on it so that people know it's hot some young helper or some like you know inexperienced a husband could be sitting here opening this box up and they pull the white wire off and they're like oh I've heard that the black one is the hot one I can just take the white one off and he gets shot so there's some places and that's valid I mean it's absolutely a valid concern to think about so there's some places in the country that do not allow that some codes have been made like here in Austin there's a code that says that you actually have to run a hot new neutral into every switch box you can't have any switch box that does not have a neutral present and there's another reason why I mean a lot of these like high-tech advanced switches now that like radio raw or like you know anything that's an automation system a lot of those devices require there to be a neutral in the box otherwise the device is not that work but again that's just getting into later [ __ ] we'll talk about that in much much later videos but for now this is the idea of how like how you can actually do this and make this work again just gonna cover one last time you have an incoming hot that's tied to a white wire that goes down to a switch then in that same 12 to the black wire comes up and hooks up to your fixture and the neutral hooks up to the incoming neutral that comes in that box because we didn't have to run a neutral down here we just left the neutral up in the box let me let me know if that's like muddy at all if you guys have any misunderstandings or don't know what the hell I'm talking about leave some comments below you can also go to Electrician you.com you can leave comments under the videos there you can email me Dustin at electrician EUCOM you can go to the Facebook group the electrician you you can go on twitter at electrician underscore you i'm on instagram too I've been doing Instagram stories and just interacting on Instagram showing some of the work that I'm doing doing some previews of episodes talking with a lot of people it's just a [ __ ] astounding and how many people use Instagram so go check out Instagram and hit me up there I do check the messenger there so anyways let me know if you guys have any ideas any thoughts any concerns any like what the [ __ ] you talking about I still don't understand and I can do it one off with you if you don't really understand what's going on so I love you all be safe do good work and love this [ __ ] tray ban it's awesome see you later [Music]

Channel: Electrician U

Views: 192,772

Keywords: electrician, electrical, electricity, apprentice, journeyman, master, electrical vlog, electrician vlog, electrical videos, electrician videos, electrical show, electrician show, electrician u, dustin stelzer, journey 2 master, schematics, how a switch loop works, how switch loops work, switch loop, switch loops, how to switch loop, SCHEMATICS how a switch loop works, switchloop, switch loop drawing

Id: nLwg6dpCsyU

Length: 9min 51sec (591 seconds)

Published: Thu May 17 2018