Episode 4 - How To Wire For And Install A Plug-In Receptacle

[Music] what's going on everyone this is Dustin Stelzer from electrician u and today we're gonna talk about how to wire and install a plug and receptacle nothing fancy about it this is a pretty beginner video but like I said in the last video I'm going to start out pretty basic on these videos and just show you how I do this stuff again this is not the end-all be-all way to do this some of y'all may rip things out a little bit differently some of y'all may use your tools a little bit differently but this is just how I do it and it's time to kind of give new apprentices out there a perspective and an idea of what they might be getting into and they're going into their first apprenticeship so let's begin [Music] so I get a new mic because this sucks I've got like 20 feet of cord rolling around on the floor my damn mic keeps falling off every time I do anything so anyways I've got some better quality stuff coming soon and apologies for all of the cars driving by I'm doing the [ __ ] in my garage we fancy around here so first thing that I'm gonna do I don't know why I have my tools yet take a single gang box single getting nail on box this is what our plug is gonna go in I'm gonna mark a plug height down below actually I'm gonna come out of this box this is a switch that I did last week to to my wife oh I've came out here the other day and I cut a hole in our garage I had a sawzall and I was like I'm banging [ __ ] there's nails sticking out I'm trying to nail all of them in my wife walks out of the garage she's like what the hell are you doing I'm like I just I didn't want to build a wall so we have a wall here it just seems to find it so that was an interesting interesting little conversation that I have but I'm out of the doghouse so okay so my plug height a DA regulations for plug height are 15 inches that's the lowest plug like you anybody in wheelchair needs to be able to reach a plug from their real chair of their wheelchair so you got to make sure that the bottom plug the lowest reach point for a plug is at least 15 inches off the finished floor so I'm gonna go a little bit higher than that again this is just my garage there's nobody coming in here in a wheelchair that are gonna use all of this test ship and I'm doing so for me I'm gonna go let's say 20 inches so I'm gonna mark my 20 do my fancy a little slash that lets any helpers that come after me know that what I mean is the line is the top of the box and the slash is where the box goes and actually if I would have thought about this a little bit more I'm gonna do it on this side because I'm coming out of here for my power all right and one thing that I like to do is as soon as I put a box in I pop out however many of the little knockouts that I'm going to use I pop them out this time I'm only gonna use one so from last week's episode when I showed how to wire and install a switch and install a light and how to make it all work oh I explained that we were taking power from there bringing it to the switch and then turning the switch on to there I'm gonna tap into this box and add another wire to jump out from the power that's already here down to this box I'm gonna wire it I'm going to put a plug in and then we're gonna test that plug with it with a plug tester and just make sure everything works just fine so let's begin first thing that I'm going to do is roll my wire out again don't ever just take wire from the middle of this thing and pull out or else the the wires just gonna spiral out of control and then trying to install it it's gonna be shitty and it's gonna get caught up in everything so we always always always roll our wire out so we take from that the outside of the roll which is this guy I'm going to take this and put it down on the floor and step on this end at first and then I'm gonna walk this whole roll out until I've got like I don't know ten fifteen workable feet all right so next thing I'm going to do I'm going to take this switch out getting a high gear there pull all of our wires out and what I'm gonna need to do is I have to figure out which one of these is my incoming hot and which one is my switch leg I'm actually gonna be tying into my incoming hot to bring power down to that plug I also need to tap into this neutral and I also need to give it a ground you need all three of your conductors going down a plug needs a hot a neutral and a ground the black white and the copper so take this guy off and a lot of people when they when they add a wire they just leave this joint intact and then they twist a new one on to it and make their joint ends up looking all ugly and [ __ ] I don't do that I start out from fresh fresh clean joint normally I'm a little bit more limbal with limber with my fingers but uh recently I had stitches in my finger because I was an idiot and I cut my finger wide open with a damn utility knife a brand new blade so like I'm kind of weak and thumbless on a lot of these things that's why it may look stupid when I'm holding [ __ ] but uh deal with it [ __ ] all right so I know that my incoming hot is this wire and I can see all the way into that box see if I can get a little bit better angle on that I know that the one coming in here you know the one that loops over that is my incoming hot so my incoming hot in this case is actually going to be my top wire that's the wire that I need to make joints on and then I need to take my ground apart as well because I'm gonna add one more ground water so sometimes getting these ground wires off of these things are really difficult alright I'm gonna leave the switch on for right now so the only wires that I'm gonna be dealing with are these guys right here I'm gonna take this wire nut off bring it down here and we're gonna loosen up my ground wires so that I can make a nice beautiful joint with all the new ground wires and that everything's touching instead of just half-assing it and add in the wire alright so now we've got everything apart I need to knock one of these knockouts out that are in the back you may ask why I have a wire nut in my mouth I don't know I just I tend to do that a lot I'm working with screws and [ __ ] I just put them in my mouth trouble it terrible habit to have but whatever I've done worse alright so first off we're gonna bring our wire into the box when I try to leave about as much wire as I have on my other wires wire and wires my wire from my wires you always want to put staples in within 12 inches of a box that's code so this is six inches that's fine [Music] and then I'm gonna cut this to the usable length that I need leave about eight inches outside of the box and then go in from a little hole that I popped out a minute ago I want this wire to be very very straight and very neat so once I get a wire in the box I don't just leave it all sloppy and then like smash it up you know I try to get everything I run my fingers down and I make sure that it's straight you know I'm I'm really meticulous and all that [ __ ] so you know if there's a certain spacing back here I'm not gonna staple this all the way back here I'm gonna try to make it look as even and neat as possible you're supposed to do this work per code in a neat and workman like manner so always try to do good work that looks good looks like a professional did it your boss will thank you [Music] and again don't ever get your staples too far you know like that wire can actually move a little bit that's how it should be you're just trying to secure the wire in place you're not trying to get to the point where you're smashing the whole damn wire you don't want to put that that metal staple and smash it into the other wires because it'll actually penetrate and short out those wires so you're damaging the materials that you're just now putting it all right so now that all of that is in place I'm gonna get this wire ripped out get this side ripped out I'm gonna put my plug in I'm gonna tie all my joints together put everything back and then I'm gonna hook up my real janky temporary power situation over there and get a plug tester out and we'll test this thing so like I talked about last time make sure you get a good fresh blade you know utility knife reach up in that box make sure that you leave it at a quarter to a half inch of romex sheathing on the wire pull the sheathing off when you're actually out in the field it's a really good idea when you're doing this on multiple plugs throughout the entire day to keep a trash box with you that is secret number one keep a trash box with you any time that you're working on anything and that you're going to be building up trash otherwise you're gonna have little piles of [ __ ] all over the place and at the end of the day all the guys you work with they're gonna have to go around and pick up all your trash but you keep a trash box with you throughout the day and when it fills up just keep dumping it out you're doubling the amount of work that you're doing and you're saving time so it's a really good habit to get into plus you just look like you know what you're doing you look like a professional because you're cleaning up after yourself as you're doing it without even making a mess so I'm not doing that right now this is my garage so [ __ ] off all right so those three are ready I'm gonna this is something I do don't necessarily have to do this but I like to I like to accordion everything in there and get it ripped out I like all of my wires to be perfectly you know from top right to bottom left so when you look through at a ripped out job and all of your wires are tucked back in there every single one of them is at the same angle again I'm just anal there's probably not a lot of people that do that maybe there is I don't know that's just how I do it I think it looks neat and it makes you look like you know what the [ __ ] you're doing okay so I've got all of this ripped out I have to deal with all of these wires again so first thing that I do always is deal with my ground wire and all the other wires have to be patient so I take all three of these ground wires this third ground wire I probably cut a little short shouldn't cut that short but it's still workable so I'm gonna get a few good twists on it all right I'm gonna cut the short guy off and crimp it a little bit more just to make sure that it's all good and together and I want y'all to look at that coil that I have here see if I can see how uh see how coiled all of these are you know they all lay down on each other and look perfect they're not all sloppy and like you know some like touching in some places and not touching in some places that's how you want all of your joints and anything that you twist together that's conductive you want it to be neatly spiraled and very very tightly tightly spiraled together that way it maximizes the surface area that you have for that wire to be touching the other wire and it makes sure that you have a good bond with those wires that your wires aren't going to come loose over time a ground is not a thing that you want to come loose the ground is like a safety wire keeps equipment from burning up it keeps people from being shocked it's just a really good thing to always make sure that you spend time on your joints on your grounds on every joint but ground specifically - because grounds are very important so now that I've got all that done I'm going to slide my green wire nut back down retighten normally I would leave the the cut ground wires a lot longer than that just I buck up sometimes too so it's generally a better rule of thumb to leave you know like I would have maybe had that ground wire or that wire or not all the way down here and made all your coils even longer and the only real reason is for anybody that's coming behind you to do work if they have to take all that apart then they got a sitting dick with like a really really short wire so that example don't follow my example okay so now the grounds are out of our way I'm gonna fold this guy up just get it out of the way for now now I'm going to deal with my neutrals they're all kind of like curly queued and and sloppy so I'm gonna cut the tips off straighten them all out that way you get fresh joints today I'm gonna use these guys it's just a found tool that I have it's actually a romantic stripper so it's got number 12 and number 14 for like a single wire and number 12 and number 14 for 12 tiro max I don't ever use it I just use my knife I'm faster with that anyways I'm gonna take about three quarters of an inch to an inch and I always cut at a 45 degree angle and then pop it over straight and pull the wire off it's just a thing I've learned over the years that makes it come off easier and then again with my weak-ass thumb you try to corral these wires and watch how I watch how I braid these wires like you I'm not braiding them but you want to get them all together to lay down neatly and when you got like three or four or five wires it's really hard to do that so usually what I do is when I hold it I'll get it started and then I'll slowly just kind of crimp like see I'm squeezing my hand like this and kind of going around and twisting it that's just shaping my joint how I want it to be shaped and then once I've got it all neatly laid down then I take it and I really grab down and apply the [ __ ] out of the pressure and make sure that that joints twisted and I make sure that I twist a good like two or three inches of the wire you know the sheathing as well so there's no way that that those joints are coming apart that is a solid joint and then put my red wire nut on and I want to get this neutral pushed back as far as possible so it doesn't interfere with my switch at all now there's something that you could do but I don't think is the best practice personally I do not do this this little plate if you notice on the backside of it has two openings two little holes that you can slide one wire in the top and one wire in the bottom I have personally found that one of the wires become suspect sometimes and just slides out guys that would tighten them well enough whatever I don't like to put multiple stripped out wires under one plate it's just me personally I like to pigtail both of these wires together into a single wire and put that single wire on the switch that's what I'm going to do and I'm gonna pull this black guy out of the sheathing strip about an inch of that put all three of these together again grab and just kind of start shaping all of them so they're all laying down together that's the first way to really like tackle getting a joint together and then start twisting the living hell out of it once you get it all right try to cut any excess off you don't want to put that in a wire nut I don't know if you can see that very well but it's just jagged at the end so I would cut it at a slight angle that way it goes up inside the wire not real nice these things are are cone-shaped so they get skinnier at the top so having an angle to your joint you know cutting it at an angle there's a really good idea it just gets it further up in there and makes for a tighter joint all right so now I'm gonna get this guy out of the way as well all right so now I'm gonna put the hot back on the switch once you get it on with a drill it's a good practice if you don't have a torquing screwdriver which is becoming a bigger thing these days like people want you to take a torquing screwdriver and torque down all this stuff to a specific torque setting that when you tighten it the tool clicks I'm not doing that this is basic instructional [ __ ] so ask your master electrician or your journeyman about the torquing devices but anyways for now I am gonna tighten this just a little bit more drill doesn't ever really get it fully tight so it's always good to torque it just a little bit tighter then I'm gonna put my ground on [Music] [Music] and then when you push these back you want to make sure that this ground wire doesn't come anywhere near these contacts these terminals otherwise if it touches it you're going to turn the breaker on it'll short out you try to make sure that I get this switch in there as straight as possible [Music] notice I only screw halfway at first that way it gives me a little bit of flexibility if it's not straight but this is actually pretty straight cool so that takes care of the switch portion of this all right so my next step is I have my handy-dandy tamper-resistant receptacle here tamper resistant you can see there's like little plastic inserts in there so if like a kid wants to be a dumbass like I was because to take a [ __ ] fork in this plug they won't shock themselves it's always fun to see a kid shocked this homes the hook you know like just seeing that raw beautiful moment in nature where a kid hurts themselves and they realize I'm never gonna do that again that [ __ ] hurt it's just there's beauty in that anyways use tamper-resistant receptacle as people don't want your babies getting hurt alright so I usually when I bend hooks I use this tool I'm not gonna do that actually I'm gonna show you all how to do it from basic strippers because this is one on one kind of [ __ ] so take this stripper don't let go of the wire don't hold it back here when you're let me see if I get a better angle don't hold it down here when you're bending a hooker you're gonna end up with this big ass crazy hook you always want to hold the wire at the very end like just keep a good grasp of it and then use these holes in your stripper that's what they're there for go in you know maybe like a quarter of an inch and keep pressure on the bottom of it with your finger and then roll it up and that's a good enough hook for anything that you're gonna do so I'll do that again keep my strippers at a 45 degree angle pop the wire off bend a hook maybe one other angle let's try it this way take about an inch up that off and Bend a hook see all three of my hooks are about the same size that's a small tight hook and you'll notice when you when you got to put it on the plug the hook fits like perfectly on that screw you know it just goes around there like nicely and perfectly because it's that's how the tool is designed to do it and that's the size hook that you want when you're doing this so make sure that that ground wire goes down all the way to a set going on let's do our neutral neutral in it's always a good habit to get into even if you're only putting one wire on one of these terminals just screw the other one back especially once we get into working with metal boxes so there's some metal boxes that are like they're a lot skinnier than these boxes so those screws tend to hit those boxes and short out a lot so it's just a good idea if you're not using a terminal even if you're in a panel or anything I just something I mean all about I always put all of the screws inwards just keep them tight and out of the way all right so now I'm gonna try to accordion these wires back fold everything neatly also being careful not to get that ground wire to touch this wire you also don't want the ground to touch the neutral side either you'll trip arc fault breakers and it causes all kinds of problems that are not necessarily as dangerous they can be depending on the situation but it's just more of a nuisance anything alright so same kind of deal look this guy I'm gonna screw it in just a little ways she's little ways I'm gonna simulate something that's not actually happening but what to do it like your plug gets cocked sideways that's the reason I don't put the screws in all the way I leave them stuck out a little bit so you can actually see that this thing is not in there straight it's like a cricket is [ __ ] so one thing that I do and it's the reason that I use these small guys is you can grab on to the yoke of this plug and you can torque it and kind of like you know re bend it to where it needs to be and get it straight that's why I love these things you can deal with other strippers - it's just that these seem to open a little bit wider and they're easier to use they're smaller in my hand so anyways enough about that now tighten it down just a lace and that's it we have a pseudo well installed new wire from our switch all the way down to the plug I'm gonna hook power up right now and I'm going to send power to this and I'm gonna get a plug tester out and have us plug it have a test it and make sure that we did a good job [Music] so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use our plug tester this guy shows all different conditions on the side you know like it'll show these lights will light up in a certain series and this diagram lets you know if you have everything correct or if you have like your hot and your ground reversed or if you're missing a neutral or you know something like that so this is a good thing to buy all right so let's cross our fingers and hope we hooked everything up right cool we have two yellow lights no red light that's what we're looking for just refer to our diagram again the very bottom condition all the way here at the bottom says we want two yellow ice no red light so [Music] broken hurt thumbs up alright my dudes that's pretty much it that's installing a plug and you know beginning to end if you guys have any questions - feel free to throw them in the comments below or go to Electrician you and write to me let me know if you have any other suggestions or ideas or different ways you do things or crazy [ __ ] that the guy you're working with tells you to do critiques anything like that I want to learn from y'all you know any way that you guys do things differently but I also want to teach you all the way that I do things so another thing if you haven't done it go to journey to master it's another YouTube channel that I have link is in the description or you can go to this little card thingy right here and click it you'll go to my channel during the master is another channel that I have a little bit different kind of following but it's all electrical stuff - it's still you know trade about being an electrician what it's like to be an apprentice how to become an apprentice what it's like being a master electrician I deal with all kinds of crazy [ __ ] belief systems and you know my thoughts and ponderings a little bit different than this this channel is just how-to stuff so please subscribe please hit the little notification bell thingy if you want to see these episodes and be notified every time I post one I love you all be the best electricians you can be and I don't mean that in a corny way I mean like do good work man everyday just try to be proud of the work that you do and [ __ ] with anyone else thinks about it like if you're impressing yourself your works going to be great so have a great day I will see you guys in the next episode [Music]

Channel: Electrician U

Views: 397,850

Keywords: electrician, electrical, electricity, plug, plugs, receptacle, receptical, outlet, how to wire a plug, how to install a plug, wiring plugs, how to do electrical work, electrical videos, electrician videos, electricity videos, electrical how to, electrician how to, electrician vlog, electrical vlog, electrician show, electrical show, electricity vlog, electricity show, journey 2 master, electrician u, dustin stelzer, electrician training, electrical training

Id: QuR6_i27WcI

Length: 27min 16sec (1636 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 17 2018