EV Charging Disaster

[Music] i know these pictures are scary in fact i did this on purpose i wanted you to understand how important this is [Music] seven percent of all home fires are caused by electrical malfunctions if there's one thing i've learned about doing electrical videos on youtube that is there's a lot of smarter people out there that know the codes better than i do and they are not afraid to tell me when i do something wrong so i'm going to show you some of the things that i did wrong when i installed my ev charging outlet that could melt the outlet and cause a house fire [Music] welcome to handy dad tv i'm chris heider your virtual dad in the cloud and today i'm going to show you how i screwed up because it's one of the things that i like to do i make mistakes just like everybody else does and i put them on videos and people correct me but i'm going to show you what i did wrong i'm going to fix it and i'm going to let you know how to do it for yourself the number one cause for an electrical fire is something called arcing arcing is when you have two conductors next to each other with voltage going through them and space develops between them and through that space even a very small mining gap it creates a an arc between them the voltage will jump through the air and it'll actually melt the air it creates a lot of heat and it also blackens the end and creates more resistance that creates more heat there are two ways that arcing is caused with an electrical outlet the first is the wires themselves are not connected tight enough this video that i found online shows exactly how this happens when the wires in a wire nut were not twisted tight enough and it melted the wire nut and eventually caused the fire now that was done under controlled circumstances and i will put a link to that down in the video description below but it blew my mind to watch it happen the second common cause is when the plug is loose inside the outlet because a loose plug means the outlet needs to be replaced because if it's loose that means arcing can occur between the prongs of the plug and the receptacle itself and that can build up the same kind of heat and melt the entire cord and cause a fire now when you're talking about an electrical vehicle that's a pretty beefy plug and a very beefy outlet as well and you know they're pretty hard to press in but it's still the more you plug it and unplug it you can loosen those prongs in there and that means the plug might actually come loose at some point so that's the reason why i only recommend an industrial grade outlet industrial grade outlets have stronger prongs in there they're meant for devices to be plugged and unplugged this is not a normal outlet that you would use for your dryer or your oven you really want an industrial grade outlet i've done videos on this before i will put a link to it down below this is the kind of outlet that you want to get if you're going to do an outlet for ev charging now i installed this outlet in a video about six months ago and i got a lot of feedback on something that i didn't do properly and it has to do with the wire connections on it first of all you can see that this is a really good outlet it happens to be a hubble and the hubble outlet has these clamps on it they clamp the wires in place but you can see i have to use a hex wrench here this one is a 3 16 allen wrench that's what's needed to clamp the wire down and that's all well and good but i didn't torque down these screws and these screws should be torqued to clamp the wire very tight so that's the number one thing is to torque the screws to the specification by the manufacturer now to install it the right way i bought myself a torx screwdriver i haven't had one it's a new tool for me the special thing about this is that it's got an adjustable torque setting here in inch pounds and this just pulls down and it twists to change the setting now what you do with this it has various different bits that go in the end and you set this to whatever the specification is of how tight you need the screws to be now believe it or not this outlet the specification says it needs to be 75 inch pounds so you can tell that's really tight and i am sure that when i use this allen wrench it was not tight enough just with my hands alone now what i'm going to do this time is i'm going to reinstall this outlet using the hex bit and my torx screwdriver and what happens is when you tighten it as tight as it needs to be you hear it click okay that indicates to me that it's tight enough on that wire so let's go do that right now now the other thing that people have told me to do not only just torque it down but also to double check by moving it and really prying on them to loosen them up purposely and then torque it down again okay that's good now that this is all torqued down twice and i moved all the wires now i can reinstall this outlet and the other problem is in the panel itself the reason i open my panel is that i didn't torque down these screws on the breaker this is the circuit breaker it is off so i'm not in danger right now although i have to be really careful not to touch these plates because they are live and don't mind the other the extra wires in here these are actually sensors for my emporia view energy monitor but if you're interested in that i'll put a link to that video down below as well i'm going to wiggle these wires the same way that i did on the outlet and i'm going to tighten them down with a robertson bit here and i'm going to tighten them to the spec that is listed on the breaker itself now the breaker specifies on here it's hard to read but it says that it needs to be to 41 inch pounds and so i've set my torx screwdriver for 41 and i have the robertson bit in here and i am just going to torque that down although that is too fat to get in there luckily for me i have a longer robertson bit i'm going to put that in there and just there that's good oh you can see it was not tight enough i'm actually stripping it with this robertson bit so if all else fails you can always use a flat blade wow good good all right now that breaker is torqued properly so you could see how valuable this was now this was only 31. so add that to the cost of the job if you're going to do this yourself you buy it once and now i'll have it forever all right my outlet is now reinstalled but one last thing that i'd like to say is that people say they don't last forever and they should be replaced periodically or at least you should check them check them so that you're not developing any kind of corrosion or anything on the prongs any kind of dirt and that it fits tightly every time you use it the other thing is periodically tighten them down just like i did with the torx screwdriver i want to be as safe as i possibly can be with my ev fire scares the crap out of me and it should scare you as well so with that i'm going to say thanks for watching give this video a thumbs up if you liked it and i will see you in the next one if you are a diy video creator struggling to find an audience join handy dad tv and get instant access to an established audience that will provide more views and income than you're getting on your own just go to handydad.tv join for more information

Channel: HandyDadTV

Views: 429,518

Keywords: handy dad tv, handydad.tv, handydadtv, hubbell, hubbell nema 14-50, nema 14-50, nema 6-50, ev charging, home ev charging, level 2, level 2 charging, electric vehicle, electric vehicle charging, tesla, tesla model y, tesla model 3, tesla model x, tesla model s, tesla charging, tesla wall connector, ev, torque screwdriver, electrical fire, fire hazard, home wiring

Id: 1BnK4a4aVpU

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 23 2022