(electricity sizzling) - [Jeff] Now as we pull
down at out the outlet, you can see here, we
notice something here. See this right here? This is, they took the ground
wire, didn't even leave any decent parts of it that was copper, and they just wrapped
it around a painted part of this screw boss here. That is a lesson, folks, in
how not to ground an outlet. This outlet is not protected,
it is not grounded. So anyway, we're going to be
putting in a new outlet switch, and then remember this is a metal box, so we need to make sure
that this metal box is grounded and bonded
to the system ground. We're gonna put a green
ground screw right there, see that hole right there,
that's meant to house a green ground screw. We're going to wrap this
copper wire around it and connect it up properly
to the new switch. ♪ Yo this all right, and this all right ♪ ♪ Too good to be true ♪ ♪ Yo this all right, and this all right ♪ ♪ Too good ♪ - Hey, everybody, Jeff here, and welcome back to our channel. If this is your first time visiting us, this is a great time
for you to take a look at the subscription button down below and even wanna click on that so you can be aware of
all of the other videos that we put out to help you. So this is all for you, my friends. And at the same time, when you subscribe, make sure you click on that bell icon right next to it that'll
appear when you subscribe because it doesn't make
any sense if you subscribe without being alerted to every time we put up a new video, okay? And then if you have any questions at all, leave them down in the comments, and we'll answer them for you. So let's get started with today's project. Okay, so now, let's
show you the proper way to ground one of these boxes. So we're gonna have to
clean this off first. So I usually use this blue
emery sandpaper tape here. This is what the plumbers
use for doin' a little abrasive sanding on the
pipes before they solder. So see how this is nice
and shiny copper now. That's how you make a
nice, good conductor. (sandpaper scraping) Just like that. So you can see what we've
done is we've wrapped the wire around a ground screw now. So now this metal box is gonna be, it's already bonded to the system ground. Then if you look here, real close here, see how the way they ran those wires into the back of the switch there? That's a big no-no. Look how much, he's left
almost 1/4 of an inch of bare, exposed conductor,
that's a major, major no-no. And this is what we find a lot
down here with the builders. Like I said before in our other videos, the builders overcharge you big time, and this is the kind of
quality work they give you. They just hire the lowest-paid,
dumbest guy in the world to do all their work, and
this is what you're left with. So we're going to put a
better switch in anyway. We're going to be putting this switch in, and you can see it has
its own ground screw on there that we're going
to connect it up to. So let's fix this problem right now. All right, so there you can see we've finally got it connected up. We added a pigtail wire because the amount of ground wire that they
gave you was too short here. Same with the black and the
white wires were too short. I mean, these guys are so dumb
it's like any chance they get to violate the National
Electrical Code, they will. You're supposed to have six inches of wire coming out of a box. So because of that, because
of their foolish mistake, what we did was we had to, you'll see back in the corner there, we
stuck in one of these WAGO wiring nuts, and this
is what they look like. So you put the two wires in there, and then you snap the doors down, (wiring nut snaps)
like this, and it holds the wires
together nice and tight so you have a nice, tight connection. Then you run the other end
of this pigtail over here to the outlet, so now
you're perfectly fine. And it's okay if the ground here has a little bit of
insulation peeled away. That's not a problem because there's no conductor there, it's
not carrying current. So now, I'm just gonna
see if I can get a piece of black tape, green tape, electrical tape wrapped around the outlet there, 'cause I always like
to cover the terminals to protect anybody who comes
in later to do any work and maybe they leave the
power on or something. And before I do, I wanted
to show you how I wired it. See how we put it so that
the wire comes right up so that the insulation
just touches the outside of the screw-down plate there. You don't want the insulation
to go behind the plate 'cause the plate has to push against the metal part of the
wire, so you only stop it right at the edge of
the metal plate there. It looks a lot better than the way the original builder did it. Okay. And that leaves you with a
nice, clean bundle there, so if anybody ever touches
that, they won't get shocked. So now if you focus your
attention on the back, you'll see I plugged up
to those two holes there, plus we went ahead and smoothed down with some silicone here
around these cracks here so the cigarette smoke won't come in from the nextdoor neighbor's condo. So I think the smell is
pretty much gone now, so we've successfully at least kept it from coming in from this spot. So you get two repairs in one here today. Okay, so there we are, the
Decora switch is all screwed in. And always remember,
before you screw it in, always remember to look
and make sure it says Top. Now, you're probably, can't
see it there, maybe you can, but engraved in the metal
there it'll say Top, and that's how you know you're
switch is right-side up. Otherwise, you'll plug it
in, screw all the plates in and everything, and you're gonna find out that your switch was upside-down. Okay, now this step is
the, is what differentiates what we're doing with
what everybody else does. We're putting this little gasket in here, and that also helps seal, it
keeps your air conditioning from escaping out through
your outlet and into the wall, and it also would seal
in the case there was any cigarette smoke in there
from the nextdoor neighbor. So when we put the plate on here, it's gonna squeeze this
gasket up against the wall and cut everything off, there's no air is gonna get in or out of here. And I always use these
metal plates, I like these. These are super wide,
they're wide on the side and taller on the top, so that'll help you in case you every have any holes that were cut in the drywall too big. And these metal plates are
good 'cause you can see there's a little bit of
curvature to the wall here. So I can screw this better to
the wall than a plastic plate. The plastic ones will crack.
(plate pops) And here is your finished product. And I normally like to
leave both of my screws pointing straight up, it
looks aesthetically better. And you can see it's nice and snug here, and there's no more cigarette smoke coming in from the
nextdoor neighbor's unit. Okay, so we have this
electrical outlet here in the bathroom, you can see
how close it is to the sink. And we were gonna take
this outlet outta here. We're gonna put a new one in anyway. Our plan was to put in a GFI outlet because it's required by code anyway anytime you have an outlet
within six feet of a sink or water that you have
to have it as a GFI, it's gotta be GFI protected. But we discovered something here when we pulled this outlet out. So if you look at what they did here, see they looped the white
wire there, the common, and they also looped the black wire, and that's not a problem here. Does anybody here see what the problem is? Do you guys see what's missing here? If you look closely at these wires here, we see a black wire, we see a white wire, and what's missing here? Well, there's no ground,
that means this outlet was never grounded, that's
extremely dangerous to do that. And on top of that, they probably thought, oh, I'll just screw it to the front of this outlet box, and I'll be grounded. Well, that's not true, probably
for a couple of reasons, because it's painted on
the front, first of all. Second of all, the box
itself is not bonded. That means, see that, you can
see that in the back there, and they got paint all over it, these are the ground wires here
coming up and through there, they're feeding through the box, but nowhere are they wrapped
around a ground screw. So we're gonna see if we
can't fix that right now by putting a ground screw in there. And you can see there's
a hole in the back there, right there where my finger's pointing, that is where we could potentially put in a green ground screw and try to wrap some of this ground wire around it. I don't know how, whether
we'll really be able to. We're gonna try our best,
we're gonna have to sand off some of that paint, get it
nice and shiny and coppery and twist another piece of
ground wire around that, wrap it to the post, and
then have another pigtail ground come off of our
ground post or ground screw, and that pigtail will then
come and feed the outlet. But the way the previous electricians had implemented it, they totally blew it, dropped the ball in probably
three different ways here, but we see this kind
of stuff all the time, and we're always ready to deal
with it when we do see it. So let's get busy fixing it. Well, you can see here,
we were pretty successful at finding a good ground here. So what we did was, we
found the ground wire that was comin' through the box. It was coming in from
one Romex connector here, and it was going in and coming out, just passing through the
box and going up and out through that other one
that you see up there. So what we had to do is, first had to sand this wire down, and I did that with this emery paper here, this is like a little sandpaper, and that got all the
paint off it and made it nice and shiny and
coppery and nice and bare, and we make, you form
a loop out of the wire, and then we stuck it through our screw, we stuck the screw through it and into the screw boss end of the box. And then this is our pigtail. This pigtail is gonna go to the outlet. So now, this is the way the electrician should have done it in the first place. Don't ask me why they
didn't do it that way. I just have no idea how builders
get away with this stuff, but it still blows my mind
how they overcharge you and overcharge you and overcharge you way above market value for a new house, and then this is how they treat you. It's just terrible,
there's no excuse for this! And so this is the
proper way to ground it. So what you can see what happens is, any ground that came through this box is now attached to the
metal body of the box, and electrical code,
National Electrical Code, requires a metal outlet
box, whether it be a switch or an outlet, has to be
bonded to the system ground, and this is how you do it! So now we're ready to go ahead
and install the GFI outlet. Well, we just had to
do one quick thing here before we put the outlet in. You can see I had to add
a lot of silicone caulk around the edge of the outlet there. That's how we seal it to
keep the cigarette smell from coming in from the unit next door. So you know, typical with
these 55 and older condos, you get one of these old-timers
that just smoke like crazy. Oh man, it's terrible! So anyway, we got most of it up. But you know, these outlet boxes all have little holes in them, and you
can see where I had to put in patches of silicone
there to close those off. So there's no more openings anywhere, and there's even a
couple on the side there, probably can't see it, but
they're inside there on the side. We had to get in there and at 'em. So some of these people, they
just smoke like factories, they're like chimneys, man, and you know, you could take the tar out of their lungs and re-coat the whole parking lot and save the HOA some money. All right, so here you can see we've got both the white wires on the left side, and we have both the black wires are connected up on the right-hand side. So the upper two are the
line which go up here and out the wall to the fusebox there. And this bottom pair here that you see coming out of the bottom
of the back there, they go to the next unit down. So all we're gonna do is hook
this up to the box there, turn the power back on, and test it. And remember, when you get
these from the factory, you're gonna freak out, go,
hey, wait a minute, why isn't it coming on when you first turn
it on from the fuse panel? You still gotta hit this reset button because they come from
the factory already reset. And I also wanted to point out
to you just one other thing. These are tamper-proof,
so they have little rubber things in there that keep little kids from sticking metal objects in there. Anything other than a
plug, it shouldn't allow. This is a great time
for you to take a look at the subscription button down below and even wanna click on it. When you subscribe, make sure you click on that bell icon right next to it that'll appear when you subscribe because it doesn't make
any sense if you subscribe without being alerted to every time we put up a new video, okay? And then if you have any questions at all, leave them down in the comments, and we'll answer them for you.
