How To Add An Electrical Outlet From A Light Switch!

in today's video I'm going to show you how to add an electrical receptacle to an interior wall that does not have one using a light switch the light switch must either be on this side of the wall or on the opposite side of the wall if you're looking to add an exterior receptacle on your home and you're definitely going to want to refer to my other video I posted a link in the video description area and you'll also see a video link at the end of this video now I'm going to be adding a receptacle right down over here there is a light switch on the opposite side of the wall right around here this is an older home these walls are made out of plaster sheets a very hard material so I'll show you exactly what I'm going to be using to cut into the wall and I'm also going to show you a few different electrical boxes that you may run into when doing this job now before I get started I have to go over a few wiring diagrams first because not every wall switch can be used to add an electrical receptacle okay you're looking at a few different wiring configurations for switches and lights the one on the bottom right is a very common single pole switch you have power going in so there's going to be a cable and during that electrical box then you're going to see another cable it's going to be two wires black and white with the ground could be a green wire or a bare wire and that's going to connect to the box with the light if you see that you have a box that has a power wire going in a single pulse which has the two screws on the side and a cable leaving that you can definitely use now over here is the same setup you have a switch turning a light on but the problem is on this one the power is coming in to where the light fixture is and down here if you take the switch cover off and all you see is just one cable coming in with the black wire a white wire and a ground wire you're going to know that you cannot use power from that box the only way you can use power from this box is if this was not a romex cable and it was actually a conduit Electrical metallic tubing that the wires were loosely inserted into then what you can do is you could take a romex cable 14:2 and insert it into the metal conduit until it gets to the light fixture and then you would take the black wire of the romex tie it into this feed line right here tie it into this feed line pigtail it with the black and then you would take the white that you're going to be running through here connect it to the white of the feed line which is this one right here pigtail it you would cut right here and do a pigtail like this connect this white from the top the white from the light and the white that's inside the conduit that you just add it all together and you would feed that cable through the switch and then you can go down and have the power supply for the electrical receptacle there's another thing that you may run into sometimes electrical boxes have more than one circuit inside of them so you might see the one cable coming in and everything in that cable connects to the switch so if you see one cable with all the wires connecting to the switch you're going to know that it's dedicated for that light you can't use it but inside this box if you see other cables and you see a black pigtail or a white pigtail which looks like what you see right over here then you'd want to make sure that has power all the time the black and white pigtails with the switch off if it does you can tap into the pigtails and go straight down to the new receptacle now appears what's called a 3-way switch this is two different switches controlling one light fixture if you opened up in this box it would be fine because the power is coming in right here you see that just like the power down here but if you opened up this box it's no good because you have just the cable coming in three-way switches use a three wire cable plus ground so all three of these wires would be going over towards the switch and then the white and the black here goes to the light or the load you would not be able to use this but once again if this was a metal conduit then all you would have to do is feed some romex 14 2 or 12 2 to this location right here and then this switch box you can come down and put an electrical receptacle or like I mentioned earlier if you have a bunch of wires inside this box with the black and white pigtail you could also use that in this location now over here is the same thing it's a three-way switch but the difference is that power is not coming in by either switch so if you opened up the box and you looked at this you would see a three wire cable coming in all the screws on the three-way switch would be taken is a black and two brass screws and you're going to see nothing else inside here and on this side it's going to be empty with the exception of a three wire cable again you could not use either one of these unless you don't mind feeding a cable if it has a conduit all the way through here to the box tapping into the black and white from this cable and bringing it down if you do that bring it all the way down to your new electrical receptacle you also have the option if there's other circuits passing through here as mentioned earlier a black and white pigtail you can probe that with a bar meter see if there's voltage present but the switches off or the light off and if there is voltage present then you can easily grab power from there and go straight down okay let's go over to my switch I'm going to remove the cover plate to see exactly what's inside that box to let me know if I can use it alright so you're now looking at the switch that I'm going to be using it's in a bathroom on the back side of the wall before touching any electrical make sure you're wearing shoes if you touch something by accident that's live and you're not wearing shoes current can flow through your body to ground and you can get a severe shock or even killed if enough current flows by wearing shoes the current cannot flow through your body out your feet into a concrete slab and you also want to make sure when you're working on wiring that you only use one hand when you start reaching inside the box take your other hand place it in your pocket so you cannot touch anything that's grounded if you do touch something that's grounded what's going to happen current will flow from one hand across your chest and out the other hand and you do not want current flowing across your heart so make sure you keep one hand in your pocket you wear shoes and you only touch the wiring with one hand the next thing to do is identify the branch circuit that the light is on so you want to turn on the light and then once the lights on you're going to go over to your breaker panel turn off one circuit breaker at a time until you find where the light goes off once the light goes off you identified the branch circuit that you're going to be working on also take note of the ampacity of the breaker if it's a 15 amp or a 20 amp breaker keep in mind that even though the light went off sometimes you have more than one branch circuit inside of an electrical box okay let me take the cover plate off first when you go to remove the switch from the wall what you're going to do is not grab it from the sides the screws are on the side where the wires would be hot if it was powered up so never grab it from the sides you always want to grab a top and bottom loosen the screws and then pull the switch all the way forward everything's been removed from the wall and there's three screws on the switch the black and two brass screws and that indicates that we're dealing with a three-way switch meaning the light could be turned on or off from two different locations the electrical box inside this wall is a square box but there's a plaster ring which reduces that down to one opening for a switch or receptacle now in this case I'll be able to add an electrical receptacle very easily on the other side of the wall because not only do we have the three wires going to the three-way switch the travelers with the common but we also have a hot end neutral you see a pigtailed off as long as you see the black wires in there twisted and the white wires twisted together that's going to be a point that you can tap into for your electrical receptacle now if you opened up this wall and you only saw the switch with three wires connected to it and nothing else inside you would not be able to use that switch if you open up your wall and you pull out the switch and you see just two wires going on the same side of the switch that's going to be a single pole switch now the next thing to do is to pull out the white wire and black wire and the electrical box and when you do that you're only going to use one hand keep your other hand in your pocket and the only thing that could possibly happen if those wires alive is that when you grab them and you touch the hot wire and your finger touch the side of the box which is grounded the electrical shock would only go between your fingertip and maybe an inch of your finger and into this box it would not go through your body so always keep one hand in your pocket when you start reaching inside the wall to pull wires out of the box okay looking at these old-style wire nuts the next thing you want to do to confirm this can be used before cutting a hole in wall take a bar meter or any other voltage tester for AC volts up to 240 and you're going to take both probes and you're going to insert them all the way into that wire night 1 probe there and the other probe in there make sure it goes all the way in deep to make contact if you hear the bar meter buzzing it's going to indicate that there's power at those pigtails and they're on a different circuit if you're not showing power at these pigtails the next thing you're going to do is leave the switch exactly the way it is you're going to turn the circuit breaker back on once the circuit breakers back on you're very carefully going to repeat the process with the bar meter insert the probe all the way in here all the way in there and you should have a power indication on your bar meter if you don't maybe you're not making good contact the next thing you could do is take it and Ram it all the way into that black one hard twist the probe around like that and keep the other probe on the metal box by doing that it'll be a little bit easier than trying to make sure both of the probes went all the way inside the wire nuts if leaving the breaker on or off does not show 120 volts between the black and white wire that's more than likely going to indicate that these two wires are on a switch circuit and you cannot use them so the black wire and white wire must have power with the breaker on or with the breaker off either way now that I know this can be used to power my receptacle let's go to the other side of the wall and I'm going to show you how to cut the hole for the new electrical receptacle now you want to make sure when you cut the hole that you're not going to be anywhere near the studs or wood that inside the wall the framing members and usually they're going to be located right here next to your door jamb the door jamb is around three-quarters of an inch thick you're going to have shims and then you're going to have one or two 2x4 side-by-side so I usually use a neodymium magnet a very powerful one detect it with this this is a very thick plaster wall if this was a modern wall it would have drywall and to be very easy for this magnet to grab it and it would stick to the wall right through it but because this is a thick plastic sheet wall I could feel where the screws are holding the sheetrock to the wood so I'm going to be using this you could use a stud finder or any other method you'd like but I prefer a neodymium magnet a very big one so over here is clear because right over here all right you can see it's grabbing a nail in the molding and it's grabbing another nail so the wood is basically ending like right over here so this is empty space in here so I want to see how much further over I can go let's make this and right there right there is a screw I'm feeling it right now and there's another one right there so I have between here is the stud all the way to here is empty space so I can cut anywhere in that one foot area when the hole for the electrical box for the receptacle is cut you want to measure one foot up from the floor okay right over here is two marks that I made that's 12 inches from here to the ground the type of electrical box that you're going to be using is called a remodeling box and you can see it has these little wings that swing out and the purpose of that is once the hole is cut and the box is inserted into the wall these wings will go upright you tighten them down very tightly against the sheetrock or drywall and the box will not move the way the wires are secured very simple you just push on that plastic slide the wiring and you cannot pull the wire back out you're going to be using a romex wire you see right here this is 14 - and I'm using 14 - because the ampacity of the circuit breaker is 15 if your circuit breaker says 20 or 25 amps you're going to want to use the same type of a wire but in 12 - it's a little heavier gauge and it can handle more current all right let me put the camera very close to where the holes going to be cut and I'll show you how to mark the electrical box on the wall now the hole is going to have to be cut to the outside edge of the plastic on this side and that side and you see this piece of plastic going along the top edge the hole is going to have to be to that point and right to here so the way to do that is we're going to position this this way and you see the mark I'm going to take this and position it in the exact spot and they're going to get the pencil and trace there there under and on the opposite side of course I can't do that with the camera in the way so let me do that first and I'll come right back and this area here is going to be removed if this was modern drywall you can take a jab saw like you see right over here poke a hole all the way in sawed it down over up and back over grab the piece and pop it out because this is a plaster wall I'm going to take my drill with the carbide bit just drill a hole right over here in the corner and another one down at this corner then I'm going to take my jig saw with a carbide blade okay it's one here perfect okay I'm ready to cut this all out using the jigsaw with the diamond blade and you can see right over here there's painters tape to keep from marring the wall [Music] okay you can see how easily I was able to cut the plaster wall using the jig so you see it's two different layers extremely strong unlike the junk that's used in homes today I'm just going to show you how nicely this fits in the wall all right let's go on the other side of the wall now so I can explain what has to be done next the next step is to take the romex cable and I need to feed it from the switch box down to the new opening that I just made now unfortunately there are two knockouts in the bottom of this box that were already removed for the cable on the right and cable on the left you'll see this a lot better in a minute when i zoom in so what I'm going to do is pop the knockout in the back of this box out and my cables going to be going through that hole and down to the other hole I just made when you remove this knockout you have to put some sort of a restraint in there or bushing to prevent that romex from being cut by the electrical box once this one's popped out what I'm going to do is take this right over here and it's sorted into that hole and then push the wire through let me pop that out and we'll go on to the next step if you have trouble trying to get the knockout out by just prying the edge and bending it back and forth until it snaps what you could do is take a quarter inch drill bit drill a hole in the center take a small screwdriver insert in the hole and now you'll be able to loosen it up and you're gonna keep wiggling and you can grab it with a needle nose and just pop it right out okay with the camera out of the way it was extremely easy removing that knockout I bet they're back and forth until it fatigue and you can see right here is where it snapped that little point on the steel now you may not have this kind of an electrical box you may have a plastic one if you have a more modern home if you do you want to look at the corners where the existing wires come in is going to be areas that are probably unoccupied that you can spread apart shove your cable in some boxes just the pressure of the plastic holds the cable in position and others there's a screw and a clamp so just take a look at yours and whichever way you can use to secure that cable that's what you have to do okay let me insert the romex cable into that hole and down the wall once it's in position I want to have about seven inches sticking out of the wall here and seven inches sticking out of the other side of the wall where the receptacles going to be okay guys go just like that romex cable is all the way down the wall and it came out the other side let's leave this alone for now and go on the other side of the wall and connect up the electrical box okay we're going to take the end of this cable push one of these in all right just a little bit and you guys shut the cable into the electrical box and pull out about six or seven inches of it need enough to work with and that's pretty good right there a little bit more push this right inside the wall and you're going to rotate clockwise you'll stop grabbing the sheetrock all right let's do the bottom one and that box is solid maybe it's not going anywhere all right so you got a nice box the next thing you're going to do is take a utility knife and you're going to cut right down the center of that sheathing on the cable and you're going to peel it back and trim it off peel it all the way back my blade is very dull I should change it but I'm not gonna do it right now all right and that's pretty good peel the paper off the wire as well lift this up cut along so now little piece off to alright going to strip each one of these wires back a half of an inch let me do that come right back just like that just enough to get into the sheathing if you're using 14 gauge wire that's a 15 amp circuit you're going to use a receptacle it looks like this if you're using a 12 gauge wire with a 20 amp circuit or a 25 amp circuit you're going to use a receptacle that has an extra line coming off the larger blade you see over here on the neutral that indicates a 20 amp receptacle it looks like what you see right over here you're going to tighten one screw on each side all the way in and there you're going to make a loop with needle nose loop just like that a little wider one we do the same for this one make a loop alright the black wire goes to the brass screw which is the smaller blade you want to make sure when you wrap it that the loop goes to the right like you see here put it on there and as you tighten it's going to close that loop and that's the reason for that if you put the loop backwards when you tighten the screw it's going to end up opening the loop tighten it down good now you're going to have to get this side the same way put it over tighten that one down okay now we just got to connect the ground wire and we're finished let's do another loop here put that over there that's perfect the way that is tighten it down and that is tight let's just push this all back in try bit like that I'm going to screw this back on the wall and then put the cover plate on take a look at it and they're gonna finish it off by the switch and that looks like it's been there for years let's connect it up on the opposite side okay I'm going to get the push in place the connector slide it over the cable it's going to get tight on the cable causing this to spread apart you may have to trim right over here just a little bit with diagonal cutters to make it a little bit wider so it's easier to push in and engage because if you don't do that you're gonna have to really squeeze this with pliers and then push it in unfortunately I can't do this on the camera I'm gonna end up blocking everything so let me slide this over push it in till the clicks and then I'll show you what it looks like romex cable has now been secured to this metal box using the plastic bushing we're going to take the white wire connect it to the white over here the two that are together take the black wire connect it up with the two black wires in a minute I'll show you I'll remove these caps we're going to take the ground wire from the receptacle and connect it to the ground wire to the switch okay right over here you can see I took the brown and just wrapped it onto that ground wire so now everything is connected together okay all three wires were twisted together using lineman's pliers take a wire nut thread it on really good all right that one's done now we're going to do this one just pull that off and you can see years ago it was just a copper sleeve slid over the ends of the wire I just got to grab this twist it and pull it off and then I'm going to connect up the black to that one as well let me do that and I'll be right back okay all the black wires are together design you could usually get all three black wires if they're 14 gauge twisted together tight using a yellow cap if you're going to be using 12 gauge you're going to want to use red if you have three wires alright I'm going to very carefully push these off to the sides and they're going to push this all the way back in making sure the ground wire stays up and out of the way let me put that back together and I'll be right back okay it's all back together let me turn on the power and we're going to check the receptacle let's check between the hot and neutral all right you see that and then you want to go between the hot which is the shorter one and ground to make sure you have a good ground and that is it guys I hope you enjoyed this video if you did be sure to rate thumbs up share and check out my extensive video playlist or many other videos of interest to you thank you very much for watching

Channel: electronicsNmore

Views: 309,290

Keywords: How To Add An Electrical Outlet From A Light Switch!, how to add outlet from light switch, how to add electrical receptacle from light switch, how to add plug from light switch, add outlet from wall switch, how to wire light switch, how to wire 3 way switch, DIY electrical wiring, how to add electrical oulet to wall, 120v branch circuit, electrician, how to ground outlet, NEC, electrical box, home wiring, residential wiring, electronicsnmore, home mortgage, insurance, Pharmaceutical

Id: I-XmiVBxBcA

Length: 25min 26sec (1526 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2019