How to Add an Electrical outlet in an Existing Wall

[Music] welcome to pawpaws workshop and I appreciate you spending some time with me today what we're going to be doing today is adding an outlet to an existing wall now if you are uncomfortable working around electricity hire a professional don't do it yourself electricity can be dangerous so please be careful and be safe but let's get started with today's project the tools that we're going to be using today is the receptacle tester to be able to make sure that our power is off we'll be using the tape measure to measure where the outlet is going to be along with the screwdriver electrical pliers the wire stripper and of course the pencil we'll need the keyhole saw to be able to cut the hole into the sheetrock and then for the installation well of course we're going to need the wire the outlet the outlet cover and this box this box is for after the construction is done it has these little wings on it when we slide it into the outlet B hole and you start to turn the screw these little wings will flip up on the top and the bottom and they'll be able to secure the Box in place and as we go through the installation I'll show you how that's done I'm in the process of remodeling painting sheetrocking this area and one of the things I need to do is that on this wall I have no outlets at all and I want to add an outlet to this wall so I'm going to show you how to do that today on the other side of the wall is my shop and I have several outlets and this one is actually located near the center of the wall and I think this is the one where I'm going to get the power from to add the outlet on the other side okay the first thing that we want to do is come to our power panel and turn off all the power and by doing that it will be safe to work on the other thing that I want to do is make sure that you still check the outlet now went ahead and removed my six outlet add-on to be able to expose the actual plug and I'm going to plug this in to verify that the power is actually off there are no light showing and I also want to check the other one just to make sure here's why this is the typical outlet that you are going to be installing and this is typically what you would have in your home most people will believe that there's only one power supply that will come to this particular outlet but that's not necessarily always the case because if you look at this you have this little brass plate right here and in between you have a little small tab well let that tab is broken on this side as well as on this side right here you could literally have a power supply that would come in and attach to these two screws supplying power to this outlet and then a separate power supply coming in and attaching to the bottom two screws and having a separate power supply coming to this one although it's not common it is possible so that's why I say when you turn the power off check both outlets to make sure that the power is truly off before working on it hey I mark the location on the wall or a1 it so I'm now going to take my box on here and just trace the outline [Music] all of the boxes that I have in this particular room or all five feet above the floor and I want to be able to stay consistent and put this one at the same point next thing we'll grab the keyhole saw and cut the hole out with the hole cut let's test fit make sure that it's going to work and yes it does okay the next thing we're going to do is go ahead and bring the wiring into the to the hole okay with the outlet removed we're just sliding the wire in we want to leave about six to eight inches of wire on this side to be able to work with let's go to the other side now and we'll finish that outlet okay on this side now we reach in here find the wire and pull it through on the box itself we have these little openings for the wire and I push that one open and I'm going to slip the wire into that again I'm gonna need about seven eight inches or wire on this side now I'm going to slide that into the hole and with the screwdriver I want to tighten this and remember those little wings will come up and be able to hold this box in the wall and there we have a nice and tight yeah one ahem stripped-back fake outer covering of the wire I'm now just going to strip the ends so we can attach it now this is 14 gauge wire so I'm just coming you it's a 14 gauge slot on the wire cutters and it's just that simple it put it to the distance that you want it squeeze and pull it off now then I'm gonna go ahead and make a hook on the end to be able to attach it to the screw okay I'm gonna do the same thing with the ground wire and just so you know the black is usually your hot wire the white is going to be your common wire and one that's bare is going to be the ground okay on the outlet there's two sets of screws this is the gold set of screws and on the other side is a silver set of screws the silver set of screws at what the white wire is attached to the brass colored screw is what we use to attach to white the black wire which is the hot wire the bare wire is the ground and we're going to attach that to the green screw down here at the bottom and I do this where I'll just hook it on then I'll just go ahead and tighten it in place then we'll take the white wire and attach it to the silver screw and we'll tighten that in place and you'll notice I'm attaching it so that the wire comes in on this side and loops around that way when you're tightening the screw it actually will help secure it and hold it flip it over now and we'll attach the black wire to the brass screw okay like that done now we'll go ahead and put this into the outlet box right here and we'll screw this in place okay with that fastened in place the last thing that we need to do is just attach the cover there we go now we'll go on the other side of the wall and we'll make the connection there in that outlet the off-camera I went ahead and strip the wires and I'm attached the ground wire to the existing ground wire and I'm going to cut off the excess and make sure that that is nice and folded into place there we go now then with that done you can see on each side of this outlet we already have the screws filled with the existing wire so I don't have the opportunity to do that now I could create a pigtail but I can also go to the back of the plug and there are some hole there that you can insert the wires into and that's what I'm going to do by plugging the light one into the side with the white wire and the black one into the black side and pull to make sure they're secure that will complete this attaching of the wires now all I have to do now it just read in the outlet okay with the outlet attached and we make sure this nice and tight there we'll just go ahead and plug this in and screw it back in place there we go and that will complete it all is left we'll turn the power on and check and make sure that everything is correct all right with the power back on I'm going to use the reciprocal tester plug this in and I should have the two yellow lights right there that indicates that it has the correct wiring we'll double-check the bottom just to make sure and same thing we have the two lights glowing let's go on the other side to wall and check that one thank you for watching the day if you found this video useful please remember to hit that like button leave a comment and please subscribe until next time have fun be safe take care down

Channel: Paw Paw’s WorkShop

Views: 1,044,991

Keywords: how to, add, install, electrical, outlet, plug, home repair, DIY, lrn2diy, Simple Practical beautiful, this old house, April Wilkerson, steve ramsey

Id: Jn6QLaSeHgw

Length: 11min 42sec (702 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 10 2018