How to Add an Electrical Outlet through a Wall

in today's video i'm going to show you how i run an outlet to my new drop zone what's a drop zone you ask i'll answer that coming up [Music] welcome to handy dad tv i'm chris heider your virtual dad in the cloud and i'm in my new house and and this is my garage which is basically everything that was in my shop or most things was moved to here but we're not talking about my garage today what we are going to be talking about is putting an outlet in my drop zone now the drop zone a drop zone is typically a space when you come in your garage door there will be cabinets right here and we don't have one it was an option when this house was built and the previous owner didn't oh my god really go lay down so i'm gonna be installing cabinets here lower cabinets as well as upper cabinets because it's gonna obviously give us some more storage but it's also just a convenient place to drop your keys your wallet your handbag whatever you need to so that it's out of the way and not taking up space in the kitchen like all that stuff over there but the thing is there's no outlet here there's a little one there but that's not going to be convenient for us to charge phones and things like that so we really want an outlet here in addition i'm going to be putting upper cabinets here so i want to put an outlet on top of the cabinet that i can plug in a transformer for the under cabinet lights so that's what i'm going to work on today now i've got a couple choices one is to take power from this outlet here and run a wire through the wall or through that pantry cabinet there and and bring it down i really want the outlet like right here right above the countertop but i have another alternative inside the garage there's an outlet over here and i believe they're on the same circuit so it really doesn't matter and i'm not talking about putting anything with you know any kind of high current draw anyway so it's really not going to be it's just for convenience so i'm thinking the easiest thing to do is to take power from this one run it down around where my cabinets are going to be and up to the new one and that's what i'm going to show you today now the first thing i'm going to do is determine which breaker this is so that little light is great but in order to work by myself i just need to plug in a fan and that'll help me figure it out that's the one right here now i pulled out this gfi the power is off and i can see that there is power coming into it and out of it so this gfi is protecting another outlet what i'll call downstream and most likely it is the one on the other side over there because that one is dead too so my workbench here is dead and i measured on the outside from the door frame over and that outlet is right about here in the garage so what i'm gonna do is just use my stud finder [Music] okay so the stud is on this side of the outlet so this is a hollow cavity here hollow except for the insulation so all i have to do is bring the wire out of the wall somewhere down there where it'll be hidden by the cabinets so stud is right here [Music] this really was a futile effort to work by myself i had to get help would you come and give me a hand real quick just go in the garage you'll see the fish tape in that that box there just pull on a little bit and i'll i'll tell you when to push okay push it back down okay hold it hold it hold it hold it push hang on hang on i'm getting it okay push good got it thank you [Music] okay i'm at the wire i just got to get it out plenty of slack here [Music] there we go beautiful okay now i've got my power feet coming in now remember there's going to be base cabinets here that are going to hide this wire i'm going to bring it around the wall and then i'm going to put another hole here bring it up to about there is where i'm going to put the the other outlet this is the top of the countertop that's the bottom of the cabinets up top and then i'm going to run another one all the way up top there now for here i'm going to use an old workbox and i've marked the bottom and the center and i'm just going to hold it here level it and then mark it and to minimize the mess i'm just going to use a utility knife to cut this out not only does it minimize the mess using a utility knife but it also prevents me from ever digging into any wires that might be in the wall any wires or or pipes that's what i was just feeling for to make sure there was nothing in the wall there and there isn't now my trick to doing that so easily it's not really a trick i use the stud finder and figured out the stud was right here so i put my hole right next to the stud and when i feed the fish tape i feed it along the stud and it always comes out well usually comes out by the hole unless i miss it and it goes beyond [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so i love these um quick strippers wire strippers they're really easy to use and i've recommended them several times in several of my videos i'll put a link to them in the video description below if you don't like stripping wires this makes it trivial [Music] now for this outlet because it's a drop zone we're probably going to want to charge usb devices so i'm going to put in one of these outlets that has two usb devices automatically right into it so we don't have to take up the outlets with those big charger things so this has the hot and the white so the hot is the black and the white obviously is white and they always use a brass screw which is dark for black and then the chrome screw which is light for white now on the bottom is the green screw which is the ground but you're not allowed to connect both grounds you're not allowed to connect two wires there but i can connect two wires to the other ones you can see there's holes in the back so for that we need to create a pigtail and to create a pigtail you could use a regular wire nut but i'm using one of these press-in wire nuts i just take a length of wire and connect the other two and after i insert them i give them a tug to make sure they're good and tight and then i can put that out of the way okay that's good and then the two hots are gonna go on this side let me open this up a little bit more give them a tug and they're good okay [Music] now on top of the cabinets this is not going to be visible so i didn't take the time to put a real outlet inside the wall so i'm just using this utility outlet here and before i close it up i wanted you to see what i'm doing is i wired that with an insteon outlet and that way i can use insteon home automation which is what i choose to use in my house that will turn on and off my cabinet lights all right now that i've got the outlets connected the only thing i need to do now is connect this to the gfi and then put it back uh turn on the breaker i think it'd be impossible for me to let you see inside here because i'd have to wear a helmet cam or something like that which i'm not gonna do but i've already got a wire nut here with the grounds on it so i'm just gonna put this one on that same wire nut ground is done push that out of the way now i have a choice to make do i want to put this on the load side or the line side if i put it on the line side my outlets will not be protected by this gfi if i put it on the load side they will be protected so i'm actually going to put them on the load side and these devices are made for two wires to go on every screw so i don't have to worry about pigtails all right let's turn on the breaker so it was this breaker here and i take my little tester and i have two green that indicates it's wired correctly this one has two greens as well i'm assuming that one will too i'll try that on the ladder well i know this doesn't look really good for now but it'll eventually have cabinets here and they'll cover that up that's the next step eventually so coming in from the other direction this is the finished drop zone you can see the cabinets installed down the bottom the countertop and the uppers with a nice wine rack in fact this is where we keep our alcohol we call this our drink and drop zone actually and the outlets work great this is where we charge phones and things like that that's a night light plugged in there and i even have the transformer up top and the under cabinet light works too so those lights are going to be in a separate video but you can see this is exactly what i was planning it to be now i know some people are going to give me a hard time with the fact that that wire runs behind these cabinets but really there's there's no problem with it it is safe nothing can happen to it just because it's not embedded in a wall doesn't mean that it's against code so thanks for watching and i'll catch you in the next one welcome home be sure to subscribe and watch our new series the living flip [Applause] [Music] and that has inch and a quarter

Channel: HandyDadTV

Views: 138,334

Keywords: handy dad tv, handydad.tv, handydadtv, electrical, electrical outlet, electrical wiring, home wiring, receptacle wiring, receptacle installation, fish tape wire puller, drop zone, usb outlet wiring, usb outlet receptacle, usb outlet install, old work box, electrical wiring basics, electrical outlet wiring, electrical circuits, home wiring basics, home wiring installation, home wiring 101, home wiring explained

Id: BU5Yjy5GrGg

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 17 2020