How to Choose an Electrical Box | Ask This Old House

[Music] hey heath hey kevin how are you all right looks like you got the letters about folks not knowing what to buy in the electrical aisle it's a confusing aisle sometimes right you think you know what you need you go down there and all of a sudden all these options and then you realize you have no idea what you need hey guys boxes so what do we do uh let's start with the easiest and the most common new work new work okay and when you say new work not new work that you're doing that saturday you're talking about not a new job but the type of construction so new construction open frame okay so for something like that in a residence we typically use newark plastic boxes like these and the advantage of these is they're fairly quick we can nail them right onto a stud wire them quickly and then cover them up with the drywall and they come with a little nailing flange and oftentimes the nail's embedded exactly and you've got enough room to bang that in and so they go they set themselves a little tab to set the spacing and look what you get and that's the finish and they're usually always plastic not always plastic we tend to use plastic more often than not when we're doing new construction sometimes you do run into metal and that is an option as well uh depends on the type of cable you have so if we're using non-metallic cable with a with a plastic box we'll try to do the plastic if we run into metal clad cable we want to use a metal box gotcha and what is it about the metal boxes that we like for the metal box this is actually designed with a clamp to hold that metal clad cable it also accepts a ground screw and that lets you ground and bond everything together we want to make sure that metal box is grounded correct and this is new work as well so you presume that you've got enough room to screw through it into the stud exactly so if that's new work this is old work this is old work so we've got an existing wall and we're either going back into a hole where a box was or we've got a pl popping or we're looking to add something all right how do we make sense of these all right this is one of our more common boxes that we'd use for old work it's a single gang plastic old work what you would do is you'd mark the outside of this box cut the drywall slide it into place and then you'd actually tighten those screws and draw that clamp forward to hold it in it's got a little bit of a flange there look at you with the spinny display here something like that grab right there and there is no stud that you're going into so you could pretty much put this anywhere right in the middle of a bay is fine if it will hold all right what's the difference between say this guy and this one here so this one you can use on new drywall as well but this also helps if you have an older home with plaster and lath if you can find the stud and cover it up against it you can actually slide this in and screw it from the face yeah look at that so it's got a screw at an angle coming out that side and the idea is that you can access it from the front go through and drive that into the stud and secure the box right to the stud acting like new work but it's actually old work very clever so these you call them single gang this is a single gang and then from there we go to double gangs something like a two gang you can go to a three gang of four gang it depends on your application how many switches you're looking to put in right and these two for example basically same idea there's tabs just twice the space exactly just a different size different application square or rectangle um and then the round guys we typically use these for lights so bathroom scones sconce in a hallway or living room that's when we use something like this same idea cut a hole slide that in tighten the screws it would draw back just like one of these and if we were going above head into the ceiling different choices there different choices there in that case i actually prefer to use metal even with the non-metallic cable i'd like to put something like this a fan rated box that'll kind of future proof things if they want to put a ceiling fan or a heavy light fixture and we'll mount this to the structure so a fan rated box can carry more weight and so you're going to go even if you're putting in an overhead light that's not heavy you're going to do a fan rated box just sort of the future just to cover ourselves yeah okay and that would just go right into the structure exactly but of course no one's ever put structure in the center of the room where i need to put my that never happens ever so in that case what do we do so in that case that's when we come to this which we've seen you install before right same kind of box but we'd cut that hole slide the brace in spin it until the two ends tighten up against the structure once that's tight you can attach the box and then you can still carry the weight of a heavy fixture or a fan literally expands into that gap and locks into the flanking right and then you can move that left or right exactly okay i think i get it um next time i'm in the aisle just make sure you got your phone on sounds good because i'll give you a call thank you heath thanks thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every home improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like what you see click on the subscribe button make sure that you get our newest videos right in your feed

Channel: This Old House

Views: 548,044

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Heath Eastman, electrical, electrical box, master electrician Heath Eastman, Electrical Box uses by Heath Eastman, heath eastman this old house, heath eastman electrician, ask this old house electrical, electrical box installation, electrical box wiring, electrical safety, How to Choose, master electrician Heath, Ask this old house clips

Id: Nn13DMnKoBw

Length: 4min 39sec (279 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 05 2020