How To Ground And Bond A Metal Electrical Box

because when you screw it'll twist it and it'll be it'll stay on there all right so basically you put it one all right guys welcome back to my channel today what we're going to do is we're going to learn how to properly ground a metal box now i have been on so many jobs there won't be very many stories on this one i'm just gonna make this kind of quick so we can show you guys how to ground these properly but i've been through many job sites with many helpers and electricians and they don't know how to properly ground a metal box which is kind of sad because this is pretty important so i'm going to show you two ways to do it obviously there's many more but uh the way that i'm going to show you is here's what i have right here so i have a pigtail that is already pre-made at uh you know the store you can buy them or whatever and then you also have where you can buy a ground screw just a plain old green ground screw and i will show you guys how to make the wire look like this at the end it's super easy to do and it only takes a few minutes now just a little information that you may want to know if you have any device in here or any junction where there's wire nuts anywhere that is you have to have a green ground screw in here along with a pigtail because anywhere there's a joint in a box whether it be on a device which device is a receptacle switch gfi whatever uh or just a regular junction box you have to put it in here because if everything was to get loose as far as a wire got loose and touch the box you need to make sure that it's able to ground itself out with the ground now obviously if if the wire was just to pass straight through and there was absolutely no junction so if you have the wire just going in one side and out the other like you pull on wire and this is just a pulling point box you don't need to do that anywhere the wires are broke with the joint that's where a green ground screw or device has to be at okay all right so now we got out of the way let me tell you something else they make this is a nut driver this is a 5 16 nut driver now uh everything that you see that i'm using here will be down in the description it'll be affiliate link to amazon you can buy it through the affiliate link it helps my channel grow it helps me do more of these videos and bring them to you guys all right so this is what i'm going to use first now i don't always use a 5 16 nut driver a lot of times i'll use a phillips screwdriver however this one right here is a 5 16 without a magnet that they do make one with a magnet i do have two of them one of them is at my work and while the one apparently grew legs and walked off but usually when i had the magnet in there i could put the the screw in there and it wouldn't fall out so obviously since there's no magnet you know all right so if you come to a box like this and i did this purposely so you guys can see all right now first of all i am in a lot of electrical groups on facebook and i see that people always bash people for using drywall screws to use metal boxes up against a wood stud all right as far as i know and correct me if i am wrong there is no code against using drywall screws to mount a box to a wooden wall as far as i am as far as i know i've never seen it if you have wood screws so be it do what you gotta do now on a wood stud like this you can really go ahead and just screw it in there to the wood and everything is you know okay should go right in so if you try to put it in and it doesn't go in chances of stripping that out is pretty good so what you probably should do and what i would recommend is you're probably going to have your tools with you at you know most boxes and such just take the another wood screw or drywall screw rather and screw it right through there so it makes the channel kind of like you're pre-drilling a hole for um you know countersinking something and i'll show you that here in just a second so before we go any further i need to show you now this is the same box i got here basically okay if you look at this box right here there's all kinds of holes in the back of it you know you got that hole that whole diesels and these holes these holes and then on this is the deeper boxes you can see the difference uh basically the same whole lineup so on this box right here there is one hole that is a little smaller as you guys can see i hope and it's that one right there now that one is threaded see if you can see the threads in the back see how you can kind of see the threads that is where your green ground screw goes it does not go through here you cannot legally screw a screw here and wrap a ground wire around it now i've seen so many people do that and it leads me to believe that one to two things when they do that all right now i'm not talking about people's homes i'm talking about on job sites if they do that uh it means one or two things for me they're too lazy to go get a ground screw or they just don't have one or i guess it could be three things and they just or they just don't know the code and they just think whatever but that is where that needs to happen when you're on a commercial job site and you have to mount a box let's say you have to mount it on the back of a whatever right so if you're going to mount it like this i wouldn't do that all right because on a commercial job site let's say this was a metal stud well if you're screwing right here then you put your ground screw right there and now now you're in a pickle because you really i mean you can still do it with the you know metal studs are pretty easy you can just run another screw in there and run it back out and do your hole like that but if you were just to turn your box like so well now you have it wide open to put the green ground screw in so you leave it open so make sure that if you are on a commercial job site and you you know you have to put it on the wall or what have you make sure that you leave your ground off off that way now those boxes kind of suck i'm not going to lie so i what i'm doing is i'm showing you guys these boxes because those boxes suck all right they make a better box which is this one here they make them in shallow also but i don't know if you can see or not but the ground is actually raised up so it does not matter where in the crap you put that because it is raised up off the back your ground screw will stick through which i'll show you here in a second and you have no worries putting it any way you want to you can put a flat on a two by six or whatever and that ground is fine they also include another screw hole for the ground too in case this one screws up see what i did there so this box with the raised bumps of the ground screw is perfect all right let me show you what it looks like when you put the ground in here now this is no ground wire on it we'll get to that later but you see it's completely flush so you don't you don't see the ground screw sticking up do you no you don't all right i'm not trying to make this video you know a 60 minute video because this is pretty cut and dry stuff but regardless i'm going to show you guys now how to ground this and i'm going to show you if you have this screw what to do with it and how to get it the right correct way rather all right so like i mentioned before what we're going to do is we're going to show you how to fix this now you like i mentioned before you can probably put the ground screw in there but this is just as easy and drywall screws pretty much are on every job site for the most part all right you just run it in there run it back out this is if you're using a stud obviously if you you can actually use these on a metal stud also they will go through i recommend using a tip similar to this so you can just slide it up and uh you know you don't have to fight trying to hold your screw in there all right so if you come and you have just one of these screws like this you know like i mentioned before the easiest way to do this is just get you a piece of green wire and take a pair of strippers you want to strip a little bit more than normal uh you strip that off like it now these are the dual strippers that i use the made by klein they're excellent obviously an amazon link is down below what you need to do now this is you can just bend the hook a lot of people do that but i'm going to show you a little better way i think so these holes right here i think i've told you before in many videos that is how you bend your hooks so what you need to do is put it in there all right so you just put it right through the hole and you want to let's say you bend it this way all right and then you come up just a little bit so you bend it right here you want to come up just a little bit and then you want to kind of twist twist take your pliers out or your strippers and twist now that gives you a a back bend on it so when you go to spin it it doesn't come off as easy because just a regular hook well it has a tendency to ride up where if you bend it you know in an angle it will stay on there a lot easier so let's let's see all right so having said all that now this screwdriver is one of my new my new favorites this is what i'm going to use i'm not going to use a nut driver on this but basically what this thing right here does is you push this button down and you can extend it all right pull it up and you can shorten it so it goes pretty long as you see so all right and then when you want to switch it to phillips you just take it out pull it up push it down and then you got everything you need all right all right so how do you put this on without this wire backing out so basically if this was in a box you want to make sure that the hook is to your right so basically you take it and you just slide it over the screw like that let me show you we're in now and we're gonna put the wire on here and we are going to just screw it down and we'll tighten it up all right so what you got here now is you have your ground and then you have your main ground your bonder ground actually this is one of this is what's going to bond your ground to this box all right you never want to use you never want to take this ground right here ever like i mentioned before i've seen many electricians and helpers both you don't want to take this and wrap it around the screw because if this was ever to break for whatever reason um you basically lost your bonding to this box this box here so what you need to do is you need to put this kind of a ground on it obviously they make one with already made up so if you choose to buy them that's great if not you can just do like i showed you you should have plenty of scrap wire on your job site most people do especially on a commercial site and that's how you do this all right so what you do after that the thing i love about these dual strippers guys is i can strip two wires at a time so we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna just cut it off here like this and we're gonna strip it out boom and we are going to take one wire and we are going to twist these together always twist do not do half-ass and just put the wire nut on it and let the wires twisted always make sure you twist your wires there's the perfect joint of course we're going to put a wire nut on it and we are going to send it and there you are that is the correct way to bond a box now they do make clip-on pigtails that you can just clip on the box which i still think is code i would not do that i would prefer this method any day over that because to me once you screw that in that box guys you're golden it's done and over with easy you can walk away from it knowing that your box is bond and everything is grounded the correct way alright guys if you have any questions or any video ideas that you want to see uh do let me know in the comments down below or send me an email i'll do my best to get that on if you like what you see here guys like and subscribe god bless and we'll see you on the next one have a great day

Channel: Why Not DIY

Views: 174,332

Keywords: diy, how to, jeff comer, mike gardiner, mountaineer outdoors, how to bond a electrical box, how to ground a box with no ground wire, grounding a metal box, grounding a metal junction box, green ground screw, commercial wiring, residential wiring, residential wiring basics

Id: 0Dsp8AODN60

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 14 2021