How to Install a Breaker In Your Panel | LIVE!

hey guys jeff from home renovation here today we're going to be wiring up a couple of circuits into my panel just to give you an idea what to expect when you're going to do this kind of work because things have changed in recent years nowadays we've got arc fault breakers okay and you'll see that extra little curly q wire up there the neutral wire is coming out of the the breaker box now and so now you have a black and a white wire going to the breaker box breaker box has its own neutral wire coming out of it all right so installing that right is a really important this is a safety device that's been used now in our building code for all wall plugs you got to get used to these changes if you're going to make upgrades and still pass an inspection and i'm also going to be installing a double so what we call a space saver there's two 15 circuits on here standard 15s are all we need for all of our light circuits so i'm hooking up some light circuit for outside and i'm hooking up plugs for all my living room renovation we're going to make that live today because i'm tired of having extension cords just to watch tv so this is the plan we thought we'd share this with you warning don't do this at home find yourself a portable light or a headlamp and strap it on your head and then turn off your breaker this is your main power so in behind this white panel is the main power if you turn it to off everything you touch over here is perfectly safe i however need the lights to make the video so i'm going to do it the way that guys like me and electricians have been doing for 100 years we just wire it live because if you're careful and you know what you're doing you won't kill yourself but if you're not and you're not you will so be careful out there all right so first we've got to punch a hole there's a little knockouts in the panel all right and there's big holes and there's little holes and you can knock them out in either direction oh i should turn that around it makes a better hammer all right and then you just pinch and twist through all that away okay then we're going to use these these are just some protectors okay they keep the cable from vibrating against the sharp metal and they also have a little locking system in there when you push the cable through that it pinches and holds it in place so it's on an angle you push the through that way and it opens and then closes behind on the wire and all we do is pinch the shut and shove it in the hole one and two all right now you can put two wires in every one of these just saying and the 14 2 wire we're using you can go two wires in each one of those grommets i prefer to just punch the hole and have a separate line it's nice and clean that way and then i have less holes to punch in the future if i want to add something later now when you're doing your wiring generally at this point we've done the rough in we have rough and inspected and then you write on your wire what it's for and just leave it dangling on the floor near your panel and then when it's time to bring power to everything you can come back and do this at this point that means you've already wired all the plugs or you've wired all your lights and everything else is finished just waiting for the power supply okay so probably should have got a sharper blade for this max the goal here is we're going to bring the wire into the panel i have to bring the ground to these screws here i have to bring a white to where the breaker is or these screws here and i got to bring the black to the breaker or where well just the breaker so we want to have enough room to come in the panel and do everything we want to do comfortably so we'll start and make it extra long this is for outdoor lights so we are going to go with a regular the split breaker on this one okay we'll do this one first ladder a lot of extra garbage okay throw that away the first goal here is to get the wire into the panel and have it be safe so we're going to press it through the back of that grommet and once it's sticking through okay i'm going to pull it towards me and create a bend so that when i'm lifting it up it's now coming away from the panel okay and i'm going to continue to pull away from the wires and all the contacts until i got about a half an inch of that white coated stuff coming through all right because the sheathing on the wire is actually what makes great contact with that grommet now that it's all through i'll bend them all down out of the way i'm going to work with one at a time first thing i want to do is get the my ground wire put in place now my ground wire is going to come across here and i want to bring it up behind this screw so i don't need a whole lot of ground wire so i'm going to cut it here if you like just to be safe you can add extra length okay inside the panel and then have it come up if you're new at this that's a great option because then if you make a mistake your wire's still too long you can cut back and make it fit where we live all of the screws in the panel are a number two robertson so that's ready to roll and i just want to get this pair of pliers to grab about one inch of wire and make a 90 degree turn all right now the screws on this panel come in the open position and i'm feeding it in behind the screw do you see that max yes sir okay now i don't want it sticking too far out and then we'll just tighten up the screw low power one click and i'm done i got great contact what you'll see there is that that wire won't be able to pull out of position and now i'm going to fold and tuck to keep this out of my way nice and organized now we're using this breaker and in this situation i have two circuits we're only using one right now so the black will go to here but the white has nothing to do with this so the white wire we're going to find a location on the neutral bar all right that's nice and convenient i like this one you'll notice that there is a lot of breakers that you can get in here there's almost twice as many ground in neutral locations it's for convenience all right so don't go worrying about always going one to the next to the next to the next your box can get very busy we're gonna find a location we're gonna put a little extra wire on there i'm to come up here i'm going to go into there wire's a little long and now i'm going to strip the sheathing wire strippers like this have numbers on them you see this that's a 14. i am stripping a number 14 wire so i press that in there i only need a half an inch to get behind that screw quarter turn and i pull it off that groove is perfectly aligned to cut the sheathing and not cut the wire if you do that your wires aren't going to break off over time and cause your circuit to fail now same thing i'm coming in from underneath i'll put a nice 90 on that that makes it very easy for me to reach in with the wire and keep my hands completely out of the way all right now i'm gonna get it up and in there until it's sticking out behind that nut and then i'll tighten it up done double check it's not going anywhere nice and tidy right bend it all into position there we go oh we're doing pretty good so far all right now the next part of this wire is going to be my hot now just for fun on this panel i'm going to put this one right over on this side okay why not isn't going to hurt anybody okay here we go now to do right there oh i like it okay now since the wire only has to go to this location i could cut it short okay but what i'm going to do is because i'm wiring this live i'm going to make it extra long so that i can really reach in and and and and hook it down here low and then stab it in position i got lots of flexibility all right we'll just bend the wire out of the way afterwards so a little long still so i'm going to come down here take off the 14 about three quarters of an inch okay i'm going to attach it to the breaker way far away from anything that's resembling power now you'll see when you cut a wire three quarters of an inch long it has restriction you don't want the copper extending out of the box because you can have incidental contact even that you can have cut down a little bit more it's not going to hurt to have even a little bit less exposed wire okay there we go that's nice that's about as safe as you're ever going to get there we go now you want to test make sure it doesn't pull out good and make sure it's in the off position very important now we're going to just take this slot here which compresses on that bar there and that is live that's power that whole gray panel in the back of these bars is live now with the breaker off you can slide it right on there not a problem so you rock it these little two black tabs okay you set that in position and then you rock it into place [Music] there we go now we're going to take this extra wire and we're going to pinch it and put it into place okay good next the other breaker i'm going to just come through the top here i'm going to come along here afterwards and i'm going to staple all the wires back up following the code for every five feet and i like to have it stapled within six inches of where it comes into the box all right i just like that because it eliminates the possibility of somebody snagging this and yanking something out of the panel all right so we're gonna give this a lot of room that's coming in now we're gonna call that in now this particular breaker it's very busy over there i think we're going to go right in this spot and so that takes me to there and a little bit of mercy okay living room plugs and then we're gonna do the same thing get rid of the sheathing that's gonna be good there peel that off yeah there's not a whole lot to all this stuff right just be mindful of how you're using your knife where you're pulling you don't want to be cutting over the seating it's another good reason for leaving along if you do gouge this out then you can cut it back and do it again generally when you put your knife in the middle you'll know if you're on the left or the right side of that copper if i'm on the north side of the copper i hold the blade towards the copper and follow it down so i'm actually it's okay to scratch the copper but you don't want to risk scratching the sheathing off the individual lines a lot of guys going oh there's different tools and i'm like yeah but most homeowners aren't going to buy every electrical tool in the in the trick right in the box they're going to use what they have well you know what let's just do this after we get it in then that is the way to do it safely again bend it to create that curve so it's poking towards you and then pull it all through there's about an inch there that's good bend them down same thing we're going to just hurry through this a little bit now okay two to two here's my next green spot okay ground over tucked and pretty okay now the difference here is on this one i gotta back off these screws and you'll see in this situation both of my screws are going in i got the white going on the same side in front of this white wire into here so there's an interceptor for the circuit that's for if somebody sticks like a butter knife in a wall plug receptacle it's not going to spark and start a fire at the box this will trip before that happens okay and we'll keep that box in the off position and we are going to install both of these lines right here now okay so the white goes just above the white this is really simple to remember all right and then the black goes on the other side test that they're not pulling out okay this is where it gets interesting take these fibers from the the wire here and twist them make sure they're not fraying so they install nice and clean into the neutral location okay and it goes in behind here behind that screw and don't install the sheathing all the way through that make sure that the sheathing stops just underneath that bar so you're getting positive contact with the wire not the sheathing or that'll fail and then what's the point of having a safety device it's not going to work listen to me talking safety while i do this live i don't know there's gonna be a ton of comments right but the point is i don't know electrician out there who doesn't do this on a daily basis okay it's just too much of a pain to be turning the power off all the time to bringing down special lights blah blah blah this only takes five minutes right now again we're gonna be careful we're gonna set the base in place there's no power in this breaker box yet you're perfectly fine you're going to line it up and press it in place huh no sparks no nothing exploding everything's fine we're going to take this wire tuck it out of the way and same thing here i'm going to set that in and then fold and flatten and give myself lots of space to continue working in the future now all we have to do now is add a few more staples tie all this to the wall but i know if you're like me i'm dying to go upstairs and see if the plugs work so let's turn it on must have been wired right nothing blur up didn't turn off now all right fantastic well now we know the plug works we can close this up now the last step here is to identify my new breaker it's right here all right and we want to break the safety tab out of the way just by going back and forth that one's good and we did this one right all right we're gonna grab this one now okay now we're good to go now we should go with no problem there we go okay now now they're special screws for these panels are very fat threaded number robertson you just got to screw them back in there's really nothing to it make sure you're not crash threading it now the last thing you want to do is pull out your marker and mark your breakers so you know what the heck they're for so here's my marker now this one over here was for outdoor lights this one here was for living room plugs all right now i'm gonna have to come back here and find out about those other two words that i put in i didn't write them down imagine that me with a punch list okay listen this is it that's all there is to it guys you can wire a panel it doesn't take much to it i probably should turn on my outdoor lights there we go all right thanks for joining us and if you like this kind of information give us a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you'd like to see other wiring videos then you can watch this as part of our reality renovation series we rewired and rebuilt the entire 8080s farmhouse in the front of the building we did a bathroom in the front hall you're gonna love it see you soon

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 548,441

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, jeff thorman, homerenovisiondiy, circuit breaker, electrical panel, circuit breaker replacement, circuit breakers explained, How to Install a Breaker Without Turning the Power Off, how to install a breaker in the panel, how to install a breaker in a panel box, how to install a breaker in a live panel, how to install a breaker in a panel, electrical panel replacement, electrical panel upgrade, electrical panel installation

Id: mYJTFMqJFS4

Length: 16min 48sec (1008 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021