How To Install a Dimmer

welcome to home renovation today I'm gonna show you how to install a dimmer switch and you can do it yourself [Music] beauty of doing electrical work in your own home is in most cases building codes allow homeowners to change their own electrical fixtures that includes plugs which is GFI dimmer switches light fixtures all that kind of stuff and I'm on the most dangerous part of this job is opening the package Hey yeah what are they thinking Wow here we go so before we get started I'm gonna read through the instructions real quick off camera not to waste your time here I back alright so this is gonna be a demonstration for anybody whether you understand electoral or not you don't have to life is pretty simple electrical in home situations nowadays is pretty much it's so safe it's ridiculous so not having to understand everything about the electrical world to change a fixture is not necessary but you do have to know every single step and have the proper tools so on the back of this particular fixture it has something called a strip gauge and that's how much of the coating of the wire you have to remove because in this situation the wires go in the holes you tighten the screws and then there's a plate inside the tighten is up to the wire it's like here's your wife it's not always like that sometimes it's more traditional this is for the ground wire we'll get into all this a minute but you'd actually wrap the wire around it so you actually strip more so what you need is a set of strippers and you have your gauge on here home wiring is 14 gauge almost exclusively so you find the number 14 you back it up there lay the length that you need your pinch give it a twist and it slides right off this is designed to remove the covering around the wire without damaging the wire all right you can confirm that you made the right cut maybe just a little bit too long the other tool you should have been doing electrical is a square end pair of pliers like this this is how got a great cutter on it but it's also good for twisting your wires together I'll show you that the other thing is you're gonna want one of these bad boys power tester this confirms that what you're doing see that it means it's on and it's ready to tell you and when we pull this off it'll tell us if the power is live now I ran downstairs and I turned off the breaker and the easiest way to do that is to turn the light on turn off the breaker and see if the light turns off and in most cases that means the powers off sometimes it means your bulbs burned out so it's not a guarantee which is why it's nice to have one of these things now almost all light fixtures are attached with 632 screws and that requires a drill bit number one Robertson but most of these screws also have a slot in them so if the screw gets tripped you can still use a flathead screwdriver to remove it there we go I have no way to know if the power's on here or not so I'm gonna lift the box straight up and out and there's my wires green light if there was power that would turn red and would start to beep okay sometimes just on contact that happens don't let a freak out okay there's no power in here so in this situation we currently have a dimmer switch all right and we're gonna pull off our little moretz wow they're really on well and you're gonna have one like this no here's what you're gonna know inside the box there are two white wires and two black wires so what's going on is we have a white and a black coming from the panel and we have a white and a black traveling to the light the way electric circuit works is the white wire has to be continuous and then the black wire when there's when the fixture is working is continuous and this switch breaks that continuity so when the switch is off the power can't travel through the black wire when you turn the switch on you engage the continuity so then you can flow okay it's kind of like a a bridge being up or down traffic stops traffic and move it's really that simple okay so if you have a regular light switch then you'll have the power in coming to the bottom screw and the power leaving on the top screw if you already have a dimmer switch then you're just gonna have a black and a black and it's reversible so you don't have to worry about which one you use now we're done with this one get that out of here so when our switch today it is a basic dimmer and you will see that it says top so this is in the off position and that will slowly bring it up to full power okay and so what this is asking for is one black wire in here one black wire in here ground on the bottom now our ground is a little bit short so we're going to start with that at the end here there's little jagged teeth just pinch and turn and it creates this beautiful little loop okay and we can use that to put across our green wire and then you can pinch the wire shut mm-hmm and then you take your drill with your number one bit or you can use the screwdriver you don't have to have a drill for this all right and now we're ready to go now my two black wires are both unique here because they've been twisted into place and what we're looking to do is bring it straight so we use our square and pliers and just in a couple of different locations and apply pressure and we straighten out the wire because it's a little short we don't want to just go cutting everything back and starting over again all right the strip gauge these are actually in pretty good shape so what we're gonna do is one wire at a time I'll start with the one that has the most flexibility push it right into the the sheathing on the wire it touches the back of the switch and that's it done and then this one here it doesn't matter which hole it's designed so you could have multiple wires coming off the same switch there we go that's it now when you're putting your wires back into a box you want to pinch them okay so there s curve you want them to have that flexibility so when you push it back you have an S curve that's going to collapse so to bend up and down okay if you just have it straight out and you push the buckle out the sides and make all kinds of mess this is perfect this is our 632 screw I always start on backwards a little bit just to make sure that I hear that it clicks and I know that the set the thread so I'm not gonna strip the screws when you're changing a fixture always throw out the old screws okay this is not the strongest metal and if there's any damage at all on it you run the risk of stripping the screw before you install it and that just creates a whole lot of work okay because it is the new Decorah design we need a corresponding plate because this will not work all right let me put this over top and then you take a look do I like it is it big enough because you have an option you can buy different size plates especially to have an old house with plaster walls or somebody's done some rework and they made a mess around the switch like this you can buy an oversize plate to cover up all those imperfections same thing that here that listen to the click right there now I know I can go forward okay finish by setting your screws up and if you like this kind of information make sure you subscribe the channel know all I got to do is go back turn the power on and I've got a dimmer switch click the video to see how this project turned there

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 409,562

Rating: 4.9050035 out of 5

Keywords: home renovision, diy renovations, dimmer, dimmer switch, wiring a dimmer, replace dimmer, how to install a dimmer, how to install a dimmer switch, dimmer switch installation, dimmer light switch, switch dimmer, dimmer switch install, dimmer switch for ceiling fan, dimmer switches, wiring a dimmer switch, replace dimmer light switch, regular switch to dimmer switch, light dimmer switch, light dimmer switch installation, wiring a dimmer switch for led lights

Id: 0yVxQp_oqSQ

Length: 8min 10sec (490 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 22 2019