How to pass electrical inspection

hi I'm Dave and I'm just a homeowner but I want to talk to you today about how to pass your rough-in electrical inspection I'm not an expert but I've done it a couple times in my life and I'm always surprised at some of the things that are code so I want to go through a fast video and show you all the important things in one shot so here we go we're in a bedroom right here and in this bedroom we started out as you probably want to start out by placing your blue boxes wherever you want switches and Outlets so we just came in here we imagined well we want to have the switch here next to the door so we put a box there just a box and we knew we like lots of outlets so we put an outlet here and we put an outlet here and it won't let here and here some people think that's a little overdone but we like lots of outlets now what you have to do for code you have to have an outlet every six feet in a wall so if you have a 12 foot bedroom like ours there has to be one in the middle so that you never go more than six feet without running into an outlet of course we beat That by a country mile we have lots of outlets um so you place your boxes where you want outlets and switches when you have your boxes placed then you start running your home run a home run line is any line that starts at the breaker panel and comes to feed the room so for us we ran from the breaker panel which is at the other end of the house 48 feet away and we came into this Outlet so it comes across the attic and Dives down uh here these holes are drilled in the top plate and so we come down and we went to this Outlet first that's our home run outlet now a couple things to notice before we talk any more about the outlets you have to be careful when you drill your holes to have enough holes and you need them to be right in the middle of the two by four the reason is you need to pass inspection you need one and a quarter inches so I've made this stick and I put a line on this stick at one and a quarter and so you can go like this and put it up there and realize oh yeah we have plenty of room but you drill a three-quarter inch hole right in the middle and it passes and you can only put two wires in a three-quarter inch hole so you have to do multiple holes for multiple wires and that's code if you go too much to the left or right you're too close one and a quarter inches when they go and do a drywall if they nail into there and hit your wires that's very bad so if you're not one and a quarter inches away you have to put a nailer strip here to keep the nails the drywall screws from hitting those wires so go right in the middle and go three quarters of an inch two wires for each hole and by the way we're dealing with old uh construction and they didn't have that rule so for example if you look at this hole that's already existing from the old days that one does not pass code it's not in the middle so we have an inch and a quarter on this side but not enough room on this side so I would have to put a nailer plate on there if I was going to use that hole and I did not but in other places I use the old holes and the inspector dinged me on it so I know all right so we started with the Home Run line came from the breaker panel down here and this is our home run so basically we're coming into the box and then out of the box to the next one and just daisy chaining all of these together and you'll see of course that when you wire your Outlets you're going to have uh two Hots and two whites if they're Daisy chained together because you have an in wire and an out wire and the inspectors like it when you put pigtails on everything instead of putting to two blacks on the outlet lugs and the two whites on the other side of the outlet lugs they like for you to put a pigtail here and you'll just have one pigtail one wire going to the back of your outlet and then of course same with the white we have a white pigtail and the white pigtail will go to the other side of the outlet and of course a ground pigtail so that that will go to the grounding screw on your outlet and then you just roll it back in there so you're ready for drywall so we do that with all of the outlets and you start with the Home Run line and you go daisy chaining along so that's how you do the outlets you can see uh we came from one Outlet to another when we got here there's a bunch of Timber in this window so we didn't drill through all of that that's too much drilling we got up in the attic again and then came back down and finished all around the rest of the room just notice here we have a nailer plate and that's because we use the old hole that was already drilled from 50 years ago and it's too close that's not an inch and a quarter and the inspector did not like that and he made us put nailer plates on places like that all right so that's how you do the outlets we're going to go into the bathroom here and I just want to show you one thing in the bathroom that's a little different in our bathroom we're going to have both an outlet and a switch in this box actually two switches and so you see we have white wires that's for lighting and yellow wires that's for receptacles coming into the same box and you can do that you still will wire all your grounds together and now you'll need two pigtails one for the outlet side and one for the switch side so our ground has two pigtails one for the outlet one for the switch and then um of course you don't tie your whites together from the yellow wires with the whites from the white wire because you have two different circuits and you have to keep them separate the grounds we tie together but none of these can be tied together because this is a much thinner wire and it can only handle 15 amps and this yellow is a thicker wire for 20 amps so when you bring two different circuits into your box you have to keep those separate except for the grounds all right let's look at a simple switch follow me to our hallway and we have a simple switch in our closet now these days because most of us are using LED lights uh you can put a ton of Lights you could put your whole house on one lighting circuit and again we're going to be using white wires for the lighting circuits by and large and yellow wires for the receptacles and when you have a a simple switch you're going to have a hotline coming in all the way from the breaker panel again hot coming in and then you're going to need a hot to go out and catch the next switch so you go from switch to switch and if you have a home run for say the whole house wherever you drop into the first switch that's the source source in and then Source out to go to the next switch because every switch needs a hot wire so that's how you do that and when you wire these of course you always wire your grounds together and this is a simple switch it only has a one Gang Box for a simple switch and so we just have one ground wire and this will connect to the top of the outlet you always tie your whites together in a switch tie all the whites if we had four switches in this box we would still tie all the whites together tie all the grounds together and then a switch you're actually interrupting the black wire so what happens here is this is just for safety we take this black wire and we put it on one side of the switch switches only get black wires they don't get white wires so you tie the whites together put the blacks one on the top lug one on the bottom lug and now your switch is ready to go we put the wire nut on there just because it's good for safety if we turn this circuit on the light will come on without a switch and that's a good way to do it all right now we're going to show you a more complicated switch so come over here to this switch these are our patio doors and what you see here we have a ceiling fan and we have a porch light and we have a ceiling fan light kit so three different switches and a three Gang Box same as before you wire all of your grounds together you do that first they all go together and since you have three switches you're going to have to have three pigtails coming off one for each switch so my pigtails are a little buried here but that's here in this yellow and so there's a pigtail oh I gave the pigtail up here pigtail for every switch and of course your black wires one for the top lug of the switch one for the bottom on each of the switches and little tags you've got to make these tags here because you'll forget what all of these wires are doing so one of these black wires for this switch is hot and one switch is going to be hot when you switch it so we mark this wire is going to our ceiling fan the one next to it is hot and when we switch it then the ceiling fan becomes hot so put your labels on and not too deep in the Box what we did here we took a piece of Scotch tape and we folded it over just make a little Loop and drop it on the wire and then pinch it together not too deep in the box and now we'll always remember this is our ceiling fan black so it comes in hot here we'll put the switch here and then our ceiling fan will work and then this one over here this is the outside lights because this is a patio door and so that one says outside lights so obviously this one is hot this one will become hot when we turn on the switch for the outside lights and then this one of course is marked for the ceiling fan light kit and so we have three switches in a three gang box once again you tie all the whites together always tie the whites together and then tie your grounds together and leave pigtails for each grounding wire and then the blacks go together because ones for the top lug of the switch and one is for the bottom lug of the switch and that's how you do a more complicated switch all right to the kitchen in the kitchen here what surprises a lot of people is how many outlets you have to have so this is your garbage disposal or this is our dishwasher outlet and that has to be GFI so you can either make it GFI up here somewhere where you can see it but that's a bad idea this is basically functioning as a junction box so we won't have anything but a blank cover on here and we are gfiing it at the breaker panel so that's a more expensive breaker to put in the breaker panel but it'll be GFI and if it triggers even if it's a nuisance trip we go to the breaker panel and uh trip it back the other direction we're good so you have to have a separate circuit for your dishwasher you have to have a separate circuit for your garbage disposal so these are home runs home runs from here to the panel for the garbage disposal from here to the panel for the dishwasher and then you have to have a home run on your microwave our microwave goes over the range and so home run from the microwave to the breaker panel you don't have to have a home run from the refrigerator to the breaker panel but it's common so another from here to the breaker panel we go and we keep having all these circuits we're going to have an Island the island has to have an outlet and probably its own circuit and then you have to have in the kitchen a dedicated circuit so you you can't just say well we're going to use the same Outlet in the dining room or the same circuit in the dining room and the kitchen you have to have a separate circuit for the kitchen so the kitchen all by itself might have six circuits at six places on your breaker panel and that doesn't even count the heavy duty range wire that's a 220 circuit so you know that one's special that's taking two places on your breaker panel so the kitchen all by itself is taking up all kinds of space and you break your panel another thing to notice here is we had to put an outside Outlet here this happens to be in our kitchen area and that could not be with the kitchen that had to be from a different circuit so we had to pull this circuit for the outside all the way from the great room instead of the kitchen because the kitchen can't share a circuit with anything else one other thing to notice by the patio doors we were surprised to find out that you have to have an outlet near your patio doors preferably on both sides for us it was impossible to put one on that side because our porch enclosed porch is right next to the patio door so we couldn't put an outlet on that side but there is one over here you can't see but it's in this cavity Down Low by where our bathtub is so that outlet is leading to outside and once again we couldn't share that with the kitchen that had to be a different circuit from the kitchen okay now we're gonna go to the breaker panel indoors but in our attached garage and that's a good place you can put a breaker panel outside if you want to the boxes can be waterproof and so you can do that if you want to but ours is inside if you're putting your breaker panel in for the first time you have to make sure that you have space you can't put a breaker panel in a closed closet where there's clothing you have to be able if there was a fire somebody needs to be able to rush in here and get to it you can't make it too high the top of this uh switch can't be more than 67 inches tall so you know might as well under that and um come in closer look at the breaker panel a lot of places these days require your arc fault circuit breakers these things cost like forty five dollars each and fortunately where we live still in 2020 they only require them in the bedroom areas but we have three arc fault breakers here because we have one lighting circuit for all of our bedrooms and we have two receptacle circuits one for each bedroom and that means they all the bedrooms where we live all the bedrooms have to have arc fault circuit breakers so that's very expensive really National codes are leaning toward every normal circuit being arc fault fortunately we don't have that yet because that would be like eight hundred dollars of circuit breakers and so we dodged that bullet for now you can see as we brought in the wires all of these are the home runs that we talked about the yellow ones and the white ones we have two lighting circuits so not very many white wires uh and and so all of those at the home runs going to those places we talked about we brought in the wires from the top that was convenient for us it might be different for you some people bring them in from the bottom and that's fine these are the big wires that are coming from the meter and so you have to install those carefully but they are installed with some special anti-oxidation cream so you have to use that if you're installing new feed wires and you can see all of these wires are bent kind of pretty and in right angles you don't want this to look like a plate of spaghetti the code actually says that there's a craftsmanship requirement and the inspectors like to see things that are pretty so you make these at 90 degree angles and put them in nice but don't make them at Sharp 90 degree angles because a sharp Bend is a hot place and so you just kind of curl them around 90 degrees and don't make a hot spot by by pinching them and so we put all of our in in our panel the neutrals and the grounds go on the same bus either side some panels they're separated and and that's equally good and then of course the black wires are actually going to the circuit breakers they screw onto the circuit breakers and we pop those in so that is our breaker panel and again you want to keep that nice and neat I won't show you the meter base but if you upgrade your service you might find that you have to replace your meter base that typically is the case the new meter bases are much bigger than the old ones so we had to upgrade our meter base and our meter base is right through this wall on the back side of this wall so nice and straight and easy you might want to double check that we've we learned two things in that process number one our power company provided the meter base for us so that was nice that was free and number two by going close within three feet only three feet of this feeder wire between this panel and that box if you go more than three feet the rules change and get more strict so we went straight out and in three feet we saved ourselves hundreds of dollars by putting the breaker panel and the meter base side by side so if you can do that that's a great trick too um let's show you one more thing back here and uh I think we will have covered most of what's required with our electrical inspection once again we talked about craftsmanship and there are times when you have lots of wires coming into one place and the inspectors now love to see these wire stackers or cable stackers however you want to say it and what you want to do is use these stackers whenever you have a bunch of wires coming through the same place so this is right outside our panel all of our home runs are going right there and this is a very busy place so we use these stackers and it makes all your wiring beautiful you have to have a staple within eight inches of every box so every switch every outlet has a staple within eight inches and then when you go up the wall you need to have a staple every four feet and so you don't want wires flopping around and our inspector required us to uh be very particular about these staples and and how we took care of the wires in the attic space if you can see up here we have lots of wires going this way these are our home runs heading to the other side of the house and so we had to put in Staples every about six feet uh in the Attic so that they're not just swinging back and forth wildly you can see these Loops of wire hanging everywhere we put these here because we're using the new LED lights which are so wonderful so they don't even require fixture boxes they are the lights come with the fixture box already complete and all you do is cut the appropriate size hole in your drywall and you put your wiring in that box that's your fixture box and you just toss this up into the ceiling and this is a spring-loaded lens and so you pop these Springs into the hole that you've made in your drywall and it's wonderful so these are the kinds of lights and that's why there are no fixture boxes where you see all of these Loops of wire we didn't require that for this kind of light and of course LED lights take so little electricity again that it in some ways it doesn't matter how many you put on you could put a whole house full of LED lights on one lighting circuit if you wanted to we put them on two lighter circuits one more thing to notice in the attic and we're happy when we are wiring for our heating and air conditioning system we have a heat pump and I don't know if you can see this but I'm going to show you the top of the attic and you'll see up there that there is a fixture box around fixture box and that's a for a light and you'll also see that there's an outlet and a switch you must have an outlet within six feet of your air conditioning unit in the Attic it's code and so you have to have one and the same with a fixture box you must have a light so that workmen up there can see and they can also plug their tools into the outlet and so we have to do that within six feet of our air conditioning system and that's why that is there so some of the things that uh we had to learn along the way and we passed inspection and so we're so happy and that doesn't make me an expert but that's what it took for me to pass so I hope that's helpful and thank you for watching our video

Channel: DaveandTeresa Rieke

Views: 11,016

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Id: ukbUF0vEeXA

Length: 22min 17sec (1337 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 30 2022