How To Rough In Wires for a Standard Outlet or Receptacle Using Pigtails in Daisy Chain - Ben's DIY

hey guys my name is Ben's ahlstrom I am wiring receptacle boxes and I want to show you the process of how you roll in each particular set of wires starting with the grounds the neutrals and finally the hots this is probably your most standard situation right here where we are feeding multiple outlets we've got power coming from this outlet here feeding into this one and then coming back out of there and back out of there and so on so this is like a daisy chain of outlets if you want to call it that so this is the box we're going to be working on as you can see I already have my sheathing stripped off of these sets of wires and I have them labeled so I've got the circuit number and this is the power coming in because it says from receptacle on the left and this is to the receptacle on the right we're going to start with the ground wires so we're going to bend these other ones out of the way we're going to be using a piece of insulated 14 gauge ground wire it's green insulated wire and this isn't this is a 20 amp circuit these are these are 12 gauge wires that by code you do not need to use a 12 gauge piece of wire to connect to your outlet for the ground so this is just more flexible and it's going to give you a lot more let's make it easier when you push this back in here the insulated wire also prevents when you're pushing that outlet back in there you have that bare copper wire most a time that is threatening to short out onto something so if you use a piece of insulated wire that keeps it from from shorting out so we're going to go ahead and attach this on here now always follow capacity guidelines for the wire nuts you're using so in this case a yellow wire nut is adequate you do not need to use the green wire nuts you can use them but they're kind of for a different purpose I'll explain that in a separate video but get that good and snug and then if you need to take a some kind of a tool that you can grip the wire nut with and it gives you just a little bit more torque on it I like to just twist it just enough so that you see a little bit of twisting happening past the edge of the wire nut but that's it do not thread this way back into the box it's going to cause you nothing but headaches later on down the road got some light here for you so you can see back in this box this is probably the trickiest part of wiring a box is just being doing this slow and steady getting these wires rolled in here starting with the grounds getting them way back into the back of the box as far as you can this is the deepest single gang box that I could get ahold of at my local home improvement store or Menards and basically you just get it to roll around the outside edges there looks like that and just spend quite a bit time sorry I'm blocking your view but getting these push all the way to the very back of the box like so leave your ground wire coming out right here and as you can see we have a pretty clean roll in there we didn't bend the cable excessively the wire excessively sharp anywhere so now we're going to move on to the neutrals all right now let's say a lot of time people would quit right here that would call that good for the roughing wiring because a lot of a lot of people would tend to use the terminals on the sides of the outlet or the receptacle to connect from one circuit to the next or from one outlet to the next as you can see there's two spots there and there's two spots over here so why would you do anything different other than use those and the reason is this is a lot less solid when you connect onto here it's okay but it's not as secure as a wire nut in the back of the box properly connected onto these and then you use a pigtail coming out to here and here so now we're going to create a pigtail with our neutrals and a pigtail with our hot wires this also makes it so that if you were to let's say take one of the outlets out so if you want to just take this guy out of the circuit that would essentially disconnect all the rest the outlets if you've used these terminals on the side to connect to the next one so if you have a pigtail do you just have a couple wires coming out you take this outlet out and it doesn't disconnect power from the rest of them so you could safe those off with wire nuts on them roll it back into the box if for some reason you wanted to take the outlet out temporarily if you're a painting or some other reason so that's the other positive of doing it that way let's strip the wires back approximately a half inch you don't want to have too much otherwise when you put your wire nut on you will end up with copper showing past the edge of it you want to make sure that there's no no bare wire showing past the edge of the wire nut make sure you get the Front's of the wires all nice and even and then we are good to go to thread this on here again if your wire nuts don't have the wings on them you're going to need to use something to just get a hold of this and rotate it because my fingers aren't strong enough maybe yours are and again we're just going to rotate it just far enough so that it threads you can just start to see it starting to twist the wires going back but not any further than that that might even be a little more than necessary get them nice and tight make sure that they are not going to come up just don't over braid them those of you inside the box for you the neutrals are nicely rolled in the back and our pigtails coming out the front here and this pigtail for the neutral in the hot wire has to be the full size of the what the circuit wire so 12 gauge you can only do a smaller wire for the ground which is 14 gauge in this case you see all the wires are rolling into the back of the box real nice that's a kind of determinant on how much cable you have coming out past the edge front edge of your box I've been doing 6 inches for the most part it looks like I might even be a tad over in this case six and a half or so but six inches has been the target so I the wires are coming in the bottom of the box and then I let them go across the back and out the front and I've been leaving about six inches and that as you were seeing makes it really nice for making that one loop with the wire in the back of the box when you tuck it back in and you wouldn't want anymore or you'll end up with just so much wire in the back of your box that you won't be happy but you want to have enough to where you have lots of flexibility if you ever needed to trim the ends off or anything like that I've been using this as a depth gauge for knowing where to trim my wires off and I pull them into the box just find something that is the length that you like which like I said six inches past the front edge of box trim is back half inch line the wire is up and put your wire nut on get a little more twist just start and twist past the edge of the wire nut that's where what I like it the way I like it and there's no copper showing along the bottom edge of the wire nut roll the wires into the back of the box and now we have our pigtails extending out the front using our handy depth gauge we're going to use the same concept and clip these up right here and now we would be ready to install a receptacle except for that we're in the rough end stage the Scottie sheet rock yet so we're just going to safe these off by putting a wire nut on the hot and the neutral like so and I like to wrap the ground wire around this just kind of keep them together and then roll that into the box like so you can see here now that this is rolled in here that there are no wires that are pushing up against the edge of this box and this is probably in from the front about a quarter of an inch and the that's important because when they come with the Rotozip to cut the drywall out a lot of times guys we use a Rotozip so put the drywall over this they'll pop a hole with the rotating bit through find the edge of the box and then cut the hole around the outside edge okay now if your wires are way up tight or that way out or all around here they could be damaged from that so just be aware of that so that's it that's how you do the rough and wiring for a receptacle and and using the pigtail method which by far is the best way to go theoretically now we'd be ready to turn on our circuit breaker if all the rest of these were done and that's one of the benefits of doing it this way is during your rough construction you can turn the circuit on before the outlets are installed since it's they're all pigtailed and you safe I'm off like I showed you then you can turn the circuit on and you'll find out right away if there's any kind of an issue if it trips or if the arc fault trips or the ground fault trips or whatever you'll know right away so you can fix the problem while your walls are open and then also if anything happens during the remainder of construction if some kind of a screw gets ran into a wire or something weird happens you will know right away as long as you're checking your panel to see if something is tripped I'm going to leave my circuits on during the remainder of the rough construction so that I know if something happens right away thanks so much for watching I appreciate it a lot if this video helped you out please rate it up and feel free to subscribe for more helpful videos we'll talk to you in the next video

Channel: Benjamin Sahlstrom

Views: 189,303

Rating: 4.892312 out of 5

Keywords: Electrical Rough In, Daisy Chain, Receptacle, Outlets, Wiring, Pigtail Method

Id: z8mvCFYW9F0

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 11 2016