How to Run / Fish Wires Easily Through Ceiling for Power to Recessed Lights and Fans

hey it's Brian from Fort Knox company in this video I'm gonna show you guys how I ran some power that's already in the ceiling over to the recessed lights that I'm installing so there's already power up there but it's obviously not going to the recessed lights that I haven't installed yet I'm gonna show you what it takes to actually run that power over to one of the lights and then continue and start that circuit so watch it's not too hard I'll show you guys how I do it and this is just one example if there's already power up there in the ceiling so let's do it so this is the outlet that I'm gonna be using for the fan and then the recessed lights I just did another video showing you how I install this dimmer switch here if you want to check that out it's also on my channel but I show you guys how I actually installed that switch so that we can use it for the recessed lights I'm going to be installing I'll do a quick little diagram and show you guys how the power actually comes from the main control panel and comes through the wall it's one circuit for these two switches and how both powers actually run up into the ceiling and come up to the fan right there so you can see I've already set my lights and I've ran wires in between them but there's these two right here that I have not installed yet because both my power sources are currently up inside the fan one of them is just capped off it's the black wire I'm going to show you how I actually jump that laughs wire or the hot wire over to this recessed light and why I chose that one and not that one I'll give you a little example of what's up in there and the ceiling and this hole ended up having less obstructions trying to jump over so I'll show you guys a little video of that and what it looks like as I run wire and what I did to actually get that wire through all the insulation and into the power box that the fan is currently mounted with we have our power coming in from the street comes into the House panel where you have all your breakers we usually have a positive and a negative or our black and our white is what we commonly see in the wall off one of our breakers which would be our circuit for all the ceiling lights in this case we have not only just a black which is our positive or our hot line but we also have a red and they just designated a separate color so we don't get it confused because you're running multiple hot wires off of that single circuit so in this case they have a black and a red which are gonna control lights in the ceiling we still have that white or that neutral which I've marked here as blue and I got these little arrows just kind of showing you the flow of the energy of how it kind of flows through the circuit we have a black and red and then the white that go through the house through the walls into our light switches on the wall inside the light switch box you'll see one of the black wires actually goes to one of the switches and then continues up and then we have the other red wire going to the other switch and continues up so after they leave the box they go through the wall up into the ceiling this is our ceiling here and you'll see in the video that in the ceiling box where the fan is mounted you'll see a black a red and the white coming through the ceiling black and red are the two hot lines and that means I could control either one with either one of these switches in this case I have the fan wired up to the first switch on the right because our doors over here so it's just the closest one to the door so the first switch actually turns on and off the red wire the second switch turns on and off the black wire the black wire is currently just capped off in the ceiling not being used for anything so my plan is to come into the ceiling and pop some holes for my recessed lights I'm then gonna run a new set of wires black white and a ground over back through the box over to one of the can lights inside this set of wires is going to be also another white one and then there's also a ground there's always going to be a ground but once I jump the power over to that box now I have a new set of black white and ground that is controlled by this black wire switch here so what was originally just capped off in a dead end I'm just extending it over to the recessed lights once I do that and I pull my power through here then I can pretty much jump it over to each one and call that like a daisy chain and basically you're just linking all of your lights together at that point and this power will just travel along each one and be dead end the plot the power still flows through each of each each light and comes all the way back and you'll see that everything on that white wire or the neutral is just joined together here because this all has the same direction of flow it's all gonna be flowing back out through the panel so hopefully that's not too confusing I'll show you guys in the video what I did is I actually took that set of wires and luckily there was a hole to punch out here and I was able to just to basically feed the wire through tie it in and that jumped over to my first recessed light and that gave me power to my recessed light system sometimes you actually have to drill a hole through or you might have to be a little creative on how you're gonna basically get that wire connect it and then branched over to wherever you want the reason that they do this with the black and the red is because a lot of lights and fans back in the day used to need two separate switches to control two different features so maybe one would turn your fan on and the other one would turn the light on and you could do either/or nowadays a lot of the fans just need one power you turn the fan on and then you can control the light or the fan speed and you can even dim the lights all from a switch a remote switch so in that case that's what I have here so I only need one power source to the fan this black wire which wasn't being used is now going to be used for the recessed lights that go throughout the whole entire room [Music] so now that I have this all open you can see what I was talking about in the diagram I had the fan hooked up to this red wire as my power the white or the neutral the common wire amongst the both of the single circuit and the reason I used the red for the fan is because initially I had wired in the fan and I knew that it went to the first switch right there I want to make sure that that stops using because the second one wasn't gonna be in any use at the time so I'm gonna go ahead and just leave it that way since the first switch will still go to the fan and the fan has its own light attached to it with the remote so what I'm gonna do is take this black one which is the other hot wire which was capped off and tucked up inside this wire here I'm gonna actually jump back through the ceiling and over to that one right there once I get this wire pulled through that black hot wire right here well then power all the lights that are then connected to each other and that will then be controlled by that second switch right there a little dimmer so let's see how easy this isn't going to be so I was very fortunate with this light junction box here it actually looks like it's made to have the option to add or you can just use these when you're running the original wires the house was built with this power source coming through here but it had these two little knockouts and I was able to actually knock this one out and I can go all the way through there it's not obstructive I can actually reach the insulation right now so that's going to make it real easy for me to then pierce through the insulation and then add an angle run over to the recess light here and I'll show you guys on the inside what it looks like there's a lot of insulation in the way but there's no other like big obstructions so should make it pretty easy a lot easier than some of the other ones I've done where I've actually had to create my own hole and I'm basically drilling through this with a large bit trying to go through wood or trying to go through this plastic and then trying to feed my fishing tape through there to try to connect a power source this made it real easy and hopefully we can get through that insulation with no problem so as you can see here I have my fishing tape and I was able to actually add an angle push through after a couple tries and actually feed the fishing tape what felt like maybe five or six feet with no resistance through the insulation and it feels like I'm actually hitting maybe a rafter which it going in this direction that's only about three feet three and a half feet away so there should be about five feet of this fishing tank up in there now I just got to reach inside that recessed light hole and find it so I have the fishing tape held right there with a little stick I just kind of wedged it so that it wouldn't try to fall or pull out but the recessed light hole that I have cut here like I said there's about four or five feet of that fishing tape up in the hole or somewhere in this direction so what I need to do is actually reach up inside there and see if I can find it so let's take a look and there it is coming see a little bit better there inside the attic so I was able to actually reach up in there and find this fishing tape and then pull it through and what I'll do is all tape some of my wire to the end of this and then feed it back through the wall and should come right out through that outlet and then I'll be able to tie it into the black wire and that will make the new cable or the new wire that comes over here hot that will then tie into these which will run through all the lights that already have pulled through the ceiling there's a two row [Music] so now to kind of show you guys what I've done is I have the new power coming through here you guys can see this is the one that I just ran over from there it's coming through the hole that I punched out and then I took the black wire which I'm gonna make hot I ran it underneath the bracket I attached it to the black wire that comes out originally with the house and that hot line is now tied up and then I pushed it up inside just to get it out of the way but that now makes this black wire hot so now when I have that coming out over here it's gonna allow me to have a hot wire to run through the circuit of all the recessed lights my additional white one no my neutral is just gonna tie in with the neutral here and then the neutral that's on the fan same goes with my ground wire it's gonna tie in with all the grounds everything's gonna be ground together this copper wire right here is gonna tie in so now I'm gonna have three whites and three grounds and then this hot wire which goes to the first switch goes to the fan and this new black one right here actually will go over to the recessed lights jumps through that hole over there so now I have the fan wire back in the fan has the black wire which is going to be used as the hot wire and again that's the red wire in this case going to the first switch my white wire being my neutral is tied in to both of the other neutrals one coming from the house and then the other one actually is now neutral for my recessed light which travels up over to the other recessed light pole over there and I got these grounds all tied together here so everything's grounded and then again my other hot wire again coming from the recessed light hole over to the other hot line from the house is tied in here and then I tucked it up inside the ceiling just to get it out of the way because I still have this fan remote switch here that I have to fit in through there so I got obviously a lot of wires here that I need to organize and make sure that I can get this cap back over but shouldn't be a problem because I kept everything short enough to be able to tuck it in and get it organized well but not too complicated it's always a hop and a neutral black and white or red and white and that was pretty much it once I got all those wires inside the housing for the fan organized and I got it all mounted back up and cleaned up that was pretty much it I just had to connect the last few recessed lights that I hadn't installed yet and those were all daisy chained together and now that I have the power in the main recessed light kind of started off it was good to go so hopefully it's not too confusing you know it seems like it might be a little bit of high speed knowledge with the whole electrical systems and stuff but don't get intimidated I hope I can explain it simple enough but once you start learning a little bit about it it'll all start to kind of click and then next time you want to replace a switch or an outlet you'll just understand what the wires are but always remember that black in that red are usually going to be your hot wires those are your positive leads those are the main ones that are gonna be charging whatever fixture it is that you have your white wire it's usually gonna be just a common wire that everything feeds back through you'll see those all tied up together sometimes inside of a light switch panel don't worry it's just because everything is basically being fed back to that white wire so that it can exit the house or go back to the breaker the main one is going to be your black or your red that's gonna be the one that's tied to your switch or tied to your plug on the hot side or sometimes they'll even say black but usually it's hot and they're referring to that's where the energy is starting that's where it's coming from that's pretty much all I got for you on this one I have a couple other videos that I showed you where I actually cut the holes and I've actually mounted the lights I have some other videos where I showed you how I install the switch so go ahead and check those out if you haven't already and stay tuned I'm gonna show you guys all the different things that I'm doing I'll be installing some other switches in some areas that are elevated so if you want to like mount to TV and you want to have everything plugged in and mount it up high or you don't have any wire showing I'll show you guys how to do that too it's not too complicated and there's a couple different ways to get it done so keep your eyes out for that video don't forget to like this video and subscribe share it spread the word and I'll see you guys on the next one you

Channel: Fort Knox Co.

Views: 141,837

Rating: 4.7200975 out of 5

Keywords: ceiling fan, power supply, ceiling power, fan install, recessed lighting, lights, DIY fan, DIY lighting, How to, Electrical, Fort Knox co

Id: ld7-wwevI5s

Length: 18min 46sec (1126 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020