How To Swap Out Old Outlets & Light Switches

hello everybody we're back at Thomas's house today and I'm going to show him how to replace a light switch and an outlet so for the first step we're not going to be replacing this while the power is on we're going to find the fuse box which it is and not a breaker box and cut the power to this switch so Thomas do you want to grab the non-c cont voltage tester so this is how this works turn it on find the hot wire it'll beep rapidly and that means there is power coming to this switch here so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go switch Breakers down in the basement and Thomas is going to hold this on that hot wire and when it stops beeping that means the power is no longer running to this you ready yes something I can do so it's easier to switch Breakers and test for power with a buddy or something in your house rather than having to run up and down the stairs all the time and it also helps having a cell phone so I called Thomas and I'm going to start unscrewing some of these Breakers and he'll tell me when it's uh when the power has been cut all right you ready Thomas now if this was a modern circuit panel with Breakers I would just be flipping switches that's the furnace basement you just back yeah that oh that's it the last one at least in this box so I'm going to completely remove this just so it doesn't make contact and we're going to head back upstairs all right I'm coming up Thomas so now that we have the power cut off it's always nice to double check there's no power coming to the switch so it's now safe to remove okay so the first step we're going to do is remove the switch from the wall I have this insulated screwdriver that protects you up to 2,000 volts but since there's no power Thomas is opting for his ratcheting six-way screwdriver so Thomas begin removing the switch I could see it's been painted over you may want to take a knife to the head of that screw cut out any Gunk good thing it's getting painted okay so now we're ready to remove the switch and replace it with this so Thomas take your screwdriver and remove both screws they should be able to back out all the way let me know if you need a longer [Laughter] screwdriver take it out all the way or just un yeah until the screw is come out Dusty very dusty okay I try to remember which side goes where on a switch it doesn't really matter too much cuz it's just interrupting the power flow but you typically want to put it back as it was because you know it works that way so this switch here is pre-wired for a three-way switch and since we're replacing a single pole switch meaning there's only one switch in the circuit you can omit the um I guess the pre-wired common or traveler wire and cap that and we're just going to let that one be we're only going to be using the black in the red today and these have uh some twists on them so we can go ahead and cut that off with some wire strippers that's those and Thomas if you this is going to be a 142 wire salad as you can see these ones have gotten fried a few times that's why you should always turn the power off so cut that go to 142 and you can determine what size wire you have if you're not familiar is you want this wire when you go to strip it can't fit through in there that's nice okay Thomas now it's your turn so use the Snips cut that little copper piece off don't cut off yeah just cut off as little as you can that's not going to work for you because I arked them up see how it's kind of blown out there yeah let me see if I have a better pair the point of cutting it is to give it a nice s oh um yeah contact Point rather than having to take that curve out of it you fatigue the mat all you want you could get away with it but I like a nice salad so here I'll hold should I should you want me to strip it more yeah strip it some more you want about half inch like that yep beautiful that's good okay now would be a good time to inspect the wire see if there's any been if there's been any damage looks pretty good to me um box is a little dirty but we're going to need to access that screw back there if you could see that where the bare copper wire is coming in that's going to be your ground wire so we're going to loosen that up a little bit and we're going to start by attaching this green wire which is the ground to that so Thomas you w to unscrew that yeah unscrew that clamp screw back there okay do you want me to vacuum this out or is that fine I think it's fine I would say just until it's loose maybe a a little under a quarter of an inch you can keep going that thing's probably an inch and a half [Music] long that's probably good so Thomas back that screw out a little bit and now we are going to attach our ground wire so here's our straight wire here you want to put a curve on this like so just a little hook and when you put your hook you want the this side to be on your right side if this makes sense because when you tighten the the screw that this ground wire is going to clamp on it's going to torque this around whereas if you put it like this and turned it will back this wire out does that make sense to you yes you want to put the hook on the screw in the direction that you're going to be turning the screw so I guess you could always just turn it that way or that way but it does matter more on the sides so we're going to put this in there do all the make sure it's not interfering anything okay you got a screwdriver oh no need to torque it too much but that's a pretty good connection on that ground wire okay so this is a stranded wire here do you see that it's a different gauge than the solid and with stranded wires we're not going solid to solid we're going solid to stranded you can go straight in there's no need to twist it together like you would with two solid wires so we're going to throw this wire nut on here and you can feel when it starts to Snug up a little bit and the wires will start twisting around one another that's about all we want to do now Thomas's turn and the wire nuts with those little wings on the end those are the best okay does it feel like it's threading on yeah yeah feels beautiful now since this is a metallic box I recommend using electrical tape on all connections even this one here that was existing oh we got a third one for the neutral that's pretty solid I don't think we need to tape those but these ones which are also solid I always I always tape them you never know if it rattles loose or something so um let me grab some electrical tape so with this three-way wire that we omitted not that there'll be power running to it but it's just safe you can rest easy knowing that connections are secure and protected and when you're twisting the tape around the wire nut go in the direction that you turn the wire nut which is always righty tidy Lefty Loosey so get a nice straight section here you can start on the wire itself just wrap it around I'm going to Hey Thomas remember to want a nice starting point get those wires together how irritating is it that I'm showing you the correct way meaning it's going to take two or three times longer yeah but if you ever have to service the switch in the future and there's for some reason bare wire showing and it hits that metal box that will Arc up and give you quite the scare look at that awesome like you've been doing it your whole life so don't just stuff the wires back in the Box all halfhazard just kind of a nice fold down and a fold up and when possible I it probably doesn't matter especially with these secure connections and the wire nuts or tape I always like to have them pointing upwards just seems cleaner that way despite how messy this box is okay see how clean that looks mhm now that's not where it's going to go and we really locked out cuz these Wings here are going to sit on the wall keeping this nice and [Music] flush so now that Thomas has both screws securing the switch we'll check for level now we're ready to move on to the outlet double check both just in case but okay so that's dead yep now pull it out and just make note which side goes where oh so it's another double yeah this is a weird wi no it's pretty typical oh it's less work it's actually a lot of fun to do okay so the White's on the left side oh don't yeah keep that keep that as it is and we'll wire it back up the same way you could tell that these are professionally wired because you would never see a homeowner doing that that's good enough so let's grab an outlet so here's the Outlet we're going to be replacing or using to replace these modern Outlets come with these holes in the back and you would put your wire in there and not have to tighten it with the screw those are those rectangular slots are the release so if you have to remove it you put a small screwdriver in this rectangle and theoretically the wire should pull out I don't like to use those very often it's probably an old school mentality but so we'll stick with the screws the back is labeled pretty clear white wire goes with the white screws or silver and your hot goes to the Brass so Thomas is going to wire it up exactly how it was do I do top or um either or just match the side you can kind of want to get that wire in there so there's some kind of some stops see that you're when you're tightening it your wires should be seated on that pretty nicely okay so you ready y you might want to pH no or Phillips is fine or square square is the best oh does that a square yeah it's a square number two nope it's a square one I love a square bit before you put it in the Box tighten down all the screws don't leave any loose okay this is hard there we go okay now before we get too far ahead of ourselves there's a ground wire in here which would be nice to attach to that but we don't have any wire on us so since the ground wire is connected to the box here it's sort of an old school way of wiring it we do not need to put a ground on the outlet itself since when these tangs are connecting to this it will make a grounding contact do you see how that is so that's where your ground wire goes but since there's not one loose for us and I don't have any extra wire this making contact with this will have to do but there's no harm in that so Thomas I think we're ready to wrap some electrical tape around the outlet to protect the screws from touching any of the metallic box or your hands when you go to put it in the in the wall you got to kind of work around the screws and don't forget about the bottom ones oh should I tighten in the ground that's a great idea there you go oh you got one isn't that square bit nice yeah I wish everything was I know I never use Phillips when I except for drywall I guess okay is that good that looks good to me cool cool no bare metal exposed and now you're ready to remember to push those wires back in look nice it's square and just you know work with it a little bit okay eventually it will sit flat if it hits the wall yes there's a strong start you're a real smart fell you could have said I know oh is that fine you think it's your house is it well you're already doing more than any professional electrician we do killing myself here don't overthink it if it's a hair if it's a hair out of level you will never notice all right the thing is what 2 and 1/2 in oh my God moved quite a bit there Thomas yeah all right I think it's good my eyes say it's okay so now Thomas is going to put the plate cover on the outlet and let's go ahead and try it on okay don't snug it up too much they do break so an old electricians trick you can do is make your screw slot perfectly vertically level you may have to back it off a little or if you think you can get one more turn in without breaking it this just cleans it up a little bit makes it look like a professional job I've seen a lot of houses where the screw slots were in every wi Direction and it just look sloppy you know what I can do to that that's a good job for a complete list of tools required for this tutorial take a look in the description below thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed this if you did please like And subscribe and leave any questions in the comments section until next time goodbye

Channel: The Proper Way

Views: 5,535

Keywords: build, builder, building, construction, contractor, create, diy, fix it, home, home improvement, house, how to, project, remodel, renovation, tip, tipoftheday, tutorial

Id: 6m81KVyhPGA

Length: 20min 55sec (1255 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2024