How to Switch an Outlet

today on handy dad tv we're going to unravel the mystery of how to wire a switch to control an outlet coming up [Music] if you need shade on your deck or patio this summer check out toya grid pergola kits you source the lumber locally and can assemble this modular system in as little as 30 minutes check the video description for links to videos and more information about toya grid before doing any electrical work we want to talk about doing it safely and to do that you're going to use testers to make sure your power is turned off so that it's safe to work with the wires now there are mixed feelings about these because in order to use this safely what you want to do is always test it against known voltage so i'm going to turn it on and it makes a beep when there is voltage so then you take it and you put it on the circuit you're going to work with and you make sure that if you touch the wires none of them beep and that's how you know your circuit breaker is absolutely off and you can touch those wires safely the scenario today is that i've got two outlets that are hardwired they're on all the time and i want to actually add a switch to this one alone and what i'm going to use to do that is three conductor wire this is 14 gauge 14 gauge wire is used for 15 amp circuits if you have a 20 amp circuit you're going to use 12 gauge wire which is thicker a little bit more expensive the first thing i'm going to do is make sure the power is off and i like to use my non-contact voltage tester because if i put it in the slot i can then go and turn off the breaker and make sure it's off and then i hear and i can see that i have no power on this circuit so i'm ready to go now three conductor wire has three conductors plus a ground the white is a neutral the black is going to be hot and the red line is the one that's going to be switched all right what we have here is the black wire goes on the brass screw and comes up and connects to the rest of the black wires and the same thing for the white is on the other side that's the silver screw and then of course the green screw gets the ground which is the bear copper here and you can see my grounds are joined together underneath this special grounding connector which is like a wire nut that has a hole in the end of it and so i'm going to continue to use that um because you can't connect multiple wires to a single ground screw i'm going to take all of these off temporarily alright the first thing i've done is just to strip the wires the black and the red ones those are the ones that are going to get connected to the two brass screws on the switch one of them is power in the other one is power out the power goes out when you turn the switch on okay when you turn it on they get connected and that creates the circuit off breaks the connection so that turns the light off it also has a green ground screw and that's going to be for the bare copper but the other two this one is always hot this one is going to be switched the white one actually is not going to be used now you may say chris copper is expensive you've only got two conductors here plus a ground why can't you use just normal two conductor wire well in the old days they used to do that but these days you're not allowed to anymore you have to have a neutral in every switchbox everything because eventually you might want to put in something like a smart switch here or you might want to run another device off of this switch and you need to have a neutral so that's why you're going to use three conductor wire i know it's a little bit more expensive than this but you need to do it that's the way it is and all i'm going to do is create these little j look loops on here and i'm going to attach them to the screws now you always want the switch off down on is up so that's the orientation you want it now this is wired i've got the black and the red on these two screws it doesn't matter which one you connect and the ground is always on the other side now what are we going to do with the white one well for that you're just going to take a wire nut put it on and leave it in the back of this box okay the switch itself is wired fine and i put that back in the box all right now i'm going to turn my attention to the outlet down the bottom and these were my original two hots and these were my original two neutrals so the white wire the neutral is just going to get connected with all the other neutrals that's the easy part now i've got four wires i can twist them together and use a wire nut or i can use a bigger waygo connector so in this case i've got more than three so i'm going to use a five way and the good thing about it is you can see where the wires come in all the way and they are held nice and tight and for the ground what i'm going to do is i'm going to reuse this grounding wire connector here i'm just going to slide it off and i'm going to bring the ground around now if you don't have these grounding wire connectors you can certainly use another wego connector or a wire nut for those but either way you have to bond all the grounds together i said the red wire was going to be the one that was switched in order for this receptacle to be controlled by that switch we have to connect these two together we know that so in this case i'm going to use a two conductor we go connector all right those are now connected and then the rest of the black wires are just going to get connected together because they're going to be hot all the time all right this is completely wired now you can see i have this pigtail coming from the brass screw here going to the red wire all the other black wires are connected together and all the white wires are connected together even though we're not using the white wire in the switch i still have to connect that wire down here okay with my wire complete i have my tester in this outlet and a light in this outlet let me go restore the power and now that the power is back on you can see i have two green lights here that means it is wired correctly if for some reason i don't have two green lights there's a little gauge on here that tells me what would be wrong and i would have to make a correction but here you can see the light is off and when i turn the switch on what happens is the power comes down this red wire which leads to the outlet and that is what turns the light on and completes the circuit now let's say we want to make it so that this switch controls both of these outlets how would we go about doing that well let's turn off the power again so what we need to do here is we know the red wire is the one that's switched when i turn the switch on power comes down here and it completes this circuit that turns on that light so all i need to do is figure out which of these three black wires goes over to that outlet now how to figure that out can be kind of tricky i know it's not going to be one of these so i'm going to leave those aside i know it has to be one of these so the best way to do that is to take off the wire nut separate the wires carefully and you need to restore power okay my power is back on and i'm not going to touch any of those wires but i am going to use my non-contact voltage tester and this is going to tell me which of these wires is hot it's the middle one that's hot now the next thing to do is to very carefully i'm going to put this wire under the wago okay and then i'm going to take this wire and put it under here okay it's still live and now i want to check and see did this light go did this outlet go on so it's not that one i know by process of elimination it's this wire that goes over here so that one goes up to the switch because this light goes on this one must be the one that goes over to that other outlet so i'm going to leave that one out for now and i'm going to go turn my power off okay with the power off what i want to do is connect this wire to the red wire i want to join these together so that when the switch goes on the power flows to this outlet and the other outlet so these two need to just stay joined the way they are and what i'm going to do thanks to using juego connectors here these lever nuts make things easy i'm just going to take that off i'm going to take this double and move it over to here and then i'm going to take these three now remember the red one is the one that goes on with the switch i'm going to connect this outlet and the other outlet to it now remember the red wire comes from the switch up there and when the switch goes on the red wire gets power so all i've done is taken these two blacks and connected them to the red wire one of them comes here the other one goes over to the other receptacle over there these two are always hot so this is the power coming in and the power going to the switch so they stay connected and of course all the white ones and the grounds are also connected okay and with the power restored i can turn this switch on and not only does it control this outlet but it also controls this one and you can see i have two green which means that it's wired correctly turn it off they go off so now this switch controls both outlets if you have any questions about this project please leave a comment below and i will see you in the next one welcome home be sure to subscribe and watch our new series the living flip oh look [Applause] [Music] and that has inch and a quarter

Channel: HandyDadTV

Views: 172,345

Keywords: handy dad tv, handydad.tv, handydadtv, basic wiring, basic home wiring, basic electrical, electrical wiring, home wiring, how to, wire a switch, add a switch, add a switch to an outlet, wire a switch to an outlet, control an outlet by a switch

Id: 2Pue6CpaQ8s

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 27 2022