How To Use A Multimeter for Home Repairs and Troubleshooting

so today i want to run you through a quick demo on how to use a multimeter now the multimeter that we're going to focus on today is made by klein tools and it's an mm-600 it's kind of their mid-tier multi-meter i just upgraded to this one from an mm-400 what we'll focus on is measuring voltage resistance temperature and capacitance i want to get you comfortable with the most common features that you're going to use on electrical and hvac and possibly even automotive if you're troubleshooting some issues with your car or truck so let's jump in we'll start off with voltage and we'll also talk about that big safety concern i want to make sure you're aware of so starting off if you just got your multimeter there's a good chance that your probes come with these category 3 4 covers on them so i would pop those off because you're going to need the category 2 probes for testing outlets there's a simple order of operation for connecting your probes to the outlet you always want to start off with your black probe going into the neutral or ground side depending on what you're measuring here i'll put it in the ground side then you would introduce your red probe into the hot side you do not want to start off with the red probe or take out the black probe with the red still attached to the hot side if you do that that can cause a safety issue and let me demonstrate that for you so now even with the probe just sitting out here because i have my hot side connected up my non-contact voltage tester indicates that this probe right here is live so that is equivalent of sticking a knife in the hot side sticking a wire in the hot side and now this is live and obviously can arc against anything that would ground it always start off with the neutral or ground side and then connect the hot so for voltage let's go over the basics you turn the selection dial to v with the sine wave and also the straight and dashed line now the white sine wave you'll see here that means you're going to measure ac voltage if you wanted to switch to dc you just press selection and now we're over in dc you can see auto is indicated here that means it is auto ranging that is a newer feature for multimeters if you're used to having an old one like here's an old cheap one you had to turn the dial to where you wanted to test this would be measuring ac voltage up to 1000 max 250 max 50 so on and then you'd have all these selections for your dc side as well so older meters like this super cheap one here had a ton more selections so back to the mm-600 if you wanted to auto range that's fine you can also if i go back to ac voltage you can set your own range so now we're off auto this is going to max out at a ac voltage of 9.999 this would be 99.99 and then this would be 999.9 now this is what i would use to measure an outlet on a 120 circuit this would be the quick range if i was setting it now if you need back lighting you just hold this down hold it down to turn it off and this also momentary press of the hold will hold a measurement so if you see a measurement you want to hold it you just press that and then that will hold that measurement and you can turn it off maximum and minimum this will set where it will be measuring the maximum voltage during the test period and vice versa minimum voltage during the test period or you just hold it down and that's going to go back to auto now that switched it back to auto range as well so if you wanted to go back to your range that you wanted set you would just set that to measure 999.9 which is the correct range now if you try to measure 120 volts and you have it in this range let me show you what you'll see so if you've manually selected your range but it is not correct you're going to see an o l or outside the limits it's basically an error coming up now remember always take the hot side off first and now we're back so if we wanted to set a range even this range right because this would be 99.9 would still give us an ol so now we'll read out our 121. so 120. again if you wanted to just read out the max as you get slight fluctuations in the ac voltage it is going to only record the maximum voltage so you can see we just got a little blip come through this can be handy not super handy for a normal diy-er but depending on the application now if you're troubleshooting and you want to also measure between the ground that's where black probe would just go to the ground and then red would go to the hot side and then you'll measure the difference across the ground too hot for me a common application for dc voltage which you just set your selection dial to v and then press select so you see the solid dashed line now you're in dc voltage same way you can change your range here this is a 12 volt system so i'll set it to a max of 99.99 volts then i'd put the black probe on the negative and the red probe on the positive and i'm reading 12.92 which would indicate a strong battery but if i want to check my alternator i'll start the engine and then do the same check and expect to get higher than that voltage indicating that the alternator is actually charging the battery and we do with 14.12 volts now that's it for voltage so let's move on to resistance now the most common thing that i do in resistance is actually a continuity check and the setting is really the default setting it's the white setting here so the white settings across the dial are the primary and then the orange or the secondary that's where you press that selection so if you wanted to measure just the actual resistance you would press it once if you want to measure and test a diode you'd press that twice but i'm looking for the audible alarm to help with the continuity check now the most common application that i use that for is maybe tracking down romex wires or troubleshooting something like an extension cord so i put the alligator clip on one side these do actually come in handy and then i will test my continuity to the other end of the extension cord all right we have continuity now a common issue is you have an intermittent failure maybe you have an internal wire that's starting to fray and at certain angles it's not working other angles it is so what i use then is called a wiggle test so i'll demonstrate it and then i'll describe what i'm doing at the end [Music] so in this case this extension cord passed the wiggle test so what was i doing the audible alarm indicates we have continuity all the way through the extension cord then one of the weakest points of an extension cord is where it goes through bending depending on its use case so that's why there's this reinforcement here is because that's one of the weakest points if there was an intermittent failure if you started to have a weak connection then when you do the wiggle test you would start to hear intermittent on off of that audible alarm and that would indicate okay we do start to have a failure here sometimes it's working sometimes it isn't and we need to replace this so continuity checks and using that wiggle test are the most common use cases that i use now for automotive you might need to use the resistance check works the same it auto ranges from mega ohms to kilo ohms to ohms you can range it yourself if you want to and this is most common maybe you're troubleshooting what's called a shunt resistor that's part of a system that has an issue and you're just making sure that it has the desired resistance and that that is not the issue all right let's move on to a cool little one that depending on the meter you have the brand and model uh for temperature which is pretty handy so temperature is super simple so all we're going to do is there's a little adapter that came with the kit and this adapter for k type thermocouples that'll plug in and then we'll match up our positive side here to the positive side on the top of the black housing and then what that actually gives us is a small what is called a thermocouple which measures temperature so we just turn it to temperature and that's going to give this the reading of the room the most common thing i use this for is hvac so maybe i just want to see how cold the air is coming out of the air vent maybe there's an issue with the air conditioning or i'm trying to balance a system between the first floor and second floor so i'll take my measurement on the first floor maybe i'll do a max and i'll let it take a measurement for about 15 minutes letting it get to steady state take that measurement on my first floor then i'll go up to my second floor do the same thing for 15 minutes and then that will give me my different temperatures to help me when i'm trying to balance the system so that's really it on temperature very handy feature and very easy to use on to the last one and that is going to be capacitance similar to temperature capacitance is a pretty short one and that's because i really only use this to measure capacitors usually within my hvac system i had a failure not too long ago on the blower motor where my five microfarad capacitor was not reading out within the tolerance range so i was able to identify that with my multimeter and then i knew exactly that i need to replace that component and that honestly saved me hundreds of dollars compared to bringing a technician out i was able to order it online get it in less than two days and then install that and solve my problem so capacitors can come in handy for some of those critical capacitors usually found in your hvac system but also found across a few other systems that you might run into hopefully that helps you guys out we've reviewed voltage both ac and dc resistance temperature and capacitance which can come in super handy around the house or on your automotive projects now around the house before getting a multimeter i am assuming you have a non-contact voltage tester like this one which is the ncbt 3p which i really prefer from klein tools or an outlet tester like this one with a gfci test button i would definitely say these two are on your list prior to a multimeter but if you already have these and you want to step it up with a little bit more troubleshooting capability the mm600 for klein tools i think works well but let me know what you guys use what multimeter do you have and why is there a reason you bought that pretty simple i actually stepped up to the mm600 because it has the carrying pouch so those alligator clips the k-type thermocouples all that i just end up losing if i don't have it in the pouch and i can kind of store it all together now before you guys take off don't forget to subscribe the channel if you haven't already we have multiple videos coming out per week to help you around the house with your repair and improvement projects and we'll catch you on the next video take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 78,212

Rating: 4.9094458 out of 5

Keywords: testing capacitors with a multimeter, measuring temperature with multimeter, Measuring Battery, measuring battery voltage with multimeter, testing an outlet with a multimeter

Id: oHdW4Fafn8M

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021