How To Wire A Single Pole Light Switch Circuits 3 Different Ways (2022) DIY Tutorial For Beginners!

on today's episode i'm going to be showing you three wiring methods on how to wire a single pole switch to a light fixture so stay tuned [Music] welcome to fix's house if you're new to the channel please consider pressing the subscribe notification bell so you can always be in tune on diys how-to videos and product reviews that i do within this channel we are going to be working with electricity today friends so make sure that before we're working with any electricity you turn off the power off on your circuit breaker and make sure that you use a voltage detector just like what you see here and make sure that you test the power or the cable to make sure that the power is off on these cables this video is made for instructional informational and entertainment purposes only and if you are uncomfortable with working with electricity please hire a licensed electrician or a professional okay friends so just to put that out there be careful and be safe working with electricity so on this mock-up you have a stud right here and let's pretend that's the finished floor so from the finish floor up you're gonna measure up to four feet here in the u.s per the code and ec code we're gonna measure four feet center the j box that we're gonna using today is a new construction j box like this but for in the middle that box that's where you're gonna nail this down i'm not gonna nail this down all the way this is just for instructional purposes for j boxes or electrical boxes like these you can use different types this one you can place it on stud just like that this one we call this new work because you install them on open um studs and then if you have drywall right here you can use old work you can locate old work anywhere on the drywall because it compresses um between and sandwiches that drywall between this right here and if you watch my past video i use this j box right here and this one pretty much has screws this is also for old work you can just cut a hole on your drywall and you can screw right there on the stud so each j box has um a lot of information on the inside there's 9 9 14 8 12 and 7 10. so the right side numbers are your gauge the gauge size and the 9 8 and 7 on the left side those are the number of wires that can be inserted on ins and they can fit inside this box okay and if you're looking for the volume there it is at the top it's 18 cubic inches volume make sure it is ul certified so you might ask what kind of cable do we use for a light fixture well we are going to use a 14 2 cable 14 gauge now a 14 gauge cable has to be running on a 15 amp circuit breaker all right so take note of that but if you already have wiring that is running on a 20 amp you are gonna use this a 12 2 cable you cannot use a 14 to cable on a 20 amp it's just not going to work it's you're going to cause overheating again if you do have a 15 amp it's possible that you can use a 12 gauge just like this one okay but to be safe use a 14 2 on a 15 amp circuit breaker if you have any questions on this regarding what type of wiring you should use leave it in the comment section down below and i'll be glad to answer that for you now next is we're gonna feed the main power through here the main power could come from your circuit breaker or to another receptacle that's pretty much going in series up to this switch so if you're asking for power um that's where it's pretty much going to be we're going to feed the main power which is this 14 2 wire through this stud we're going to drill a three-quarter inch hole we're going to be using this three-quarter spade bit okay so we're gonna drill it right right on the middle of this stud so your hole is supposed to be an inch and 5 8 away from the edge or centered of the stud anything that's closer to the edge less than one inch and five eighths you're going to use a wire shield lights we use 14 to wire but you can use 12 too you can always go up but in this case we're going to be using a 14 2 wire now the first method that we're going to use to wire the switch to this light fixture is what we call a middle of run single pole switch now this is where the power goes to the switch first and then it runs all the way to the light fixture we're gonna feed our main power through the stud this is a 14-2 wire if you can't feed it through easy like that you can use one of these tools right here this is what we call fish tape you can pretty much insert it through this stud right again this is just an example fire right here feed it right there bend it again take uh electrical tape wrap this around and then you can fish that right through there i'll leave it in the description down below where i got all the tools on this video check out the link down below feeding it right inside the jbox for me i like to leave about six to eight inches take another wire and we're gonna run it through the stud up to this j box for the light for this mock-up i just put the light right here on the side so you can see the wiring again when you're done you're gonna put this on top of this nut here okay so this is just for instructional purposes and then we're gonna feed it right through this electrical box again we're gonna leave about eight inches in your running cable make sure you leave a sag or a slight curve so this will prevent potential kinks sharp bends or over stretching of the wire run it to the light fixture i'm just going to apply some nm staples all right so when you're stapling you don't want to over staple it or hammer it in to kink the wire you don't want that you want a little bit of play a little bit right there not too tight that you're going to damage the wire this is the power source going through that stud that's where our switch is going on to the inside that box we have our 1422 wire with ground wire that is going to that ceiling box right there all right so now let's go and wire up the switch looking at our single pole switch you can see it's just a single it has a on and off and it has two areas where we can put our hot wire in and we also have a ground gonna do is we're gonna strip open these wires just be very very careful you don't cut the insulation off the wiring so here's our cable power source and here's our cable that's going to go to the light fixture now on the light fixture if you're looking right at the back you see this little tiny groove right here let's see if i can we can zoom in that's about 5 8. you can use that you can pretty much put that against and use that as a gauger so that's how much you're going to strip out all right so that's just good reference [Music] so now that we got everything stripped the only thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna loop the hot wires which are the black wires okay so those are the only ones that we're gonna end up looping now the white wires we are going to use are we go connectors again i love using these juego connectors because they're so easy they're just levers and you just insert the wire through just like that and pretty much close it up and then you can insert as many and you can reuse these things so again all the tools and these wiggle wires as well i'll leave it on the description down below go check those out so we're gonna take our white wires and we're gonna connect them just like that with our single pull switch make sure that the wording is on the upright position off and on position we are going to hook this black wire to the top terminal so this is the power source going to the top and hook it up so that the hook will go in the towards the clockwise position so once we hook it up there see how the hook is going towards the clockwise position and make sure that you tighten this real well okay we're going to take our hook and then go to the clockwise position just like that going to strip off just a six inch piece wire from one of your cables make a loop and we're going to feed it to the ground wire i'm going to feed all the ground wires into this wiggle wire connector so again let's go over this we have the top hot wire this is coming from the power source this is the bottom black wire this is going towards the light fixture we have a pigtail from the switch going to all of the ground wires and all of the neutral wires are all connected together now that you have all that in we're gonna stuff all this wiring inside the j box now that we got our switch all hooked up we are now gonna go towards the light fixture so i'm gonna use my two lever my two lever wiggle connect the white all the whites together so for this one i like to twist it out a little bit to make this a little firm and then insert it to the wire terminal connect the ground and then we're going to connect the hot together boom so you don't want exposed wiring coming out of the connectors all right okay so now that everything is connected let's switch it on there you have it it's a simple switch and that is method number one which is the middle of run single pole switch so now that we discussed the first method which is the middle of run single pole switch where the power is running to the switch first to the light fixture the second method is what we call the end of run single pole switch which means that the power now is going to go straight to the light fixture first and then it ends to the switch so with that being said let me reroute the power going here the second method is going to be wired two ways that's why it's going to be three methods that i'll be showing you the first method which i just showed you and now i'm gonna be showing you this method which is gonna be wired in two ways okay so i'm making it a total of three let's get to it this is the second method which is what we call the end-of-run single pole switch i've relocated the power used to be on that side i relocated the power line going through here so you see the power source and we are still using a 14 to 2 wire with ground wire now let's wire this power source to this light fixture so first we're going to take our neutral wire which is the white wire coming out from the power source and we're going to attach it to the white neutral wire going to the light fixture take the ground wire from the light fixture we're going gonna take the ground wire from the power source this is the cable that is gonna run to the switch so we're gonna take this ground wire and attach that as well all right we're gonna do is we're gonna take our black wire the hot wire that is going to the switch and we're gonna attach that black wire to the light fixture okay so again feel free to pause or go back to this video if you are getting confused again i'm going to recap i might sound like i'm repeating myself but i want to make it so clear to you friends what we did were pretty much we took all the ground wires and we hooked them up all together into this connector so that all three of them are in this one connector now we have our neutral wire which is from a neutral wire coming from the light fixture and a neutral wire coming from the power source now we took our black wire which is the hot wire from the light fixture and connected that to the hot wire from going to the light switch so that's connected which leaves us with the white wire going to the switch and a black wire from our power source cable okay so what we're going to do is we're going to connect this white wire with this power source hot wire so what we're going to do so we don't confuse ourselves and whoever works at this in the future we are going to take our black electrical tape just like what you see here and we are going to wrap this white wire with black electrical tape to indicate that this wire is going to be a hot wire so now we took our black tape and we wrapped it around this neutral wire indicating that this wire is now hot because because it is now connected to the hot wire from the power source now we're going to join these together with a wire connector okay so there you have it i made it really clear and i'm going to try to separate it free from so if you want to pause the video you can do so you put a label right here the power source and this is the wiring first off so i want to divide this into sections before going to the light switch so you do not get confused feel free to pause it so you can check to see your wiring as what you see right here now that we have the power source look hooked up to the light fixture we are now going to go and wire that light switch so as you can see there's only going to be one cable that is going through this jbox which is for the light switch now as what we did with the neutral wire onto the light fixture we're gonna wrap this with the same thing the white wire so if we indicate that this is gonna be the hot wire we are gonna be late uh wrapping this with black electrical tape to indicate now that this a hot wire so is whoever's to be working this in the future will know that this is going to be hot we're going to do a loop the same thing do a loop onto the hot wire and we're going to loop the ground wire as well take our hook now it's all about hooking everything on okay we're going to take our hot wire slash neutral wire that is covered with black tape and put it onto the bottom we're gonna go do a recap again we have our power source we have our 14 to 2 wire with ground wire this wire power source is going to the light fixture this is powering it first we have our neutral wire from the power source with the light fixture together we have the ground all the grounds connected together we have our light fixture hot wire and we have our switch hot wire connected together we have our power source hot wire connected to the neutral wire of the light switch that we labeled with a black electrical tape to make sure that that is now hot and now we run that cable to the light switch now we have the bottom as the neutral wire marked with black tape around hot wire at the top and grounded now with that being said now we can control this light fixture with this light switch just like that this is what we call now the end of run single pole switch method all right now that we have this done i'm going to show you now the third method which is still going to be the end of run single pole switch method but this time instead of using a 14 2 to wire with ground we are going to use a 14 3 3 wire with ground the difference on this one is that we instead of a 14 2 we are using a 14 3 3 wire with ground meaning that this wire is gonna be having the red wire okay so now instead of labeling the white wire with the black tape we are now have a hot wire which is we're gonna use with the red wire okay so let's hook up first the power to the light uh fixture and we're gonna take our neutral wire from the light fixture and our neutral wire from the power source and we're going to combine those together we're going to take our ground wire from our switch cable ground wire from the light fixture and the ground wire from our power source and we're gonna combine all those three just like what we did with method two so now we're gonna take our black wire coming from our switch and we're gonna take our black wire from our power source and we're gonna combine those two so now we're gonna take our neutral wire from our light switch and combine it now with all the whites as well so pardon me on that one i'm going to take this off and i'm going to replace it now with the three-way together just like that okay which leaves us now with the black wire from our light fixture and the red wire from our switch let's connect those two i'll feel free to pause this let me just go over once again again or this might seem repetitive but i just want to get to show you guys how this all works the power source black wire the black wire from our switch is connected all the ground is connected together on the power source the light fixture and our switch our white wire all connected together from our power source switch light fixture and now we have our hot wire from our light fixture and the red switch it's now connected together now let's get to the switch we're gonna loop our red and we're gonna loop our hat just like so neutral we're gonna leave that out of the picture so we're gonna take our red and we're gonna hook it to the top hike put it on the bottom and then we're going to take our ground bar and that's it for the neutral the neutral is going to be inactive we are just gonna put a connector there and that's just gonna be shoved in there and it's gonna be left open okay so i'm not gonna shove this in the box you already know what to do on that i'm gonna leave this open so i can show you all the wiring and how this all works so let me do a quick recap once again we have our power source this is a 14 2 2 wire with ground going to the light fixture to the light fixture we have the all the neutral wires connected light fixture switch power source neutral connected all the ground together power source 14 2 2 wire with ground the hot wire connected to the light switch cable and then we have our switch red and the hot wire from the light fixture connected together running to a 14 3 3 wire with ground wire going to the j box to the light switch which is going to be the red wire connected at the top hot wire black wire connected to the bottom ground connected to the other side and we're going to leave our neutral neutral wire open and we're all going to shove that into the j box and we are complete and that france is how you do end of run single pull switch using a 14 3 3 wire with ground and a 14 to 2 wire with ground wire okay friends so i hope you found this video helpful friends and if you have any questions on how to do any of these methods feel free to comment down below and ask me these questions they are very simple again friends turn off the power from your power breaker before you use any of these if you follow these tips you won't go wrong and again if you are uncomfortable please hire a professional and a certified electrician again friends if you found this video helpful please hit that big thumbs up press the subscribe and notification bell and i'll see you friends on the next video and i appreciate you guys tuning in to this electrical series that i'm doing on these episodes and let me know in the comment section below what you video you want me to cover on the next episodes to come thank you so much i'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Fix This House

Views: 359,876

Keywords: How to wire a single pole light switch circuits 3 different ways 2022, Electrical DIY, Electrical Switch, single pole switch, 3 way switch, electrical how to, electrical outlet, outlet wiring, electrical receptacle, junction box, j box, pig tail wiring, electrical box, home DIY, DIY electrical, home electrical basics, electrical install 101, electrical for beginners, electrical plug, voltage detector, 120v outlet, hot wires, grounding wires, neutral wires, Cable run

Id: 5OKZaP5JBkc

Length: 23min 16sec (1396 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 05 2022