How To Wire A Split Outlet With Bottom Controlled By Switch & Top always Powered On! DIY Tutorial

on this episode i'm going to be showing you how to wire a split receptacle with the end of run switch where the outlet is divided and you can control the bottom outlet like this with the switch and the top outlet is constantly powered on so stay tuned [Music] i'm jay from fix's house if you're new to the channel please consider pressing the subscribe and notification bell so you can always be in tune on diys how-to videos and product reviews that i do within this channel just a quick disclaimer we are going to be working with electrical components today my electrical codes and your electrical codes might be different so always check that you are always up to date with your current local electrical code and make sure that you always have the proper permit before working with any type of electrical and also make sure that the power from your circuit breaker is turned off if you are unsure and you're unconfident of working with any type of electrical equipment please hire a certified qualified electrician with that being said let's get to the video so you're probably wondering what's the point of wiring a split receptacle well if you want to control a lamp by a switch itself and have one part of your outlet still powered on you can control that lamp where you can you know if you don't want a main lighting on your room like for example a light fixture in the middle of your room and you just want it to be controlled by this when you enter it then this is a good option i know some older houses have this wiring and i actually have this myself where i have this on my mains i have a switch on my main entryway that controls a lamp onto by my window so this is nothing new because if you look at your outlets you can see that on the hot side of this outlet there is a tab that connects both top and bottom terminals which is you can pretty much take that tab off and i'll show you on how to do that as we go further onto this video here are all the tools and materials that i'll be using throughout this whole video let's start off with the wiring first the wiring that you can use for this project is either 12 gauge wire or 14 gauge wire what i'm holding here is a 14 gauge wire it all depends on what power source it's coming from if it's coming from a 15 amp circuit breaker or a 15 amp power source you can use a 14 gauge wire or a 12 gauge wire but if it's coming from a 20 amp circuit breaker or 20 amps power source then you'll have to use a 12 gauge wire and above okay so on this case for lighting it's typical to find 14 gauge so that's what we're gonna use today we're gonna be using two types of wires we're gonna be using a 14.2 which is two conductors which is the neutral and the hot in the and one ground and a 14 3 which is three conductors which is neutral uh red which can act as hot and then you have a hot black right here and a ground wire if you're using a 12 gauge wire similar types like this one now moving on to the duplex receptacle or outlet and switch that you'll be using it all depends what you want to use these were residential you can tell that these are residential because they are cheaply made it's blue at the back and it's not well constructed and sometimes it's not even tamper resistant now depending on the code that you're on some codes require that you have a tamper resistance on newer builds and this one's actually commercial you can tell that this is actually built really well if you want to know more about outlets and how the difference between residential and commercial i'll leave the video on the top right right here and you can decide for yourself but in this case we're just gonna go stick with the a common residential like this one and a common switch single pole switch which contains two brass which is for two hot terminals and one ground and that's pretty much it simple as that and it has an on and off switch you always want to have a voltage detector this one i like using this volt claw this is awesome when you're going and trying to tuck in all the wires inside the j box very useful tool you got a wire stripper needle nose pliers utility knife and most of all i love using these wiggle connectors these wiggle connectors are you can have a two lever three lever this one's a five lever i wish they made four but i prefer these over wire nuts any day these are so easy to use you just lift up the lever put on your your um your conductors close them up and that's pretty much it so i'll be using this throughout the whole video this and all the things materials that i use throughout this video i'll leave it in the description down below check out those links and let's get to it so just a heads up i am going to be using a mock-up like we see here i love using this mock-up to show you guys what i'm doing but we already have stage two uh one gang j boxes right there this will uh be deep enough for a one outlet and one switch now let's start off with the outlet j box first i'm gonna take my 14 2 and feed it onto the first j box i'm not going to put cable staples on this but depending on your code you already know you got to put some cable uh wire staples there and i'm going to leave six inches of wiring onto this j box you're gonna see some nicks on these wires i do apologize i reuse my wires on my videos but like what i do in all my wiring videos i like to put labels on them this is the power source and it's also the 14 2. before going through any of this make sure that you test for power and always test this first on the live power first so that you know that this is not this equipment is not broken put a pigtail onto the brass terminal you're going to put it in a clockwise position tighten that real well pigtail on the ground clockwise tighten that down real well we're gonna go modify this receptacle this is what makes the receptacle a split receptacle because we're gonna be isolating each outlet by this so see you see this tab you always wonder what this tab is this little tab connecting these two brass it's also the same here but we're not going to talk about that side we're only going to talk about the hot brass side what you're going to do is you're going to take your needle nose pliers and you're just going to take off this tab move this back and forth and break it off each one of this is independent now now if you're using a commercial it's about the same concept the tab is a little bit larger on this one but it's the same thing you're going to go and break that off i want to reuse this so i don't want to do that let's go back to our jbox with the 14 2 gauge wire we're going to connect now our outlet with these weigl wire connectors this is the two two one it has three levers very easy to use i prefer these over the wire nuts just open them up like this ground wire onto the first lever connect the ground wire of the fourteen two take the hot from the outlet and we're gonna take the hot from the 14 2 put that inside now it's very important that when you're installing it through the way goes that there's no exposed wire on the bottom and that the wiring at the top is touching the ceiling or the roof of the waygo wire connector now for the neutral of the 14 2 we are gonna leave that and set that aside for now we're gonna go introduce the next cable and we're gonna feed it onto this j box which is gonna be the 14-3 hot red the neutral and the hot black and the ground wire take the same 14 3 go through the stud so i'm going to be labeling this cable 14 3 3 wire width ground so let's start off with the easy part take the ground from the 14 3 and attach it to the last lever onto where all the grounds are connected don't worry we're gonna go over this one more time again now this is very important take the black from the 14 3 make a loop and we're going to attach that onto the bottom terminal put that in a clockwise manner tighten that down real well don't get weirded on this we're gonna take the red from the four team three and we're gonna feed it with the hot wires on the wiggle connectors now this is from the pigtail from the outlet the hot from the 14 2 power source and we're going to put this 14 3 red in there with it so now you have two blacks one red onto this tur this wire connector now let's get and deal with the neutrals now the neutral from our 14 to power source okay we're gonna loop that and then we're gonna attach this one onto the neutral side of the outlet now we're going to attach it onto the top area the top terminal okay so let's do that take the new that neutral put it on the clockwise position we're going to take our 14 3 neutral make a loop on that and we're going to attach that onto the bottom terminal the last terminal on the bottom of the outlet tighten that in a clockwise manner before we follow this 143 to that last j box to the switch let's do a recap on this first j box first on everything all that's connected we have all our ground wire the ground wire from the outlet the ground wire from the 14 2 power source and the ground wire from the 14 3 all connected together now we have our black hot wiring the black wire from this outlet that's pigtailed it's connected to the black hot wire 14 2 power source and the red hot from the 14 3 is also connected onto here okay so that's good and that black hot wire from the 14 3 is connected onto the bottom terminal of this outlet so now let's get with the neutrals the neutral from the 14 2 is connected on the silver side top terminal of this outlet and then the 14 3 neutral is connected onto the bottom terminal of this outlet so that being said that's hopefully you got you understood that take a quick um last look on this and let's go follow the 14 3 wire to the last j box following that 14 3 let's go to this final j box right here this should be nice and easy now take your switch make sure that it's in an upright position it's saying off and on right there nice and upright take the black wire from the 14 3 and hook it to the top terminal the brass top terminal put it in a clockwise manner now take the red from the 14 3 and connect it to the bottom terminal clockwise tighten that down take your ground wire and attach it clockwise onto the ground terminal that's complete for that switch now you're probably wondering what the neutral wire goes to that pretty much is a loner wire you're just going to cap that off with your wire connector and we're just going to leave that out just tuck that in this is no you you're going to be using this for future use if you need to but for this setup we don't need it okay so that's all set up pretty easy right here you got the black at the top right at the bottom ground at the ground terminal and that's pretty much it so you already know me and if you watch my past videos i like to do a full breakdown before i tuck everything into the jbox if you don't want to go through this just fast forward but i like to do this so you can get a quick and a clear understanding on how this whole circuit is run let's start off with the first jbox with the power source so we have our 14 gauge wire coming from a 15 amp power source if you have a 12 gauge wire you can only use that on a 20 amp power source but here we're using a 14.2 that power source is running to our first jbox so onto our first jbox we have our outlet now it's very important that you take off the tab from this outlet now we connected a pigtail onto the top hot uh screw terminal and then we connected um another pigtail onto the ground terminal now let's start over the ground first the ground from our 14 to power source the ground from our outlet and the ground from our 14 3 is all fed into the same connector now let's get into the hot terminals now the black hot wire from that 14 2 power source is connected here and the the pigtailed hot terminal on the top of our outlet is connected here as well and then the 14 3 red wire is connected here as well also now let's get to that last hot wire from our 14 3 the 14 3 hot wire is connected at the bottom of this outlet going to the neutrals the 14 2 neutral wire that's coming from our power source is connected to the top terminal of this outlet and then the 14 3 neutral is going on to the bottom terminal of this outlet so that's that hopefully that made sense i'm going to follow this 14 3 and go to our last j box now this is fairly easy right here this one we're just going to connect the black on the top hot terminal connect the red on the bottom hot terminal and then we are connecting the ground on the ground terminal and with the neutral wire this is not going to be used that's just capped and we're just going to tuck that in with that being said that's pretty much the whole wire setup feel free to take a snapshot of this for future references or if you have any questions leave it in the comment section down below i'll be glad to answer it and that's how it is let's go and tuck these in if you do have any um terminals that are not occupied make sure you tighten those down it all is up to you if you want to wrap this up with electrical tape some people use it i'm not going to use that personally because i am using a plastic j box tuck these in nice and neat i like to tuck in the ground wires first i am going to be using my volt claw there's a push um end on this volkl where you can use this to push the wires in flip this around and maneuver and twist the wires and orient it the way you want everything is nice and tucked in let's turn on the power from the circuit breaker the top outlet is on see that now if we go on to the bottom there is no power on there so we'll leave that in there you know why there's no power because this switch is on the off position now if we turn this on there is now power being fed onto that outlet see that okay so now that we have our lamp let's put our lamp onto where we can control it which is the bottom like so and when we turn on the power it turns on so the top outlet is going to be constantly powered on you can put another light there like so and while that stays on you can turn off the lamp perfect [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Fix This House

Views: 133,380

Keywords: 3 way switch, electrical outlet, electrical switch, junction box, j-box, electrical box, Electrical DIY, Electrical Switch, single pole switch, electrical how to, outlet wiring, electrical receptacle, pig tail wiring, 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, How to wire a split outlet, split receptacle, fix this house

Id: jO_YxiF1Ur4

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2022