How to Wire a Switched Outlet

a question on how to change a switched outlet and so I'll go through the steps on how to change it and also how its wired and always make sure you check the electric before you start and shut it off I like a non-contact tester what I like about it is you have to depress it to turn it on it shows you a light that it's working and also gives you a chirp and then you don't actually have to touch the wire so that you know whether the electrics I don't know so always turn off the power before you start but a switched outlet has one side of the outlet always on so in this case we've got a nonmetallic two wire cable coming into this box we have the hot going to a leg going up to the switch and then we created a pigtail a little wire going to the bottom of the outlet now this hot from the service panel is always on so this bottom part of the outlet is always at and now we have this second cable to wire cable coming into this box we twisted that together with a wire connector and it's going up to this switch now from the switch because we're using a two wire cable this white wire which is normally in neutral we have to mark it with black tape to let everybody know that this is a hot wire it comes down to the top part of this outlet and now this top part will be controlled by the switch and again we have to mark this white with a piece of black tape or black paint so that everybody knows this is hot but we can't have both of these screws with hot wires so what we have to do when we replace this so we're going to turn off the power unscrew the old outlet and then on the new outlet our hot wires will be connected to the brass screw our neutral wire is going to be going to the silver screw and our ground wire to the green screw but on the Heights hot side you're always going to have this metal connecting tab so what we have to do because we have two hots we need to break this tab and you can either use needle nose pliers or diagonal pliers and we're just going to grab it with the pliers and we're just going to bend it back and forth and you can hear it snap and now these are completely distinct they're separated so we can have one hot that's always going to be on on the bottom and then our hot on top is controlled by the switch so very simple to do and that's the wiring scheme for a switched outlet

Channel: FIX IT Home Improvement Channel

Views: 734,261

Keywords: home improvement, diy, diy projects, do it yourself, home improvement projects, how-to, home repair, fix it home improvement channel, how to wire a switched outlet, how to wire an outlet, switched outlet, how to replace a switched outlet, wiring a switched outlet

Id: tYinqtVDNcA

Length: 2min 29sec (149 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 11 2014