Most Common DIYer Electrical Mistake - Don't Let This Be You!

how's it going you guys it's scott with everyday home repairs and today i want to help you avoid the number one mistake i see di wires do when they're jumping into electrical the mistake comes from when you need to connect stranded wire to solid core wire this is extremely common in light fixtures such as vanity lights ceiling lights i have one right here which is an led recessed wafer light and inside the junction box all your connections are going to be stranded with your neutral hot and your ground you will also see this with a lot of the smart switches that are becoming more and more popular and why this is so important is because a loose connection can equal at minimum additional heat in your junction box which might lower the life of some of these connections and at maximum can't equal arcing or short which can be a fire hazard so let me quickly show you how to connect these two together with a simple wire net and what the best practices are and then we'll finish off with actually my preferred method which i think is perfect for diy-ers so here's the example of a common failure the wire nut is connected i don't have any exposed copper it feels pretty tight where the wire nut is biting into the wire but then many people forget to do a pull test so if i pull i can already see that the wire is coming out and there the stranded came out and i had a very weak connection now the wire net still connected on but that's because it was biting into the solid so here's the example you can see the wire net actually was just biting into the solid core and then the stranded was just getting wrapped around the solid core but really with a very loose connection this is a classic failure point and something that can be avoided with a simple technique let me show you how so first up we're going to strip off some new wire and remember in your wire strippers you do have the gauge callouts for stranded and then on the opposite side for solid and those will be different stripping holes depending on if you're doing stranded to solid now this is 14 gauge so 14 gauge solid would be here and usually i'll be stripping three quarters of an inch or maybe just a little bit more you'll pull that straight off you will not pull at an angle and you shouldn't wiggle the strippers too much because that can cause damage to the copper itself now that's especially true with stranded because stranded can you can break off some of those strands right and then you'd be lessening the current capacity of that wire so 14 gauge here and again we're gonna do about three quarters to an inch again pulling straight out you can see sometimes if you if it's a little bit harder you can go to the piece of insulation that no longer has any wire in it you can pinch down on that piece of insulation and then pull it the rest of the way off now for the stranded it is nice to put a little bit of a pre-twist on there just to make sure you don't have any frayed wire then the correct approach is pretty simple and this is going to ensure you get a nice strong connection between the stranded and solid what you want to do and what we did wrong last time is we just put the wires we just put the wires within the wire net and what ended up happening is the solid actually led the stranded so the wire nut actually just bit on to the top part of the solid and the stranded just got wound loosely around the solid core that is not what you want you want to actually do the opposite you want to lead with the stranded you can really do only about an eighth of an inch and that's going to be enough often when you have solid core wire many professionals will pre-twist they'll pre-twist the wires together prior to putting the wire nut on even though the wire nut manufacturers usually call out to not pre-trust and to let the wire nut or a wing nut like this do the work all right so now once we have that folding on we can look down inside you can see the stranded is much higher up and is biting into that wire nut so that same pull test is not going to pull the wire out like it did last time so you can kind of yank on these all you want and it's just not going to happen now a correctly installed wire nut is really hard to beat in terms of price and the proven durability the challenge is it does take a little getting used to so if you're starting off on your electrical project i actually have a better solution and it is the connector i've been using for the last year let me show you one quick note if you guys are ever looking to expand your tool collection you're kind of building out as you build up your diy skills and projects you can look down in the description you'll see our amazon store it has things like my favorite utility knife which is the milwaukee fastback you'll see my go-to wire strippers which are now this hybrid set from canipix which are great brand but they're a little costly so sometimes i will put kind of the higher end and a more mid tier that i also prefer you'll see the pictures you can kind of run through it quickly and see if we have a recommendation for tools so just something to check out and you'll see that in all of our different videos so now on to the connectors that i recommend these connectors are called awgo221 if you've seen any of my other videos you've seen these connectors because they are my go-to now these are both three wire connectors they are called lever nuts they are not push in connectors do not be confused with something like this which would just be a push in connector these are a little bit different why i prefer these i think especially for di wires you can get a more consistent connection using the wago lever nuts than you can with a wire nut considering you're only doing so many electrical projects a year so you don't get a lot of reps with the wire nuts which it does take a little time to get used to them the smaller wago two two one which you get a two pin three pin five pin those are the ones i carry on me all the time this goes up to 12 gauge and then the bigger one can actually go up to 10 gauge so the smaller which has the smaller envelope which is easier to fit in the junction box is by far what i recommend and why i recommend these for di wires you will see so we open up our two slots here by releasing the lever we place our solid core in you'll see it through the housing it's fully seated and that chrome bar there is actually the bus bar so i'll close that lever and that secures that wire in place then with a pre-twist on the stranded just to make sure i don't have any stray strands that get caught up i'll also seat that in and the big thing is wago 221s are approved for stranded not just solid core there's some confusion out there there's also some confusion seems like a lot of pros say that these cannot handle load i'll put a link in the description the silver symbol which is a great youtube channel you guys should check out did a load test and went three times the the rated capacity so went up to 60 amps and the wago did generate heat but had zero issues once it cooled down still fully functioning and that was even after three times the rated load so as long as it's installed as you see here with the wires fully seated the wago is going to stand up to the test of time and actually over in the european markets things like the wago lever nut are much much much more common than wire nuts and that's just because it's a solid consistent connection and here's an example of that this is a 221-613 which can handle 10 gauge and we have 14 gauge stranded wire in the middle i know others have commented that the levers are loose and they are loose but that actually does not release the wire so we can show here the lever looks like it's starting to come released but it's actually just some play within the levers and if we zoom out here you'll see my little cheap test rig and that shows that single stranded wire holding 25 pounds of weight without failing you could push back a little bit on cost these are gonna be quite a bit more costly and cost you five to ten times more than a standard wire nut but for sdi wires that aren't doing a ton of jobs we're not doing commercial jobs i don't think that cost really makes a huge difference why i also like the wago i use them on like temporary light fixture at renovation projects because they're reusable you can take them right off the wires are not damaged you can reuse those they're just a great overall connector and i do highly recommend them so now you know if you're installing that ceiling light or vanity light you just want to use the standard wire nuts in the package no problem now you know how to safely connect up stranded to solid but if you have a few projects ahead of you i do recommend getting yourself some wago two two ones there's some sample kits that have two three and five pins you'll see that down in the description and i just think it's a great starter kit for diy-ers to see if you prefer these type of connectors now if you want to see other best practices and just things to avoid when you're swapping out outlets around the house check out this video right here i'll walk you through three issues i actually found in a newly built home in my area so thanks for joining us on this video and we'll catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 2,735,638

Keywords: stranded wire to solid wire connection, loose light wire, loose wire nut connection, best wire connectors, everyday home repairs, diy electrical wiring residential

Id: NVNzuF2UUrI

Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 31 2022