Replacing a Vintage 1960 Switch and Grounding the New Switch

hi this is bill for Sparky channel comm and it's house renovation time this video is for educational purposes only and only competent persons should attempt this repair today I'm going to be switching out this vintage 1960s which listen to it remember I don't know if you remember this old switches but they were pretty noisy and a lot of people switched them out for quieter switches in the 70s and 80s but this is an original 1960 vintage switch and I'm going to change it out and what I put into this Leviton federal specification grade switch so let's get started first I've already turned off the circuit breaker this is my fluke one AC voltage detector I'm gonna put it in here and I do a double check I've already turned off the circuit breaker but right now I'm double checking to make sure that there's no hot wires in here okay so I'll just put my impact driver right here and take out one screw that's an old flathead screw the other one has a fill up so take that out to here's the old 1960 switch that's what looks like on the back okay this is a push in type switch and so I'm just going to cut them right here okay I've got nice long wires to work with sometimes in old boxes the wires are pretty short this isn't bad at all one thing I like to do is take off some of this old paper and I always vacuum out the box stripping old wire from 1960 it's not as easy as tripping new wire there we go I have now turned back on the circuit breaker to make a couple of important tests okay this is my fluke voltage detector again and this is the hot wire right here so this is what we call the line wire and this is what we call the load wire this is the wire that's going to the light because the light is the load this is my fluke one one seven electrician's meter I have these wiggle lever nuts on these wires for safety because the electricity is on right now for this test and what I'm going to do I'm going to take the red lead of my fluke one one seven electrician's meter and put it into one of the ports of the whatever nut and then I'm going to take the other lead and put it right to the back of the metal box and see I'm getting 121 point one volts AC so this white wire is hot and the metal box provides a return path to ground so when you put your leads across them you get about 120 volts AC so what I'm going to do is run a pigtail from this box and connect it really good to the metal box and that will be my ground for my new switch what's happening in this 1960 metal box is that they ran a ground wire to the back of the box and attached it to the back of the box in the wall here's a picture that I took of a different box in the same house now not all the boxes in this house are bonded and grounded like this this one in the photograph it happens to be in the laundry area so it had ground wires coming to the back of it and the one that I'm working on now replacing the vents which has the ground wires because that is on an exterior wall a lot of the interior receptacles and switch boxes had no grounding or bonding whatsoever so this box is grounded so what I'm going to do is I'm going to tap a 1032 screw into this metal box I'm using a combination drill and tap bit okay so I've got my 10 32 bit on my drill and I'm gonna go ahead and find a good spot right there pull it out nice and straight okay so I'm gonna take my grounding pigtail put it in my newly tapped hole so that's down there good and tight this white wire and this black wire make up what we call a switch loop back for 2011 it was okay to do this have a white wire a black wire in a switch box and you're supposed to color code the white wire to black so that people would know that it's a switch look it's not a black wire in a neutral wire it's the first thing I did here is I went ahead and color-coded it I just used my sharpie and color-coded it you can use black tape and so forth this switch provides two different ways of wiring you can just put the wire straight in to the terminal and then screw this screw down or you can go around the terminal and then tighten the screw down so I'm going to elect to go straight in I'll start with the ground let's put it right in there and tighten it down securely and then it doesn't matter which wire goes next we're just breaking the flow of electrons when it switches off that's an open circuit the current isn't going on the load wire to the light so the lights off when the switch is on that is a closed circuit and the current is going to the light so it turns the light on put this right in here this is called back wiring this is not backstabbing backstabbing is a totally different thing this is a your more expensive devices will generally provide a way to back wire okay so we've got the black wire in the second term Oh tighten it down securely the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to put some black electricians tape around the switch for safety so now we'll go ahead and put it back in now I'm going to install the screw this wall plate so this is the base plate it goes on just like that there are two screws it's called screw this but there are two screws and then this is the cover just pushes on just like that so the next thing we're going to do is turn the circuit breaker on okay you turn off 200 off it works great I'll put links in my video description for the fluke one AC voltage sensor and a fluke one one seven electrician's meter I'll put a link for the switch you saw it installed in the video which is the professional 15 and 20 amp heavy duty switch I'll put a link for the ideal combination drill and tapping kit I'll put a link for the atomic drilling driver set I'll put a link for the ideal grounding pigtails we are one thousand volt insulated number two xeno drive screwdriver and last but not least I'll put a link for the Eaton screw this wall plates thanks I hope this video was helpful [Music]

Channel: Sparky Channel

Views: 255,918

Keywords: Vintage Switch, Replacing a Vintage 1960 Switch, Grounding a Switch, light switch, Non-Contact Voltage Tester, Fluke -A1-II Volt-Alert, Fluke, DeWalt, Knipex, IDEAL, Fluke 117, True RMS Multimeter, Leviton, Spec grade, commercial grade, Sparky Channel, Single-Pole Switch, IDEAL 61-534, vintage house, vintage, IDEAL Combination Drill Tap Kit, DeWalt Atomic drill and driver, drill and driver, atomic, Electrical Installation Pliers, electrical, replacing a switch, switch change out

Id: FxaJ3MtwVpU

Length: 9min 14sec (554 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 19 2020