The BIGGEST Mistakes DIYers Don't Know They Are Making When Wiring Light Switches | How To

so like receptacles light switches I see a lot of mistakes that are being made especially by di wires that don't even realize that they're making these mistakes but by pointing them out in this video hopefully it'll help you to recognize them in the future so that you don't make those mistakes so let's go ahead and Jump Right In let's go all right so here is your very common single pole light switch and over here to the right side you'll see you've got two screws what these are are these are your hot side these are what make the connection from your feed wire to whatever it is that you're trying to power in most cases a light fixture or a fan perhaps many people think that it matters which one of the black wires goes to which one of these terminals so when it comes to a single pull switch like this it does not matter whether you put the line wire here or you put it here and you put the load wire here or you put it here as long as those two are not on the same terminal screw it doesn't matter which wire goes where that's all this switch is doing it is interrupting that current flow when you have it in the off position but then in the on position again it's just connecting these two terminal screws passing the power on to whichever terminal screw has the load and then passing it on to the light fixture so when it comes to actually installing the wires around the terminal screw what I see happening so often is people will take their J hook and they will wrap it around the terminal screw and then they will go to tighten down that wire underneath of the terminal screw and then they'll call this connection good which in most cases there is really nothing wrong with this connection but I don't know how well you could see but as I got that screw tightened down more and more what it was doing is it was actually pushing this J hook that's going around this terminal screw it was actually pushing it away from the terminal screw itself and that's because it's going in a counterclockwise Direction whereas the screw is going in a clockwise Direction so instead what is best to do is to take that J hook and wrap it around the terminal screw in a clockwise Direction and then tighten it down it is helping to create a superior connection and the reason why is because as that screw is spinning since it's wrapped around in that clockwise Direction it's actually promoting the wiring to be pulled in closer to the terminal screw itself all right so the next big mistake is actually a really big one this switch is in a multiple switch box so maybe it's got two switches in it or three switches whatever it may be what I've seen being done is let's say that we know that this is the line wire this is the hot wire that's bringing in the power from the breaker panel in order to connect the other switches together so that they can have power as well I have seen where they have backed out this terminal screw they'll leave the line wire or the hot wire in place and then they'll take a jumper wire and they will connect it underneath of that same terminal screw with the line wire and then they will tighten it down like so so now they've got two wires underneath of one terminal screw again this one's bringing the power in from the breaker panel and then they put this one on top as a jumper wire to feed the other switches in the Box these terminal screws are not made to have more than one wire underneath of them when you put two wires underneath of a terminal screw like this wires move and these are not going to be secured as well as they should be because they're stacked on top of each other so any movement in these wires could cause one of the wires to come a little bit loose and then you have a really big problem in that box you could have arcing you could start a fire it would be far far better to use pigtails and it would also be the legal way of Distributing That Power from that one power source to all of the other switches in that box so the next mistake or I should say misunderstanding that is made when installing these single pull light switches amongst di wires is that they assume or try to figure out where does the neutral wire go where does the white neutral wire go on this switch the neutral wire does not get connected to the switch in any way instead what you have is you have a white wire that is coming from the feed line and you you have a white wire that is coming from your light fixture or your fan or whatever it is that you're connecting to the switch what needs to happen in order to complete that circuit is you actually have to have your white neutral wires put together and you can do this by using a wire nut and then that just gets pushed into the back of the box or you can connect the two together using the ports on this Wago lever nut you just push the two wires into the ports flip down the levers and you can see that you have a good connection there and then that would get pushed into the back of the box and it doesn't matter how many neutral wires you have they all get connected together and pushed in the back of the box the only time where you're going to be connecting a neutral wire to a light switch is if that particular light switch requires it and usually it's a Smart Switch that's requiring a neutral wire now really quickly if you're finding value in this video if you could do me a huge favor all that I ask is that you hit that thumbs up button right down below or leave a comment down in the comment section letting me know what you think of the video so far it really does help the video out to spread out to other people and hopefully be able to help them out as well I really appreciate it let's get back into it so for the next common mistake that is made on this what I have seen happen quite a bit is when somebody goes to connect their J hook to the light switch they will go they'll take their J hook wrap it around the terminal screw and they did a good job they put it in the clockwise Direction and then they will go and tighten it down well did you or do you spot the issue with what I did here yeah if we zoom in up here really close you will see that there was not enough insulation removed from the wire and that insulation is up underneath of that terminal screw so we could have a case of where we are not making a good connection because obviously that insulation is thicker than the wire itself is so that terminal screw can't come down all the way on top of that wire am I not having that really nice and tight connection underneath of that terminal screw could lead to a whole lot of issues in the future it may not even work right off of the bat or may work intermittently or you might see your lights flickering just depending how bad this is how little insulation was not removed from the wire now conversely the next big mistake that is made is when somebody strips off way too much insulation so they go they wrap it around the terminal screw they tighten it down and now now they have all of this exposed wire sticking out of the back of the light switch so with all this exposed wire here this wire is live so we have current that is flowing through this wire and if anything is to brush up against this even if the best case scenario all that brushes up against this is a ground wire and what it does is it causes your circuit breaker to trip or maybe you're putting this in a box with something to wear with this being exposed it could cause arcing to happen it just causes a very unsafe environment in that box and it can just lead to multiple issues all right so all of that brings me into the next big mistake and in this case this mistake is actually Allowed by code it's actually integrated into the device and it is approved to be used and that is over here on the back which are these back stab holes here now this is a highly debated subject that I've seen amongst electricians as to whether or not these are are good or bad to use so let me just really quickly show you how these work so we just take our wire we just push it into one of those holes like so so now that's connected we take the next wire push it into the other hole and there you go now that's connected so now they're both connected and what that took three or four seconds so why the controversy well it's been in at least my experience where I have seen when you use the side wiring technique if it's installed correctly I have yet to see that technique fail whereas with the backstabbing technique I have on occasion they don't all fail but I have on occasion seen devices that have failed and they have failed in different ways maybe your lights start flickering that usually signals that they're starting to fail this is a loose connection inside of the switch itself maybe you have some arcing going on I personally have not seen where where the wire has fully released but I do have friends that are electricians and I've talked to electricians out in the field where they have seen that that's the case where this is just completely failed and the wire is just loose in the box so this is not meant to scare anybody again these are legal by the NEC to use they are approved to be used it's just stuff to keep in mind for you to decide on your next project how you're going to go about connecting to a receptacle or a light switch whether you use the backstab the side wire or a combination of the two also as a really good bonus tip don't use this type of switch that I've been showing everything on in this video this is a residential grade light switch and they are very inexpensive but it is well worth a little bit of extra money to upgrade to this commercial grade light switch they're just built way better and the best part is if we turn it over here to the side we don't have to make those J Hooks on these terminal screws here with a commercial grade receptacle it's called back wiring so if if we go back here to the back we will actually just insert the wires and there's two places for two wires we can actually just insert the wire straight in there there's a plate here on top that once the wire is put into place and you'd start tightening down that terminal screw that plate is going to come down compress the wire kind of like a vice would and would hold those wires in place and this is a very good connection not to be confused with backstabbing as you can see on the commercial grade you don't even have that option so these provide an excellent connection and they're just built a lot stronger and they can be installed a little bit faster also many of you have been asking what bit I've been using in all my videos to tighten down those terminal screws these bits are the best bits you can use to tighten down those terminal screws this particular one is made by Milwaukee it's the ECX bit client has this one as well this is a combination bit they're very similar and with these bits you really do get the best of all worlds between having a flat head or slotted Phillips head and then of course the Robertson bit which is also really great for tightening down those terminal screws so I definitely recommend picking up some of these if you haven't already and I'll have links for everything that you saw in this video today down in the description so I hope that you found this to be helpful or at the very least interesting and if you did if you could do me a huge favor hit that thumbs up button right down below and of course if you have any questions or comments you can leave those down in the comment section and I'll catch you all in the next one see ya

Channel: How To Home

Views: 100,366

Keywords: How to wire a light switch, light switch mistakes, how to install a light switch, how to install a lightswitch, how to wire a lightswitch, biggest mistakes diyers make when installing a light switch, light switch, light switch install, how to home

Id: QSBMd774qkk

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023