If you're working on outlets,
light switches, light fixtures, or anything else electrical
around the house, then this funky little tool
might just save your life. If you've ever opened your circuit
breaker panel only to find something like this, you've probably cursed the
electrician that wired the house, everyone who's ever lived there.
And their little dogs too. With around 400 deaths per year, as the result of high voltage electrical
injuries, just in the United States, not to mention about 30,000 cases of
electrical shock that often end in burns and other injuries it's time we
made things a bit safer. Today, we're gonna look at several ways to
make sure that you don't become part of those statistics. And we're also gonna look at a tool
that will help you easily identify which circuit breaker you need to shut down
for the work that you're doing around the house. We'll also show you some ways to organize
your circuit breaker panel so that people who see in the future will
want to name their kids after you. I was recently installing some smart
light switches in my living room, and I was trying to play it safe. I was actually making sure to take all
the necessary precautions so I didn't get shocked. And so what I did is I turned
on the lights while the power was on, came to my circuit breaker, identified,
which one needed to be shut off, shut it off, went back, made sure the
light was off. Then just to double check, I used a non-contact voltage tester to
test the wires on that switch and make sure everything was completely dead. I really felt like I had covered
all my bases and then some, and so you can imagine how surprised I
was when I went to pull out the switch and this happened. Oh wow. Okay. As it turns out, in my case, the switch that I was working
on was on one circuit breaker, but the one right next to it
was actually on a different one. And as I pulled those out one made contact
with the other, which was still hot. And then I got that sparking.
Luckily I didn't get shocked, but I have been shocked several times
by assuming that things were good when they actually weren't. When I asked
you guys, if you've been shocked, 56% of you said that you had 32% said
that you hadn't and the rest said, they at least knew someone who has, there are probably a dozen different
reasons or more as to why we might think the power is off on something that
we're working on. When in reality, it's actually not one of the problems
that we as homeowners and DIYers run into is that we often have
to decipher this mess. We go to our electrical panel and we
see a bunch of gibberish in there. Sometimes it's 50 years old, a hundred
years old and maybe it's brand new, but it's still written in such a way
that we can't really understand it. Maybe it's got labels on everything, but you're not sure what that means is
that light switch actually in the living room or is that more in the
kitchen when it says bathroom? Does that mean the light switches and
the outlets or just the outlets or just the light switches? It can be pretty
confusing unless it's all specified. That's where a tool like this
is so time saving and valuable. This is called a digital circuit breaker
finder, and it comes in two parts, basically down here, you've got the transmitter and
this can just plug into an outlet. And we'll talk about some of
the other things that it can do. And then we've got the receiver, which will help you identify which
circuit breaker is being powered by this transmitter for outlets. You simply
plug the transmitter end into the plug. You want to identify, not only does
this communicate with the receiver, but it will also verify that the
outlet is wired up correctly. It's got these light patterns on here
to help you understand if the neutral is present, if it's properly grounded,
if it's even working at all, then you can use the receiver to scan
the circuit breakers in your circuit breaker box once. And then on the second time, it actually shows you which circuit
breaker is powering the transmitter. So you kind of have a learning phase
that you go through once and then it'll show you and pinpoint the exact
circuit breaker with this. You'll be shutting the power off
to the correct breaker every time. Now I do wanna point out that there are
other less expensive ways to do this. That don't require any special tools. One of the oldest ways that's been
around for ages for doing this is just to take a loud radio, a boombox,
a stereo, something like that, plug it into the outlet that you
want to disconnect the power to, and then flip off your circuit breaker. And then you'll hear that music turn off.
And you're pretty sure at that point, you've got the right breaker. You might not be surprised to hear
however that a lot of homes like mine, we don't have a stereo or a
radio that plugs into the wall. Everything is digital and
everything is Bluetooth. So some other options are
to use a lamp to do this. You can plug a lamp in and see
if that's working. Of course, with light switches. Those are
typically a little bit easier to see. And then you always want
to double check things. But a lot of times that does require a
lot of back and forth to check if the lamp is off or if the radio turned off
or whatever it is you plugged in is no longer functioning. One of my favorite ways that I've always
used to do this is to have one of my kids or my wife hop on
a phone call with me. I'll be in here testing
with the circuit breakers, and then they'll have something that they
can see on their end to see if it goes off. And then we can communicate
back and forth and make that call. But we don't always have someone
available with us to help us out. And that's where our circuit
breaker finder comes in.
This makes it extra handy, especially if you need to do something
quickly, you definitely wanna verify it. And if you don't have someone else
to help you out at the moment, one of my favorite things about this
method is that you can buy a little accessory kit that allows you
to test anything in your house, not just outlets by themselves. So yes,
we can plug this into an outlet like so, and we'll get our lights and we'll
be able to test that. That's awesome. But what if you need to
test an outlet, for example, that doesn't have a ground on it. Let's say you've got an older
house and there's no ground, well, we've got a little adapter here that
it has a non grounded outlet that will receive the grounded portion
so I can plug it in like that, test it and use it that way. What if you want to test a light fixture
instead with that, again, super easy. You can take this little adapter and
this has a light bulb socket on one side, and then your non grounded
tester on the other. So we can plug that in thread it into
your light bulb and then use a receiver to see which circuit breaker
controls that light fixture. It even comes with an alligator clip
tester for live wires. So with that, you can plug this end right into here. And then you've got these alligator
clips that you can use for testing live wires, which is really handy. Let's
say, you're working on a new space. You're finishing your basement and you
wanna make sure you're turning the power off to the right receptacles. That haven't even been hooked up with
an outlet yet you can use these to make sure that current is running through
them and that you can test which circuit breaker they're connected to. Now that we have some great ways to
identify which circuit breaker panels are powering, which parts of your house let's go through
and take a look at some of the ways that you can clean up this area to make
it super easy for you or anyone else who works on your electrical panel to know
what to turn off the first and simplest option is just to go through and
update the labels on your panel. I think that's kind of the least you can
do to make things easier in the future. Now, when I finish my basement
in this house, for example, I wrote a lot more detail about which
spaces were covered by which circuit breakers that by itself has definitely
come in handy many times in recent years. Now another tip is to use a label maker
or just to print off a list on the computer so that everything
is actually legible. It doesn't do much good to take the time
to identify everything and then write it out in chicken, scratch that you can't even read another
tip when you're working in your circuit breaker panel is to take a Sharpie or
even a label maker and write the numbers of each circuit next to it. Those little engraved numbers
are so difficult to read. And a lot of times they're sideways. Let's give ourselves every advantage
by making those really easy to identify another option is to actually
drop a simple diagram of the home. And you can do this on the computer, or you can do this just with pen and
paper and identify which circuit breakers control, which rooms including whether they're
for light fixtures outlets or both. I did a quick search and found a bunch
of free and cheap floor plan creators online that you can use to help
with this. If you find that useful, some other solutions for this include
circuit breaker panel labels that you can buy on Amazon or elsewhere, where they have the pre-printed labels
that you just pop right onto the circuit breakers themselves. Another suggestion I read was taking a
picture of your circuit breakers and then actually labeling them on your phone or
on your computer and printing them out. So you see exactly what
your setup should look like. I've also seen some people using Sharpies
painters tape or labels on the inside of their outlet or switch plates to
identify which circuit breaker to flip. And this is a pretty handy way to go, but you do wanna make sure
that you're testing everything. So someone doesn't mix these up when
they're painting or something like that. On that note, all of these are just
to make things more convenient, but they don't replace the idea that
you do need to actually go and test each one of these use that circuit breaker
finder use some sort of a test to make sure that it's definitely off. Don't just rely on labels anywhere to
make sure that things are actually safe and ready to work on. When
you're wiring up your outlets, I've discovered six common mistakes
that us DIYers tend to make when we're wiring up outlets. You can
check that video out right here. I'm NIS with learn to
DIY. Thanks for watching.
