Wago's vs. Wire Nuts - How To Wire Outlets During Rough In

hey there thanks for stopping by so i'm just going to start here at the panel and i'm just going to follow the wire to where we will begin the 20 amp circuit that we are going to be working on so we have a 20 amp arc fault breaker that is powering this circuit that runs up in this little sub panel here that we installed our 12 gauge wire then runs up in this conduit where it then comes in contact with the floor joists it runs across the floor joists over into what will be the basement living room here we are in the basement living room and right up here you can see where that cable comes down from the ceiling and runs down along this 2x4 stud right here is our first box that we're going to be working with you can see how we have three cables coming into it therefore we actually needed the deeper version of a standard single gang box 22 and a half cubic inches to fit a receptacle and three 12 gauge cables that wire then splits and goes two directions and then it forms what we would call a daisy chain of receptacles from there and around the room and into the subsequent bedroom we'll start by wearing this receptacle here and then we'll cover this next one right down here and you can take it from there so we start by stripping all the sheathing back leaving approximately a quarter to a half of an inch of sheathing inside of the box run the razor blade or utility knife down the middle of the cable to avoid damaging the insulation of the actual conductors try not to cut your hands off if you're looking for the best utility knife ever made this is the one to buy i'll put a link in the description below the only thing that's bad about it is not not made in the usa it's a gerber though lifetime warranty okay so now we have all of our wires stripped back here i'm going to trim these back a little bit it's a little bit long i want it to extend about four inches past the front of the box that's actually shorter than i used to do them i used to keep a full six inches past the face but it was a little bit excessive and in everyone's opinion for this first box we're going to use wagos and the second box we'll use traditional connectors but just so you guys can kind of get an idea of how it is working with the wago so we always deal with our ground wires first now you can use a green insulated wire for your pigtail going to your receptacle so we have to tie all three of these together but then we also need a wire for the receptacle so we're just going to be using bare copper today because that's the most traditional method this wago connector here is nice you can see when the conductor is pushed all the way into the end so we're gonna go ahead and do that one at a time there's one two three and four and they're very firm just make sure that you can't pull that back off of there and you should be good to go so now we're going to roll this back into the box just kind of push it back and down and then rotate it basically one turn until your wire connector is facing down and push that way into the back as far as you possibly can we have extra wire here right now but we're just going to leave that for now we'll clip all three of those off at once so now we'll move on to the neutral wires and we'll strip about a half inch of insulation off of each of those and then we need a pigtail to go to our receptacle then we'll take our lego push it on one two why doesn't everyone use legos it's starting to get that way that's ridiculous i'm starting to feel like why why have i ever used a wireless can you take them apart yeah you can it's kind of tricky they have a more expensive version that has little levers you pop the levers open and then it pops right off but oops this one oh actually let's let's try it once i think that's a good question to answer we are going to attempt removing this push to connect connectors supposedly these are reusable on solid wire if you use a stranded wire it cannot be taken off so i think if we twist it like this and pull at the same time yeah sure enough look at that wow they do come off so we'll put it back in here and just tug on it again if i pull it straight out it doesn't come out so where have you been all my life gosh i'm never buying wire nuts again so we're gonna go ahead and roll our neutrals back the nice thing too about this is that it doesn't damage the conductors when you twist your conductors it it work hardens the copper uh because copper gets harder the more you move it so that's why it's such a pain in the butt when you're trying to deal with those super twisted up wires finally we've made it to the hots now i don't want to go back and do i said the next box that i would use regularly just visually inspect on the end of the wago and you can make sure that all of the wires are seated then i like to go about four inches or so out past the front of the box and then we'll clip all three of those off and then i like to use an old-fashioned wire nut to insulate the hot and the neutral i usually do both theoretically you can do just the hot um that way we can energize the circuit and test it to make sure everything is that make sure nothing is shorted out or anything then we just roll this back into the box as far as we can without kinking the wires and now it should be pretty out of the way for the drywall guys now we're going to strip the sheathing back just like we did before except for we only have two cables this time uh okay neutrals and hots up out of the way grab our grounding pigtail and like i said we're going to use a traditional wire nut i always look at the number of conductors that can safely be handled by whatever connector you're using now i like to just twist it by hand i don't really feel like the need for pre-twisting is there with the linemen players just twist it until it starts to rotate a little bit past the bottom of the wire nut like right here and that's adequate don't thread this thing way back into the box and then we'll take our neutral pigtail strip that back half inch with the wire nuts it seems uh it takes a lot more effort to get the ends all lined up compared to the wagos where you just push it in each individual wire as far as it will go with this you have to spend some time lining up the ends getting them just right before you put the connector on i found that with the black you can usually get the the wire nut to kind of go in the middle of the rest like that so we have a good amount of space here for a device even if it were to be like a bigger gfi or usb charging outlet or something like that then we'll take and turn this back about four inches out from the face of the box take a couple of wire nuts and insulate our current carrying conductors which are both the neutral and the hot wire technically slightly wrap your ground wire around them just to kind of keep them all together and then roll it back into the box i think that took longer than the other one you know why they're called legos they're called juegos because they're the way to go so that completes that first receptacle that we did with the legos and then the adjacent one which we did with wire nuts so you can choose which ones you want to buy i'll put a link in the description below to both options one important thing to note is with the method that we use that we just went through we are pigtailing these together instead of having the receptacle using all four screws on it to connect one circuit or one side to the next we just have all of them tied together and then we just have these three wires that we have to hook to the receptacle if i wanted to just put one receptacle or outlet in that would still totally work perfectly like if i didn't want to use this for some reason i just put a blank cover over it i wouldn't have to change any of the wiring because everything's still connected and it would be able to continue on down the line now you can use 120 amp circuit to serve more than just one room we're serving this living room area and then over there there's a third wire that taps off and goes over into this bedroom the general rule of thumb is to calculate your general purpose receptacles at 3 va or 3 watts per square foot so these two rooms are like i think it's like roughly 400 square feet let's say between the two rooms and that would come out to be four eight 1200 watts so let's uh was it like a little over 2000 watts in a 20 amp circuit so we're still plenty good to go for a little bit if you have any questions or thoughts or suggestions put them down in the comments below i'd love to hear what your guys's opinions are on pigtails and legos versus wire nuts so let me know this sounds really funny push style connectors if you want make sure you're subscribed and hit the bell to be notified about new videos being posted i post a new electrical video every week as much as possible click on one of these videos right over here and we'll continue to work on some electrical stuff together

Channel: Benjamin Sahlstrom

Views: 605,523

Keywords: Wago, Wire Nut, Daisy Chain, Pigtail, Wiring, How To

Id: _NpY5mxsYaU

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 13 2019