What Outlet Should You Buy For Your Home | Commercial vs Residential

hey what's up you guys it's scott with everyday home repairs and today i want to dive a little bit deeper on a topic of conversation which was brought up on one of my other videos now i put out a video that was just basics on how to wire an outlet and some of the best practices if you haven't seen that video you can check the link right here dive into that and then get some of the basics often it's just a great refresher uh things you might have already known but just a refresher before you jump into a project but in the comments so there's over a thousand comments on that video from a lot of great people everything from just weekend warriors like myself because i'm not a licensed electrician this is just entertainment purposes only and anything i say here is really just what i'm learning in my experiences it's not telling you exactly what needs to be done in your home one big thing is the national electrical code or nec is different for different states and cities states and cities adopt different versions and that can stretch all the way back to 2008 or 11 14 17 or even up to date with the 2020 code so it's going to be different for all of us in our areas and you do need to do the research and take that responsibility in your own hands i'm just sharing some information with you now one thing that came up is this outlet and what this outlet is is just a basic 15 amp outlet but it is cheap right so if you go in the big box stores you're going to see this guy for about 50 cents it's gonna be the biggest box at least in our air the biggest box there and it's not even what's called tamper resistant which is is the code in many areas today but a lot of people said i never use those this is made by the same brand leviton which makes pretty much all of the components you'll see in these stores but it is residential super cheap and i don't even know how they make any money off something that's 50 cents you have alternatives and those alternatives are going up to commercial grade so i busted out my hacksaw and i cut into that outlet now once i cut in i just wanted to see the internals and what that looked like and here's what you get now i did the same thing for a commercial grade outlet so here's the commercial grade and i really wanted to see what am i getting for the difference between the 50 cent outlet and the two dollar outlet the guts of it the thing that are actually going to hold up better over time or fail um what is that difference and there are some so let's jump in and take a closer look and i'll let you know in the end in my upgrading is there a big enough difference that i'm going to be spending the 1.50 additional per outlet just because i see that difference is that big so now looking at the internals on the right hand side we have the residential and then here on the left hand side we have the commercial a few things that stand out that you're not going to see in the video is just the weight so this residential is probably about half the weight of this commercial that's mostly due to the thickness of the plates here so you can see just the ground plates on the commercial are about two to three times thicker and then the plastic housing this plastic housing is much thicker or at least denser and just carries a lot more weight structurally i have seen failures in the past where the top white housing and black housing separate and break apart kind of makes sense now that the mounting tab runs through and then carries the structure through this plate in the middle that also grounds serves as your ground so now you can see if you if you apply to any sort of torsion or twisting motion to this plate how that could break apart those two housings and it makes sense why i've seen that failure in the past alternatively the commercial carries the load through outside cradle bracket which i kind of like it just seems like it's going to take more load and then it's definitely not going to apply that twisting motion between the two housings which could separate and cause failure also i have seen on residentials internal shorts before so using this little wire i'll point out something so with the hot side here your plug's going to go in between and be sandwiched in this kind of u or v pattern and then that's going to be hot now you only have this small piece of black plastic separating the hot from ground so if there's any sort of failure in that black plastic you can cause an internal short and start to get arcing internally and sometimes you'll see like black or melted plastic internal and you can see how that is a real possibility and how that can happen with the commercial you don't have that so one you have a lot thicker black plastic here and your ground is going through here and back to the external cradle so in terms of clearances or separation between hot and either shorting over to neutral or shorting to ground you just have much better clearances overall and probably the biggest thing and failure that i've seen over time is this u or v pattern as we as we talked about let me take this little plug here so if you plug something in right it applies pressure to that plug and sandwiches it to hold it into place the problem is once those deflect out so once you start losing the distance between the top then your plugs aren't going to stay in so if you ever had an old outlet that the plugs just keep falling out that means that these are deformed out and now the clearance is such where it doesn't hold the plug into place for the commercial it's a completely different design so now you have this external arm that applies the pressure and then that's what's going to push out when the plug's in and then push back in once it's once the plug is pulled out that is just going to be a better design and should hold up to many more cycles of taking the plugs in and out and hold your plugs in many more years than a residential would ever hope now are you using your plugs enough to ever see that that's really up to you but those are the big differences overall that i see between there's other things like the residential is going to have these push pins for 14 gauge wire those are not recommended for use i really only want to use these terminals uh just a better way and we go over that a little bit more than that the first outlet video that i have and then you're just not going to have those available on the commercial grid all right so let's sum it up and will i be switching to the commercial grid all right so now we've seen the internals and one note leviton makes a ton of outlets so if you want to see the two that i specifically went over look down in the description and i'll have links to the two different outlets that we went over too often in different products when you go for the upgrade and you pay more the internals are actually the same between the like low medium and maybe high quality options that's not the case so you saw there's tangible design differences the thickness overall the metal thickness of the plastic the clearances there's there's really no similarities between the two so the two main things that sold me on it are the reduced chance of any internal failures with the commercial i think that's awesome and then also that plugs will stay in over time in the commercial much better than the residential you'll be able to pull plugs in and out without worrying about that u or v shape deforming and then not holding the plugs in with the commercial and having that larger lever arm that presses the plug into place that's just going to make for a better connection over time so i'm making a change here in a condo that i'm redoing there's 24 plugs so the material cost difference if i wanted to upgrade a commercial opposite residential is only 35 so really in the grand scheme of things spending the time whether you're doing yourself or you're hiring it out remember if you're hiring out that's this is good information to have because you can request these commercial plugs and get that better product installed in your home or condo before you take off don't forget to subscribe to our channel we have videos like this coming out on a weekly basis to help you guys around the house with your repairs and improvements and we're going to catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 752,780

Rating: 4.8902698 out of 5

Keywords: leviton outlet, commercial outlet install, wiring outlet

Id: kX6xnOksQTc

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020