Why Knowing WIRE INSULATION Types Is Crucial

what's going on my friends this is dustin stelzer with electrician you and today we're going to talk about wire [Laughter] insulation [Music] so why is it important to even know about insulation honestly the insulation is kind of the most important part to know about and a lot of apprentices don't realize that they're not taught that but the conductor or the piece of metal inside of every kind of wire that you're going to come across across is generally the same no matter what you're gonna have a piece of copper or you're gonna have a whole bunch of stranded pieces of copper stuffed together or you're gonna have aluminum or you're gonna have copper-clad aluminum but either copper aluminum or copper-clad aluminum the conductors inside of the colored sheathing are all the same so when you look through the code book and you're trying to figure out like well why does this one wire why can this handle this and why can't it handle it it's all talking about what the insulation around the wire can handle so keep that in mind at most things in code that have anything to do with conductors are talking about what that insulation is capable is it going to melt because it's not rated for a high temperature is it going to be damaged in some way so a lot of different kinds of insulations are are built for very specific environments some of them are meant to be submerged in water some of them are not meant to be introduced to water at all so it's really important because if the insulation around a conductor starts to degrade or starts to become damaged that's when you can have wire short out and create a potentially dangerous situation so let's look at an example of two i guess on the opposite sides of the spectrum two instances where insulation is kind of important uh and the extreme differences in the uses of these two video is sponsored by ariat if any of you are in the market for a new set of work boots i've been using area for a lot of years and typically i can get a set of 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of places that you could use romex i just call it romex that's actually the brand but that's what most people call it romex but type nm cable is not meant to be put into raceways it's not meant to be wet it's kind of one of the weaker of the conductors because the insulation is only rated for 60 degrees celsius so if you introduce it to a really high heat environment or you start putting a whole bunch of amperage in it past what the insulation can handle the insulation is going to start breaking down so that's why we put it in homes and we don't really expose it to sunlight or you know bury it in the ground or anything like that because the insulation around the conductor can't handle that but another situation where we've got a conductor that's very similar is uf so uf is another cable assembly it looks just like romex but instead of the yellow or white or orange sheathing around it or black sheathing around it romex has a whole bunch of different depending on the size and everything but a whole bunch of different outer colors of sheathing but uf is standard it's gray so there's this uf is very very durable if you bend it you're not going to break it there's nothing moisture can penetrate into the insulation because the outer sheathing itself is actually melted on to the inner insulation of the conductors so the inner insulation that's protecting those conductors can't degrade because the elements from outside are not going to enter into it so that insulation is completely protected so that entire cable assembly is rated for a lot more you know crazy environments you can directly bury it in the ground you can hang it in trees you let you know the uv rays let the sun radiate down on it and it's going to be okay so that insulation that cable assembly is made for that so you're going to go through a whole bunch of different things in the code book that talk about different cord types different cable types different conductors and fixture wires there's a lot of different conductors but just know what is really being talked about the important part to know is what the insulation is and and what's going on with it and making sure that if you're working in some kind of new environment and you know that okay we're we're storing a whole bunch of really corrosive stuff in this one room this might affect the insulation it might actually affect everything in the room which is something you need to think about if you're working in a hazardous environment but if you're just you know like working in a house you know you have different types of insulation that you can use and get away with now again always say this the code book is the minimums the code book covers everybody's ass on the minimums that need to be installed um you're more than welcome to go above and beyond exp put far more expensive and stronger insulation and you can you know instead of running 20 amp circuits you can run 30 40 amp circuits to all of your equipment that's rated at 20 amps it doesn't really matter it's okay it's gonna be very expensive for you to do that but i always try to remember to remind people that the code book is is talking about the minimums and it is definitely okay for you to exceed the minimums you just can't go below them because that's where the liability line is an example of something that might happen to damage insulation or maybe perhaps melt the insulation and cause a problem say that we had two conductors and we're running far too much current through them for a really long time and they're in an extremely hot environment they're in like texas up on top of a roof right next to the roof and it's 120 degrees out over a very long time that situation could result in the insulation around the conductors starting to degrade and actually melt and then you've got two wires that are energized right next to each other the only reason they're not shorting out is because the insulation is intact but over enough time if that insulation starts to melt boom all of a sudden you've got a situation where those conductors are actually going to touch each other because there is no more insulation it's all melted off we run into that a lot of times in in hid fixtures high intensity discharge lighting where there's a metal halide high pressure sodium bulb that's like 700 degrees to the touch and the ballast gets really hot it's in a huge metal case you know out in the middle of the texas sun it's just an incredibly hot environment so the insulation on the ballast wires a lot of times just melts wire nuts melt if you don't use the right high temp wire notes which we run across all the time but that's what happens the the insulation degrades over time and then these wires all of a sudden touch each other and blow up and short things out another thing that happens is say it's not two different uh ungrounded conductors like two hots that are touched that end up touching each other but say it's like a hot and a piece of metal like the actual metal enclosure that a light fixture is in well if that hot over time it's way too hot and that that insulation starts to degrade that thing is going to touch the metal of the fixture once that insulation is gone and if the fixture or the pole light or whatever you're working on if that metal enclosure is not grounded properly that entire metal enclosure will become energized so it just takes some kid walking over and you know touching the pole and just like electrocuted that's why it's really important to ground and bond things we're going to talk about that in a much later video grounding and bonding is hugely important probably the one of the most important things right out of the gate to understand and to start wrapping your head around but you can start to see why the insulation around a conductor is so incredibly important and why everything is rated for insulation everything's rated for temperatures for environments for you know what a conductor is going to go through what kind of stress it's going to go through so i hope that that kind of cleared things up uh really think about insulation installation is important but also um just understand that that all of the codes and standards that you're running across for these conductors the the de-rating of conductors all of it has to do with making sure that the insulation around the conductors is cool that's why we de-rate you know you get a whole bundle of like 20 conductors in one pipe the likelihood of those conductors being exposed to excess heat because of all of them having current on them is high so you have to de-rate the number of conductor you have to de-rate the amperage of what each conductor is allowed to carry because they're when they're all bundled together like that they can't carry the same amount of current without the insulation degrading so a really important thing to to understand and realize i hope that helps i love you guys thank you so much for your attention and i'll see in the next one

Channel: Electrician U

Views: 201,632

Keywords: electrician, electrical, electricity, dustin stelzer, apprentice, journeyman, master, electrician vlog, construction, electrical vlog, electrician show, electrical show, trade school, electrical courses, electrician courses, electrical class, electrician class, electrician school, wire insulation, insulation, conductor insulation, cable, cable insulation, types of insulation, types of wire, wire, cables, electrical wires, wire strippers, wire stripping

Id: EHMe0uGAAUs

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 26 2020