WIRENUTS - Why Are There So Many, and Why You Should Care...

What's going on my friends? This is Dustin with Electrician U and today we're gonna talk wire nuts Why is it important to know the difference between all of these different wire nuts? Why are there so many wire nuts? Really it's just a size factor for the most part for most general use wire nuts like this back row here it's just size number of conductors that you can fit in a wire nut and what size wire sometimes you get really big wires so you need something huge like this sometimes you got itty-bitty wires so you need something really tiny like that most of the time in the middle we're gonna use reds or we're gonna use these whites or yellows I mean it just kind of depends on the situation if you need a little bit more room inside of a box that you're trying to push wires and you've got really big like lighting control system you know dimmers, Lutron, Radio RA dimmers, or anything like that, and you're like pushing to smash everything in well if you change all your wire nuts from reds down to yellows you know if the wire permits it actually saves you a lot of room so there's reasons size-wise why we would use all these different wire nuts and then this front row is more like specialty wire nuts they have a very specific purpose to them so you'll actually go out looking for that specific thing so you know like these crimp sleeves not really a wire nut it's more of a crimp sleeve that's got insulation on it I'll get into that in a minute but you've got things that you use specifically for grounds, specifically for copper and aluminum, for high temperature, multi-use so it combines several different functions of other wire nuts into one wire nut or you know direct burial, waterproof, something that you're gonna put outside so let's start breaking into and we'll talk about each one and why you should care about that one so first let's start out with the itty-bitty gray's these gray's are used the minimum size is three number 22s or max sizes two number 16 really if you're doing anything low-voltage with like you know 16, 20 gauge wire a lot of that's going to be cat 5 or it's gonna be like maybe security wire probably not speaker wire really anything that's like network cable really small stuff that you have to strip out and put wire nuts on you're going to use these tiny little ones same thing with the blues. The blues are just a step up so this is three number 20s to three number 16s so it's a little bit more forgiving this you could probably use for some really small speaker wire a little bit larger or if you're putting more network cables together under one wire nut if you're doing work in ballasts a lot of times ballasts have like 16 or 18 gauge wire so you can use these up in ballasts and it kind of just keeps everything out of the way although I like using wagos instead we'll get into that in a different video next up on our list are the oranges oranges are kind of a mid-sized wire nut so you can fit one number 18 in here all the way up to two 14's so this starts getting into interior residential wiring if you're ever doing stuff with 14 gauge wire which most of the time people aren't using 14 gauge wire these days it just depends some municipalities don't like it, some don't care, some you can do all your LED lighting in it because it's such you know low current lighting, but like all of your regular circuitry they would do it number 12 but these oranges are handy because a lot of like fixture wires and things like that are really small so you can get away with packing a whole bunch of these into a box and it just saves you space next up on our list is the yellows. So yellows, I have probably just as many yellows, whites and reds in my pouches at all times as the others I don't have really one more or the other. I use these yellows when I can fit something into a tight space and I'm trying to save space whereas I will use probably the reds if I don't really care the reds are kind of my default but the yellows will save a lot of space especially if you're doing like four gangs or if you have say you have a four gang and you've got like two different circuits coming in plus you have travelers and you've got two different three ways going on with the hot side of one three way and the leg side of another, some crazy thing where you're gonna have a whole bunch of wire nuts in there I would use these yellows just because it's saves space you can fit three number 12s in it so that's a really nice thing to have if you're doing more than that if you need more than three twelves or if you want to start using number 10s these whites are a really good place to start you can't fit a lot, I think you can fit three number 10s max. The smallest that will bite in here is two number 20s so that's still like two really small wires so that's a good range this is kind of an all-around really badass wire or nut for everything three number tens is gonna fill this thing up but like you know most of the time when you're working with any number 10s you know you're probably going to be doing two of them so that's really great I would still personally probably use the Reds for number tens that's just because they fit in there easier you got them on you all the time anyways and you don't have to really worry about if anything's gonna be coming out of the backside of it or not this covers it really well so that brings me to the reds. The reds are probably the most commonly used wire nuts that you're gonna see out there they will fit at minimum two number 18s that'll actually bite on in there if you put like one 18 or like two number 20s and you try to stick them in there it's just gonna keep spinning it won't bite so it'll actually bite on two 18s and then the max that you can fit is four number 12s that's why people use these for residential because we're using number twelve wire the vast majority of the time and to fit four of them in one wire nut is super helpful so these are my go-to for for most things or they have been for the longest time next up on our list are the blues, the big blues. So big blues are for really large wire or for a lot of wires now they're not necessarily listed to put like eight number 12s in here but they're really handy if you're doing stuff with like number 6 number 8 wire they're listed for bizarrely enough they're not listed for like three number 8s they're listed for one number 6, and two number 8s put together that's the max size nobody's gonna do that then we're gonna have two number 8s and one number 6 that they're gonna stick in a wire nut so like I get it you're trying to fit the marketing to make it seem like you can put a lot more in the wire nut but realistically three number 8s is what this should be listed for as a max because that's what circuitry we're going to be coming across and that's what we're gonna use these for so three number 12s so you can actually use this for three 12s if you had to as well I probably wouldn't do that because they take up a lot of space you start sticking three of these in a box and holy crap you know you're run out of space very very quickly but these things are a lifesaver especially four gang boxes where you got a whole bunch of neutrals sticking one of these in there will definitely do the trick so that's it for our general purpose wire nuts the the regular use so let's start talking about some more of the specialty items these are crimp sleeves so these are actually insulated crimp sleeves they're not even wire nuts they're not like twist on wire nuts there's actually just a little crimp inside of here that you would crimp but it has an insulated shield around it so these look like wire nuts and you're gonna see them on a lot of ballasts and a lot of light fixtures that are pre manufactured they crimp their connections in the factory but I just figured I'd put them in here because it kind of looks like a wire nut so people might think it's a wire nut anyways it's for number 22 to number 10 conductors next up on our list are the greenies or the ground wire nuts green ground wire nuts these are specifically designed they're pretty much like a red as far as what they can hold inside of them same spring, same build so you're looking at two 18s all the way up to I think four 12s yeah but the unique thing is that there's a hole right in the center of them and what that's for is say you've got like three grounds but you only need one ground coming out you'd have to bunch all three of those wires twist them together split two of them off and and cut them off so that you've only got one coming out but you don't want to just leave those wires like that and fold them in the back of the box because that can start coming loose so you still want to put a wire nut over all of them to keep them tightly together but you want one of them to be able to come out at the end of it so it's kind of a very specialized thing that you're only gonna use for grounds next up we're going to talk about the copper to aluminum or CO/ALR wire nuts these are purple notice purple everything in purple has to do with bringing aluminum and copper together there's a special pookie that they make, Noalox, that you're supposed to put there's a special kind of compound in here that's an anti oxidizing compound so if you put copper and aluminum wires together so that they have a less chance of degrading each other over time or rusting each other you would stick this on those wires and there's all that stuff inside of it Pookie inside of it so that's what these are listed for. Now these are very expensive you notice I only have two of them here these two probably cost like seven bucks so you get a you know big pack of them you're gonna spend a whole lot of money but a lot of times people will go out in homes that are built in like the 50s you know and they've got so a whole bunch of aluminum wire and they're putting all brand new devices but they don't you know they're instead of using CO/ALR devices and trying to use the aluminum and hooking up to receptacles they want to pigtail aluminum and copper conductors together bring the copper to the device so that the device and the copper wire are like fresh or whatever instead of using CO/LAR devices I get it I get like why people don't want to do that everybody's scared of aluminum but that's when you're gonna run into these and it's really expensive next up on our list are the high temp wire nuts so most of these wire nuts if not all of them... yeah I don't know if all of them but the majority of these wire nuts are all rated at 221 degrees Fahrenheit meaning that's what they can handle before this plastic start from melting so high temp wire nuts are usually used for up in like metal halide fixtures or environments where there's a lot of heat like a whole lot of heat they need to be able to handle that high temperature without melting because once it melts you just got metal inside here and two wire nuts laying up against each other once they melt boom those conductors touch each other and blow up so you need something high temp so these are 302 degrees Fahrenheit so not quite a hundred degrees hotter but like that's a definite huge improvement that's like taking you know an entire like from 0 to 80 degree difference in temperature and adding that on top of the standard wire nuts so you always want to use these when you're doing stuff with H.I.D. like metal halide, high pressure sodium, mercury vapor, stuff like that next on the list are the water proof, direct burial wire nuts so these are characteristic blue pretty much all the time they come in all different sizes just like these do but what's special about them is on the inside they've got a silicone compound in there that's like just this goopy greasy stuff that they fill with them so what it does is just keep water out, it repels water essentially it's not water-soluble so you would use these if you're in a direct burial environment if you're doing something with UF now if you're doing work outside then it's like 120 volts that you're running underground I personally would not use these I'm gonna do something that's like an actual splice kit an underground direct burial splice kit where it's bolting the wires together and making sure that they are not coming apart having twisted joints I don't know it's just my personal opinion these are rated for it they're actually listed for it so if you had like UF that you were running underground you could use these and bury them underground I just I feel like that's kind of hacky I think that there's a better way to do it and I think direct burial splice kits are the way to go all right the last part that I'm going to talk about is a dual rated wire nut so this is the Twister Pro Flex from ideal it's kind of a new product for them but if you go to like Home Depot, Lowe's, anything like that, you're gonna see these everywhere what's cool about them and why they're my favorites is that it mixes two different wire nuts there's a reason it's two colors yellow and red that's like mixing this yellow and this red together in one wire nut to give you a wider range for the same size essentially and inside of it the actual coil is wider in this one so you can fit 10s in this it's rated for four 10s whereas this is only rated for four 12s so you need to be going by UL listings and what these things can handle when you're using them out in the field but I just find that this can go to smaller sizes and bite smaller sizes and larger sizes than one of these and I like it's rubbery I don't know it's kind of like maybe a gimmicky thing but the feel of a wire nut in your hand actually matters, I don't know, there's a certain, like the more you do this the more you'll have your go to wire nuts that you like because of the way that they feel and you would think that that like rubbery and that extra size and everything would make them a lot more expensive than just a standard red but they're not they're like a few cents more per wire nut depending on like what you know if you buy a 250 bag or a 100 bag or like a 10 or 25 or something like that but on average they're really pretty close in cost so there's not a huge cost differential like I will go to a bag of these all day every day again because it's the same size and it gives you more one cool thing you're probably gonna see is like orange blues that's another dual rating that they've got it's like mixing oranges and blues putting them together into one wire nut so that they can get a wider range and I you know for relatively the same sized wire nut, a lot of those are also going to have a skirting on them to kind of help fit all those things in there but anyways that's pretty much it that's the majority of wire nuts that you need to care about I'm gonna do another video coming up where I do all different types of wire terminations where it's like briefcases or suitcases whatever you call them crimps crimp sleeves wire nuts like all kinds of different terminations so I'll probably include some of these in there but there's going to be a much more diverse selection of things that you take wires and put them together with. So thank you guys so much for your attention I hope you gained something out of this. Love you crazy people and I will see you in the next one! you

Channel: Electrician U

Views: 139,758

Keywords: electrician, electrical, electricity, dustin stelzer, apprentice, journeyman, master, electrician vlog, construction, service, industrial, commercial, residential, electrical vlog, electrician show, electrical show, trade school, electrical courses, electrician courses, electrical class, electrician class, electrician school, ideal, wire nuts, wirenuts, fasteners, twist on, pro flex, red, blue, yellow, orange, difference between, direct burial, purple, high temp, connectors, wire connector

Id: 1USjt3vhkLo

Length: 14min 30sec (870 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 12 2020