How To Install Electrical Receptacles – For the last 7 weeks I have been helping my dad on his Turkey Farm. They are building 2 new turkey sheds and ran into a time crunch, desperate times call for desperate measures ? so I went to help him install all the systems in the shed. The systems include A LOT of wiring, power lines, water lines and sprinklers, natural gas lines and heaters, fans, motors, etc etc etc. Great work!
As I installed the electrical outlets, I thought I’d snap a few pictures for a tutorial. The images are for an industrial environment, but the same methods apply to home use. You can never have enough outlets, right! Sometimes you need to add one here and there in the house/garage.
How To Install Electrical Receptacles
To connect a 110 volt/120 volt outlet you need 3 wires, green or bare copper is the ground, white is neutral and usually black or red is the hot (active) wire (in this case my Hot is the purple wire) . In the home, you usually use Romex wire, which you can get at the hardware store. Generally you will get 14/2 which means the hot/neutral wire gauge is 14 awg and includes a bare ground. This type of wire is solid. The wire I used on the farm is 14 awg stranded, which means the wires are in a bundle of small wires. Stranded is easier to use in an industrial environment such as a farm.
How To Wire Electrical Outlets And Switches
Make sure the power supply is turned off at the switch panel in the area you are working on. Unexpected SHOCK is never fun ?
Using your electrical stripper, at the 14 awg mark, strip the insulation from the wire about 1/2″ from the end. This will expose bare copper wire.
If you are using stranded wire, it is easiest to attach a spade connector to the straight wire. Slide the connector onto the straight part of your wire and using the crimping screws, grind the connector tightly onto the wire. Pull the connector lightly to make sure it’s securely turned on. Repeat for each wire.
Loosen the green ground screw and attach the green spade to the green screw. Tighten the screw with a screwdriver.
Adding An Electrical Outlet To An Existing Run
Note: if you are using solid copper wire, make a small loop in the wire and wrap it around the screw and tighten the screw down.
Loosen the top silver screw, attach the neutral wire to one of the silver screws. On a standard 110/120 volt outlet, the neutral wire attaches to the long prong. Tighten the screw with a screwdriver.
If this outlet is the last prong on your cable, you will only use the first set of screws. If you continue to another outlet, you will use the other set of screws for the wires leading to the next outlet.
Next, loosen the gold screw and attach the Hot wire to the gold screw (the short tip). Tighten the screw with a screwdriver.
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Now we attach the outlet to the box by lining up and screwing in two mounting screws that come with the outlet. When you put the wires in the box make sure the bare ground will NOT touch any of the HOT screws, this will short out your power and flip the switch when you turn it on.
Attach the outlet cover. We are ready to try it. Turn on the breaker and you should be good to go.
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Basic Electrical Outlet Wiring Diagram
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All cookies that may not be specifically necessary for the website to function and are used specifically to collect user personal data through analysis, advertising, other embedded content are called non-essential cookies. It is mandatory to obtain user consent before running these cookies on your website. Today I want to share with you another “electrical basics” post. This one is super simple, but it’s one that a few of you have specifically asked for – how to hook up power. If you’ve never installed an electrical outlet before and have been afraid to take the faceplate off and see what’s under there, I think you’ll be surprised at how easy it is.
And since this is probably the most common situation you’ll find, I’ll show how to install a power outlet in the middle of a circuit.
First of all, before you do anything with switches or plugs or lighting or other electrical parts, you need to make sure the power is off at the switch box. If you don’t know how to do this, or don’t know which circuit breaker supplies which area of your house, or you don’t know how to use a circuit tester, DO NOT PROCEED.
How To Install Electrical Outlets In The Kitchen (step By Step) (diy)
After turning off the circuit breaker, always be sure to test the circuit with a circuit tester.
In my particular case, I didn’t have to do any of that because none of the wiring for this room has even been connected to the breaker box yet. If I go into the closet where my breakout box is, I only have five wires for the five circuits for my studio hanging down inside the closet from the attic, and none of them are near the breakout box yet. Connecting them to the switch box will be the last step. Anyway, moving on…
I’ve explained this before in a previous post, but to refresh your memory, a circuit is simply a series of outlets and/or switches that get their power from a single circuit breaker in the switch box.
The circuit I connected last night is this, where the wire comes from one of the circuit breakers in the switch box in the guest bedroom closet, goes over the attic, and goes to the outlet marked #1. From there it goes to #2, and #3, and so on.
Cost To Install Electrical Outlet
And in the pictures in this post, I’ll be connecting the outlet marked #2 in the picture above. So it receives the power from outlet #1 and then sends power to outlet #3 in the circuit.
In the junction box I have two wires. As I explained before, I always label my wires, so you can see one that says “power in” (meaning it’s coming from socket #1) and the other says “power out” (meaning it’s going to the next outlet in the circuit, outlet #3).
The first step is to strip the yellow shield off the wires and I use this tool to do that…
The circled areas are specifically for removing these outer sheaths from 14/2 and 12/2 wire. My wire is 12/2 so I use the larger one.
Our Home From Scratch
I try to cut the sheath as far into the box as possible, which usually leaves about an inch or so of the sheath in the box.
And once the yellow sheath is removed (the wire cutters cut it very easily, and then you just pull it off), six separate wires are exposed – two black, two white, and two bare copper.
When working with 12-gauge wire, I use this exclusively. They cost a little more than the cheap sales that you can buy in bulk contractor kits, but they save so much time and are a lot less work because under the screws are these little metal plates…
If you have an outlet that doesn’t have those little metal plates under the screws, that means you have to bend the ends of your wire into little hooks or loops and wrap the wire around the screws. It’s not a big deal when dealing with 14-gauge wire, but it’s such a frustrating headache when dealing with 12-gauge wire.
How To Wire An Electrical Outlet
So I choose those plugs that have those little plates/clips under the screws. This allows you to place the wire directly under the plate/clamp and tighten the screw. No need to hook the wire and wrap it around the screw. This is so much easier, and what a time saver!
So back to the box, I cut off the excess wire leaving about four inches of wire sticking out the front of the box. That gives me a total of about 7-8 inches of wire to work with.
It’s a guess. It could be a little more or less than four inches off