good morning my name is ben salstrom
i am roughing in all of my switch boxes
and these are some of the more
challenging boxes that you're going to
be roughing in
i want to show you the process of the
way you create a box
like this
this is a lot of different wires coming
in it as you can see
and
ultimately you want to end up with your
bundles of wire that are going to go to
your individual switches like this one
here this is for a three-way switch
which is why there's a red black black
and then of course a green for your
ground so i have one that's not finished
and i'm going to do my best to show you
the steps to doing this correctly in
such a way that it'll be easy for you to
understand and keep track of here's the
switch box we're going to be wiring
all of my wires are pulled into the box
extended out at least six inches past
the edge and they're all labeled for
where they are going
and
so that i understand
what each of these wires is for
this box is simple in that there's only
one circuit in this box there's no
separate circuits this is my power
coming into the box no particular reason
that this is long except that that's the
way it ended up when i pulled it in here
so this is the power coming in
and then these are all of the switched
the switched
power legs going to
the dining room canned lights or recess
lights there's a decorative spotlight
right in the middle above us here and
then the kitchen recessed lights so
these are all single pole uh switches
they're not three-way switches but it's
not a lot different either way for
wearing the the overall box so we're
going to go ahead and
one at a time strip the sheathing off of
these and make labels
now you can make labels for your wires
however you see fit there's probably no
best way to do it
but for me what's been working well is i
have a
self-adhesive label that i use for
sending packages
and i got a whole bunch of those and
then my printer has a function where i
can print graph paper lines on the each
sheet
so that's what i've been doing and then
i use one section
of the grid
for making my label
so
i designate each wire with which circuit
number i have so in this case this is
some of the main level lights that we're
working on so that is circuit number 38
so at the beginning
and the end
i put number 38
and that's so that no matter which which
way the tag is if it's upside down or
upside right
then it's easier to see it
number 38.
now always write the destination or like
the direction of the power is flowing so
if your power is going to something like
this right to kitchen recessed instead
of from
on this next one i'm going to put from
because it's power coming into the box
from
junction
above panel
now that we've got all of our
destinations written out here
we can go ahead and
cut our
labels into strips
[Applause]
and then
we can peel them off
so this is already sticky so this could
be regular paper since i'm using tape
anyway but i like that it makes it a
little bit easier to do the process
so now we're going to go ahead and
pull this tape off
to about the right length
might be a little bit long
it's been working well to keep it
stuck on my finger like this until i get
it lined up on the first side
and then
bring it up to the center on the other
side
like so and voila so we're going to go
ahead and fold this over before we have
it around the wire i found that it's a
little bit easier to do it now
fold it like such
very carefully trying to get it as close
as possible
like that
then just leave enough of a loop on the
end here that it
has room to slide over the wire
alright so one of the time we're going
to
remove the sheathing from the cable
the best tool that i've found after
doing this for a while is just a simple
utility knife
but
the other tool that can work and i have
used quite a bit is called a cable
ripper which is this tool right here so
i'll demonstrate how both of them work
just in case you have one or the other
my preferred tool the utility knife uh
so the center conductor in these cables
is copper so you just keep your knife
right at the center of it and i started
about half inch from where the cable
comes through the back of the box
so i'm gonna start about there
and
very carefully
strip the ceiling back
so make sure you get all the paper off
of all the conductors
now i'm going to go ahead and pull this
down
and you can kind of finish it to the the
length that you want i like about a half
inch coming in the box by coat it needs
to be at least one quarter of an inch so
i keep it at about a half inch
pull it nice and tight there
and then take your utility knife
and just cut it off just like that put
our label on here actually just put
these on about an inch out from the edge
of the box
this is the most beautiful thing about
doing it this way now i know without a
shadow of a doubt that this circuit is
coming from that location because of my
label these labels are just it's worth
the time it's a tedious and it's a pain
in the butt to make them but i would
highly suggest it i'm gonna show you how
this cable ripper works
this it has a little protrusion out the
bottom side right here i guess bottom as
we're looking at it
that now you slide it onto the cable you
squeeze it down and then it cuts the
sheathing
so we're going to do that with this one
here
the thing that's not as easy about this
is that you tend to have to pull a
little bit harder
to get the cable
stripped
and you have to kind of hold the wire on
the top of the box
so you don't pull it out
but
as you can see
it works pretty effectively still
i've noticed a couple times where it
seemed like it scraped the insulation of
the wire
that i was stripping back it didn't
actually damage it very much but it kind
of
made it
a little bit rough
so there we go we got that pulled back
now you still have to use your utility
knife
to cut this off just make sure you're
careful about where you're headed with
your blade
there we go
slide the label on
seal it on there
and we'll repeat the process for these
ones get them stripped back and labeled
now you always put your labels um at
least what the way i've been doing it is
put your label on the black wire
because each each set of cables will
just have that one hot wire coming in
and
the
grounds all get tied together no matter
what even if they're from separate
circuits and neutrals get tied together
if they're on the same circuit
and the the hots are the only ones that
sometimes will go straight to a switch
and they're the easiest ones to access
you also stuff your hots in the box last
so they're the ones that are going to be
on top all of our labels are on here and
we are good to go so the first thing
you're going to want to do is bend all
your conductors that are not grounds up
and out of the way all right so we've
got four conductors coming here
four ground wires
and we want to get these all stripped
off to about the same length
so that we're good there
all right now we're going to
we're going to need three ground wires
coming to each one of these switches the
switches need a ground wire to attach to
the body of the switch so we have to
accomplish that by using
uh i guess jumper
uh no pigtails pigtails
all right so these are the biggest wire
nuts that i have right now these are the
red wire nuts
and on the bag or box or packaging it'll
tell you exactly how many of a certain
size wire you can have so this has one
two six number 14 wires so that means
i'm one short i'd need
three more and i've got four right now
so i'm going to have to do
my first initial jumper and then one
more wire nut after that so i'm just
going to put
i might actually just use this
this bare
extra piece here for now and i'm gonna
do these five together at first
all right now i like to do a little bit
of pre-twisting uh the methods vary a
little bit from electrician to
electrician
but i use the
just a flat side of my
tool here just to line up all the ends
of the wires
and make sure that they're all in line
before i start
and then i get a grip on it here
and then to start to twist it
before i even put a wire nut on it
most of the wire nuts that you buy now
say that this is not required
but it's still not prohibited either
i'm just going to go a little bit i'm
not going to go crazy on this one i've
got all of my
the tops of the wires are all lined up
perfectly right there
[Applause]
if they seem to get out of line a little
bit
you can
clip off just the last eighth inch or
quarter inch of the wires
so i'm still pleased with the way those
are lining up
so they're going to go ahead and get our
wire nut on here
if you get the wire nuts with the wings
on them like this
it makes your life a little bit easier
because you have a little bit more
torque
talking to the electrical inspector
yesterday
and this is going to vary but so now you
can see how the wires are starting to
twist down past the wire nut
that's semi-positive because it's going
to make them more secure
but you you can stop right here there's
no there's not really much reason to
continue
uh he said a lot of guys or some guys
will just keep going all the way into
the wall
not literally probably but you you just
this kind of damages your wire so if you
have to take this apart it's kind of a
pain to do so if you have threaded it on
so far and braided your wires all the
way back so just go a little bit so that
you know that it's secure but then stop
right there
all right so now
we can move on to
getting our
wires tucked in the box here this is
kind of the tricky part
you just got to kind of decide your plan
of action for how you're going to lay
them in here but you always start with
the grounds
we already established that
and so i'm going to start by getting
these
the origination of each one of these
wires
tucked back in here
and then i'm going to
roll
this top one in
just like that
we're going to move on to creating all
of our pigtails
insulated
14 gauge wire
you could use the bare copper stuff but
this is just a tip that the
inspector
said
and basically you use
insulated ground wire so that when
you're pushing your switches back into
the box
you are
less likely
to
short something out
onto the bare ground wire
so i need to have three
when you're stripping back the wires for
the grounds
i usually go just a little bit further
back it's not necessary but it doesn't
matter if it's if it's not
covered normally you would want to strip
these not as deep for the rest of your
conductors
all right so we got four wires here this
time
i can use a yellow wire nut because the
ones that i have
have a maximum of
4
14 gauge wires
give it a little bit of a pre-twist
14 gauge is a little bit
[Music]
easier well it's a lot easier to work
with than 12 gauges
uh 12 gauge is a little bit more i see a
little more value in pre-twisting now
you can see how i've got one wire that's
protruding a little bit more right there
so i'm going to go ahead and clip this
off
nice and flush
and then just squeeze these back
together one more time
so i've got three pigtails
coming out of my new wire nut here
get that nice and snug
okay
so now one at a time i'm gonna take
these wires
to each respective
spot where we'll have a switch
i always kind of give myself as much
room as i can i push these wires all the
way to the back
and then the length that i put them off
to is the length of this handle which is
about six inches
it's nice to have something handy you
don't have to pull a tape measure
boom
now some guys will take a long longer
piece of wire
and loop it from one
so instead of having three pigtails
coming out for your grounds
they'd have one really long ground wire
and then they would they would just loop
it over the screw of one
light switch ground to the next to the
next
this is my preferred method
and i think probably the
the overall better way to do it it's not
probably wrong either way but this is
the way that i prefer
all right next step we're going to take
all of our neutrals so we're going to
bend these kind of down out of the way
all of our neutral wires and tie them
together
now these i'm all going to strip back
about a half inch
half
5 8 maybe
because you don't want any
conductor to protrude past the edge of
where the wire nut is after you've
threaded it on
all right then you connect all your
neutrals together
and
get them tucked back in here now i added
one additional thing that is kind of an
extra
this wire right here is
a pigtail of a neutral
and this is semi-optional because
you
do not need it for most switches most
switches do not require neutral but
there are a few switches that do like
[Music]
electronic switches that are motion
activated and such so instead of having
to later on undo this big
this big batch of neutrals right here
you can just grab your neutral that you
already made a pigtail for
and use that instead so it's kind of an
extra step but it'll save you a little
bit of work later if you ever do add a
motion sensor switch
make sure that after you put your
wire nut on like i said before don't
don't over twist it and twist it down
too far and also make sure that there's
no conductor no part of the the copper
that you can see from the end of the
wire nut here so that
you
make sure that you're not going to have
any shorts in the box so
now we're going to go and move on to our
switched legs and power that's gonna
feed them
these three wires on top here go
directly to the light fixtures that they
control so these will be going right to
the switches so those do not need to be
spliced
this lower wire here is the power coming
into the box and that needs to feed all
three of these switches obviously we're
going to need to use some pigtails in
this situation
so i've got
three wires this one's longer but i'll
just clip it off to length and i'm going
to be hooking up both ends
when you trim the wires back you're
going to
want to go ahead and strip back about a
half inch maybe 5 8
you just don't want too much because you
want them to be fully covered by the
wire nut when it is threaded onto your
wires
all right now we're ready
max of four wires
for these yellow wire nuts four 14 gauge
wires
so we are good to go with that
get these as tight as you can
with your hands
this is almost threaded back a little
bit further than i'd like but it kind of
is the way it ended up so
we're going to go with it
all right again we're going to tuck this
into the box
just like we did with the grounds
this is going to be fairly simple to do
i want to have these uh lay across the
bottom
so i'm going to loop it over like like
this
and then we have a central point for all
of our
pigtails to
bend out from number one
two
three
so these all don't really matter they're
interchangeable just these ones up here
that matter
but we're gonna go ahead and strip these
back just a little bit just a half inch
so the way i'm doing my roughing wiring
is i'm setting everything up so that i
can turn it all on
and that's i think my preferred way to
do it because then you know for sure
that there's no
strange things going on that you're
going to have to
figure out later right now the walls are
open so it's the time to find a problem
if there's if you're going to have a
problem
so
that's the method i'm going for
so in place of where the switches would
be here i'm going to go ahead and wire
up these together so essentially
circuit will be closed or the circuit
will be
completed
where each one of these switches would
have been now i know that i'm going to
be putting switches on here so i'm going
to tighten these wire nuts but i'm not
going to
tighten them as normal as much as i
normally would
lined up there
no pre-twisting because i don't really
want them to be twisted together
but
i'll put the wire nut on here and get it
good and snug when you got two wires
it's a lot easier to make sure they both
gripped well too
all right
so this is really simple for this one if
you had three-way switch wires you
basically just have an additional wire
a red wire coming through
to each one of these bundles
and
pretty easy to know what's going on with
those so i like to take these these
ground wires
and wrap them
around
just a little bit like that
kind of bundles your wires together
nicely especially if you have that
that three-way switch
loop like i was talking about
keep them nice and straight
and then you just roll them into the box
here's our label still so we know
exactly what's going
on it's a beautiful thing
you know and avoid sharp
bends
in the wire as much as possible
so now when you go to put your switches
in it'll be really easy you roll out the
wires that you need
put your switches in
and away you go
now you want to get these rolled in here
so that the edges of the wires
so the wires are not
all laid up along the outside edges of
the box
because if you're going to have drywall
done they might use a rotozip and
they'll pop through the sheetrock into
this box they'll find the edge and then
they'll buzz around the outside so when
they pop it into the box you don't want
to have wires
way up against the edges because it's
more likely the wire will get damaged
nothing protruding from the outside and
very nicely coiled up here so we can
roll these out connect them to the
switch that you want them to be to
if you have multiple circuits in the
same box there's a couple things you're
gonna need to remember
first of all don't mix the hot so if
you're if you're bringing power into the
box make sure that you keep the circuits
separate for your black wires in
addition to that you need to keep the
neutrals separate you cannot splice all
the neutrals together in the back of the
box right here i have my first set of
neutrals tied together and then my
second set of neutrals tied together
from the two different circuits again
easy to keep track of if you use the
labeling system that we outlined earlier
this is a circuit for number 40 and then
this one right here is a circuit for
number number 38. so you use those
numbers on your wires coming into the
box to make sure that you keep those
separate all the grounds go together
in the back of the box
but otherwise neutrals in your hots stay
separate if you like this video and it
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