now when it comes to installing
receptacles or other devices like them
i've seen a lot of very common mistakes
or at the very least some very poor
practices when installing these types of
devices so there's quite a few of them
so let's go ahead and jump right in
let's go alright so the first mistake
i'm going to go over when discussing
installing these receptacles this may
seem very basic but you might be
surprised how many people don't know the
difference as far as where the wires are
supposed to go so on this side here
you'll see we've got these gold colored
terminals if we flip it over the other
side we've got these silver colored
terminals the gold colored terminals are
going to be for your hot wire typically
it's going to be a black wire that's
coming in that's supplying the power and
that's going to be connected over here
to the gold side the neutral wire which
is the white wire is always going to go
over here on the side with the silver
colored terminal screws if you were to
put your black line wire on the silver
terminal and your white neutral wire on
the gold terminals this is referred to
as reverse polarity now the reason why
that's so dangerous to where if you have
the line or the electricity wired into
the neutral side with these silver
screws is because it's going to create
an unsafe receptacle it may work but you
are running a risk of having a short
circuit or a shock or even possibly a
fire
so just remember that black is always to
gold the white neutral wires are always
to the silver terminals and green wires
and bare copper wires like this one here
are always the ground wires and they
will always go to this green ground
screw here all right so for this next
mistake this is a very common
residential receptacle these type
receptacles require for a hook to go
around the terminal screws and then it
gets tightened down but one of the
really big mistakes i see when people
are installing these types of
receptacles is when they take their
wiring they're stripping off way too
much insulation so when they take their
hook and they wrap it around the
terminal screw and then they go to
tighten it down you can see this copper
that's extending on
past the terminal screw by quite a bit
and then also past the back of the
receptacle the problem with this is once
this is all tightened up and pushed into
the back of the box what could happen is
possibly your bare copper your ground
wire could rub up against this hot wire
here and then it's going to cause
everything to shore out you could also
have instances with arcing depending on
how everything is in your box which is
obviously something that you don't want
that could ultimately cause a fire
conversely i've seen people and this is
a little bit of a dramatization but i
have seen them like this where they cut
too little insulation off that hook when
they wrap it around that terminal screw
as you can see even though that hook is
around that terminal screw once we would
tighten down the terminal screw on top
of it if we flip it here to the bottom
side
you can see that insulation is
underneath of the head of that terminal
screw
well when that terminal screw gets
tightened down and it clamps down this
wire it's going to be making a lot of
contact with that insulation which is
obviously wider than the copper portion
of the wire and you're not going to get
a good connection there so you also are
going to have a bunch of issues here the
outlet itself may not work or it may
work intermittently or you could have a
case of where it short circuits or
causes overheating and a really easy way
to check and make sure that you have the
correct amount of insulation stripped
off of the wiring is you can use a strip
gauge they're on pretty much all of the
receptacles that are out there and you
can just put your wiring up into that
strip gauge just to either confirm that
you've stripped off the proper amount or
if this wire wasn't stripped already you
can just lay it up in there make a mark
and then strip it from that mark off and
you know that you're going to have the
perfect amount of insulation removed
from the wiring in order to have that
good connection and so this is what a
good connection would look like all
right so talking about the wiring being
connected to the receptacles that leads
me to the next mistake that i'm going to
talk about
and that has to do with these hooks
again and so i'm just going to put this
hook over this terminal screw
and then i'm just going to go ahead and
tighten that down all right so does
anybody see the mistake with this wire
on this terminal screw yeah it's put on
in the wrong direction it's being put on
in a counterclockwise direction and the
problem with that is if you can see all
this copper up here at the top
and then here at the bottom it's not
awful but what ends up happening if you
put your wiring on in a counterclockwise
direction you may have seen it as i was
tightening that down it's actually going
to promote the wire being pushed away
from the terminal screw so it's not
going to be in nice and tight in the
middle of this terminal screw which
could lead to
not as good of a connection as you would
want so what you'd actually want to do
is you'd actually want to take that hook
and instead of wrapping it around in a
counterclockwise direction we want that
hook or that loop to go around the
terminal screw in a clockwise direction
as i tighten down the terminal screw
it's going to promote pulling that wire
in closer to the center of that terminal
screw which is going to give us a much
better connection
so as you can see it's pulled in here
nice and tight and we have a really nice
solid connection here and this is
especially true for this stranded wire
here it's going to be promoting or
pushing each one of those strands out
away from the terminal screw
but if we take that same strand of wire
and wrap it around in the correct
direction the clockwise direction you'll
see that it actually wants to pull it in
closer
so as you can see all those strands are
in there much tighter we don't have any
of those stray strands that are
basically reaching up to this second
terminal up here everything's in there
nice and tight by going around in a
clockwise direction now really quickly
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it all right so for this next mistake or
really a very poor practice and this is
one that i've seen electricians do
because my house was wired in some
places like this since then i have
corrected it because i really think that
this is a really poor way of doing it is
on these residential outlets if we flip
it over here to the back if you see
these four holes here
this is where you can insert up to 14
gauge wire into these holes to connect
the wiring to the receptacle itself
this is known as speed wiring also known
as backstabbing and the way that this
works we've got our silver terminals
here and a white wire all you have to do
in order to make this connection is push
the wiring into one of those holes
and once it seats as you can see it
doesn't just pull out and while this
seems like a really great way of doing
things because it is so quick and easy
to do there's a lot of problems that can
come from this now if you're going to
have a problem and you have a defective
device you may see issues right away
other times it may take time in order
for issues to develop and the reason
that it may take a while is that the
more that the device is used the more
that it warms and cools the more that
it's moved around that little piece of
metal that's inside that's making
connection and holding this wiring in
may become loose and if it becomes loose
over time what can end up happening is
the wire starts to back out and may fall
out completely if it doesn't fall all
the way out and it just starts to have a
really poor connection well then you
could have arcing and heating and a
bunch of other issues and to kind of
illustrate this wire being backed out as
you can see it's in there nice and tight
you need to depress there's a little tab
inside of here usually use a screwdriver
to depress it and then pull it out if
you wanted to remove the wire i'm going
to show you right here where i can
remove this wire without depressing that
tab just by pulling on it and twisting
the receptacle back and forth and it's
just that easy for that wire to come out
so for this next mistake this is a big
one as you can see here i've got two
terminal screws and just imagine that
the whites both of these terminal screws
are taken up as well and they're wanting
to connect another receptacle or another
device of some sort and they want to use
this as a way to tap into the circuit
well what they'll end up doing
is they'll loosen one of the terminal
screws
they'll leave that wire in place they'll
take their new wire and they'll put it
in on top of the wiring that's already
there so that's what they do they leave
their wires that are already there in
place they take their new wire coming in
so they can connect to something in
order to power a new device and then
they just sandwich the two together
underneath of one terminal screw these
devices are not made to have more than
one wire under the terminal screw so
this is against code and it's also
incredibly dangerous to do over time
what can end up happening is since we
don't have proper pressure from the
terminal screw on the wiring and there's
variables to where these wires can move
one of these wires can eventually fall
out from underneath of the terminal
screw which then also has the other wire
being loose and then that can cause all
kinds of problems with the minimum of
the receptacle not working or damaging
it all the way up to causing a fire it
would be far better to avoid doing this
at all and just use some pigtails in
order to connect all of your devices and
the new device that you're wanting to
install the next thing i want to talk
about as far as installing these
receptacles or devices that are like
them that is really going to make things
a whole lot faster
easier and make sure that your
connections are going to be as tight as
they should be
is it comes down to the tools that you
use now a lot of people are using their
standard phillips head screwdriver in
order to
loosen and tighten the terminal screws
on the receptacles and while a phillips
head will work it can also cause issues
if you get down to the point of where
it's becoming hard to turn if you go to
keep trying to turn it look at what
happens the phillips head wants to just
kind of come out of that terminal screw
and that terminal screw can still be
tightened down a little bit more so with
a phillips head you can't always get
this tightened down as much as you
should
and then there is the robertson bit or a
lot of people call it the square bit the
robertson bit is what i've been using
for quite a while now because it is
extremely effective at tightening down
these terminal screws but there are a
couple of options out there that are
actually better than the robertson bit
so what i'm using now are these two bits
right here over here is milwaukee's ecx
bit and over here is klein's combination
bit if you see here you've got this long
blade here kind of mimics a flat head so
you can get a lot of nice torque on that
terminal screw if we flip it up here to
the top side you can see it's kind of
squared off so it's more like that
robertson bit so you can get right into
the middle of that terminal screw and
also help to add to that torque and get
a nice grip on that terminal screw so
just to kind of give you a visual as to
how much better these work this is a
standard phillips head so i'm going to
get it down to where i can tighten as
much as possible with this
and now it's popping out so let's see if
we can't take one of these newer bits
put it in there and get it to tighten
down a little bit more
so as you can see i was able to rotate
it a little bit further than i was able
to with the phillips head and it was
pretty easy to do so i have links for
both of these down in the description
down below now if you like electrical
projects or other projects for around
the home i'll post some links right over
here of some videos and playlists that
you might be interested in now i hope
this video was helpful and maybe you
found it to be interesting and if you
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catch you all in the next one see ya