[Music]
hey guys welcome to plumbing with tim
i've had a lot of people in the last few
months ask me tim could you show us a
video on how to hook the power up
to an electric hot water heater well
that's exactly what we're going to do
today
and i'm going to show you what we need
to do to get started once down the first
thing that you're going to want to do
is locate where the breaker panel box is
to the house
locate and try to find and decipher
which one of those breakers usually on a
water heater usually
is going to be a double breaker that's
rated at 240.
but not all electrical panels are marked
correctly so you're going to have to
make sure
that you get the right one and i'm going
to show you the tools needed to make
that happen
tools that you will need to do this is a
simple multimeter
pair of side clips needle nose sometimes
possibly a six and one screwdriver
phillips head screwdriver
an electrical whip adapter good wire
nuts
once you remove the electrical whip make
sure nothing's touching
remember we don't know if that breaker
you turned off was right or not
you're gonna end up taking your
multimeter
you're gonna set it to where it says acv
or 250 200
volts right and then turn it on
and test your leads if the power is
still
on to this water heater most water
heaters
it should read 240 volts as you can see
we found the proper breaker
and we're rated zero which means these
lines have no juice going through them
let's take to the next step you want to
start by taking off your screws on the
top panels where the tower is
usually they have phillip head screws
but some of these water heaters
that's why you have a six phone
screwdriver you can take one of these
ends off and it'll act as a socket
to take that hexagon top screw out of
there in this case it's phillip head
screws
we've loosened them up and we'll remove
it
remove the second one and here's what
we're looking at
looking at a red and a black wire
let's go to the next step we're going to
take these panels off set them aside
and secure your screws somewhere usually
that's a pretty good spot to have them
first thing we're going to do is we're
going to take our little electrical
adapter
now a lot of these water heaters when
you take them out
there usually might be one already in
the existing one that you can take and
replace and put over to the new one
but in this case we didn't have any if
you don't have any of these it's a good
idea to carry some of these on your van
pick them up at a big box store or an
electrical supply
i'm going to take by starting with our
little adapter
we're going to slide that through
and get all three of our wires our
ground
as well it's a little tricky doing this
one-handed
as our hot our lead or common whatever
neutral you have that sitting there like
that
and let me show you do next well now
that we have our little adapter
electrical adapter sitting here we're
going to take our plate
that covers our electrical panel our
water heater the one that's got the hole
in it this is the top side usually when
you see the green ground screw
and we're going to slide that through
the top plate like so
we're going to slide that up until that
adapter attaches
and take our little nut slide it in
there
nice and easy don't skin the wiring
and then we're going to go ahead and
tighten that nut up
this is the bottom side of there see
that that's what we're looking at
just like that on to the next step
all right we're going to take our plate
with our power lead
from the house kind of just bend them up
like that see that and get these other
two lines that are coming out of the
water here
out of the way i'm going to take and
place that thing
down on top where it goes on the water
heater
kind of like this see that
i'm going to have a screw here and a
screw over here we're going to secure
that down and i'll show you how to tie
in the electric lines together
one screw in
get the first screw secure don't tighten
it all the way yet
you might have to make a couple
adjustments
go ahead with your second screw kind of
just get that so it sits down in place
that's what you're looking at now we
have our main feeds coming from the
house
around so those two lines
come from the heater pretty no-brainer
it doesn't matter which one of these you
hook to those two
ground being by itself it's going to
work so there is no
right or wrong when it comes to putting
those two together
just hook them up those two to those two
with wire nuts right before you hook
that all up
that's a small compartment so you're
going to want to have to finagle
these lines in here to stuff them into
place
enough so you can get everything in
there usually bend
this is the lines that are coming from
the water heaters we still got our
live veins from the house get them down
to a shorter
area which is more manageable to get
tucked up inside of that little
compartment just be careful you don't
want to skin
these lines when i say skin is rub any
of that coating off there because you've
got a bare line and something hits
bang it's going to short out
okay let's go ahead and get these tied
into there
all right red to white
good wire nut and that's going to catch
both of those wires
all right before you start tucking and
doing any of that stuff make sure you
get
both of these tied in with wire nuts
and while they're nice and tight do not
substitute wire nuts with
electrical tape all right take the time
to get the right stuff
now words get tricky take and bend this
down
don't skin the lines and keep saying
that
trust me tuck them down
so they're down in that compartment for
the other panel to go on
something like that nice and tidy got
room to put the panel on
now listen ground is very very important
especially here in florida we live
in the lightning capital of the world
everything needs to get ground if you
don't you're gonna fry something out
if you go on a hot water heater and
there's no ground available
make sure to let the customer know that
they may need to get an electrician out
here to protect their investment
and make them sign off on it there was
no ground so they don't come back on you
saying that you never grounded it and
now you're out of the money to have to
replace that heater because it got
struck by lightning
let me show you the best way to do this
now this ground wire is a little bit
longer than i want
my whole premise is i want to cut this
about right up in here
take and bring it down and loop it
around
that ground screw right i don't want too
much excess just hanging out
we're going to take our side snips i
showed you it's got the little needle
nose and we're going to clip that
bend it over here and around that screw
see that
pinch that together so it's up
underneath that screw
now we can tighten that screw down so we
have everything secured up underneath
there it's time to take our other
plate kind of focus it down right like
that
get our last little screw that we held
onto
see if we can't line that hole up right
there
i said i'm doing this one-handed so this
is interesting
there we go find that hole
and get it in there it'll be tricky
just don't give up have some patience
there we go
beautiful voila that my friends is how
you hook up the power to an electric hot
water heater
all right take your time don't force
anything
be patient never turn these hot water
heaters onto the power
until it's full of water
that's all the time we got for this one
thanks so much for watching the video
any questions or comments about how to
hook up the power to electric water here
i by no means am a licensed electrician
by being a plumber and have to work
around things like this
i find myself having to work around
power and knowing how to hook these kind
of things up
thanks so much and don't forget to keep
plumbing