well welcome back to Steve Robb reviews today we're going to do some electrical testing basic
electrical testing and the type of things that you should know about electricity basic electricity
and some of the tools that I find are very handy the first one for most do-it-yourselfers should
be this one right here and this will check to see if the circuit you're looking at is actually wired
right from the beginning just a basic 120 volt circuit and it would be an outlet like this that
you would plug something like this into so all you do is just this is a power cord that's already
powered up and if I just plug this in you will see here that the two lights are lit up and there's a
guide here that tells you if it's not wired right so the two yellow lights on show that the polarity
is right and it's wired right and that's a good starting point the second one I'd like to show is
some of these electrical testers they're non-contact electrical testers which means
you can go to a wire and you can see if there's actually electricity flowing through the circuit
if it's hot if it's live if the breaker has not been turned off and you will get a shock if you
don't know what you're doing right so these are all different styles I got this one here which
is a fluke which I really don't care for it too much but it's got some features that other ones
don't and one is it's got a light on it which is good and if we were to use guys can see on this
plug here you can see the black there which is the hot wire and on that side the white which is
the neutral and you could see the green ground and beside it now if I were to just go like with this
on this side you could see that nothing happens because I'm not on the hot side of the plug I'm
on the neutral side if I turn it around you'll see that it it lights up like a purple kind of
deal and if I were to go on the ends here you can take a look at the end here and this Moeller one
is always going to be your hot if I go on this one here and there's a smaller one there I don't
know if you could see that or not but it is lit up like like a purple and it's so faint it's hard to
tell and on this one here it doesn't light up at all and that's why I don't really care about this
one so much is I prefer the Milwaukee there's all kinds of different brands out there I like
this one here reason why I like it is it's got two identifiers it actually lights up and makes
a noise so if you take a look here you can also tell that when it's on you know it's working and
if you go like this one here on the hot side it is actually beeping and you know showing the light
and if you go on the other side it's not doing nothing on the neutral and again if you were to
go on this side of the wire it's showing it's hot and if you go on the opposite side it doesn't show
anything and that's a good you know identifier because a lot of times when you're working on
circuits you may have turned off your breaker and you think that the circuit you know is applying
to this particular outlet or whatever it is and it may not cuz you know when you're working on
electrical circuits the wires sometimes can work for so many different areas you've got to verify
that the power is actually off and a lot of people what they used to do in the past and it still
works today is a known good so if you had like say uh a light bulb you know that you just plugged in
and it didn't go on well you got to make sure that the bulb works right so you plug it into a good
one first and then plug it into this one and make sure that the circuit doesn't align and this is a
great identifier here because you know sometimes you could plug it into this outlet here and by
the time you get to the next one what happens if the bulb goes out well that kind of stuff
has opt-ins you gotta be careful electricity so we're going to do some basic checks and I'm going
to explain to you some stuff that maybe a lot of people don't know for basic electricity and one of
them is going to be on the back of a outlet here or a switch this is a switch and a lot of people
don't like to see anything on the back there they only like to do their wiring on the sides using
the screws and we're gonna get into that and that's a little controversial but I don't mind
a little controversial so let's get Stewart now and I'll show you some stuff that maybe you just
don't know well let's get started right here and of course most people should have just your basic
multimeter and I've got it set here on continuity so when you touch the two pieces together that are
in continuity it will of course make a noise so if we just take a look at your your regular switch
here and a lot of switches you'll see they just have one connector here and one connector here and
it just turns you light off and on now for most lights if you take a really good look there I'm
not too sure if you can see it or not but there is actually like a bump or a surface here and
that usually shows the direction of on or off and on the back here you also have the ability to put
your connector in the back here rather than use the sides and this is a piece of 14 gauge wire
that you would get in a normal household circuits and of course you would just stab this right in
here and make your two connections here or you can use on the side now let's say you're going
to try and wire this up and it doesn't have the identifier on it here well you just get your your
two wires now there's continuity right there and there's the bump now the switch is off so that's
a good way to identify if the switch is actually on or then you get to another switch like this and
of course this one here is completely smooth so you have no idea what's going on there right well
there's a reason for that they don't have an ADD identifier on here because this particular one you
will notice it's got two brass colored ones screws and the other one is blocked so if you just put it
on one and you got continuity there but if you come around to this side no continuity now if I
turn the switch I love continuity here and none here so you can tell what kind of a switch this
is and you know many times you're looking at a switch and you're saying okay so where does
the third one go like if you take a look at a receptacle here you'll see that there's a
ground here well a lot of times what happens is this screw is missing this is your ground I don't
know if you pick that up or not but yeah this is missing so you do have to have a ground here and
a lot of times even on a receptacle like this the ground this here will always go to the casing so
let's take a look at one of these and this is just your regular receptacle and you've got these two
connectors here and then you see you got these are brass colored and these are silver colored
now of course they correspond with the plug so this is your hot wire and this is your neutral
and silver would identify with white and the brass colored one would identify with your black wire
and of course your ground or your bare one would go on like this now a lot of people have so they
catch 'n and you'll see you can put a plug in two 15 amp circuits here well they actually have two
different sets of wires and how they do that is on the side of your receptacle plug here you'll
see there's a little tab if you look real close you could see that little tab and all you do if
you want to have two separate circuits is get your needle nose pliers and break that tab off
so there is no more connection between the one and the other so they'll actually have a 15 amp
circuit on this side and a 15 amp circuit on this side and that's how you can tell when you open up
a electrical outlet box and you'll see all the wires in there you know you know it's more than
just powering up the whole thing you've got two separate circuits itself now on the back here you
have the same type of method that you can actually put your conductors in here in these four spots or
you can use the screws applied now if you take a good look at this here I'm gonna show you in
the future a little bit better but if you take a look right there you can see there's like a little
tab here well you could press in on that tab and release the wire to come out but I'll just show
you here for reference if you take a look at say this side here it is attached so there is
conductivity between here and here and this is in the wire just like this and if we go to this
one here this tab that you press down is that wire in there and of course on the other side
as well so let's take a look next at powering this up and load in the circuit up to 15 amps
because there's a lot of controversy especially on YouTube when I made a video a little while
ago talking about the backstabbing method here there's actually a specific word for this but
by putting the conductor's in the back a lot of people thought that was unsafe and shoddy work and
no electrician and his mind would wire something up like that but you know what they're all wrong
this is perfectly safe to do you have the option of using the side terminals or using here so let's
take a look at that next okay so we're going to take this receptacle right here you can see I've
used my screwdriver to put the ground on and of course you've got a choice of your two conductors
the block is always your power and this is your neutral and if you just go in the back of your
plug here silver matches to this one here just plug it in and take your block on this side and
plug it in there and that's you know that's pretty well it now if you want you can use these ones
here back off the screw put your conductor wire in there just like this and tighten it down so you do
have the option of both of these like this and like I said before you can take a probe you know
our screwdriver like this put it in here to pull the wire out so now let's just take this regular
receptacle and let's load it up with a circuit that can draw 15 amps and prove that this here is
actually certified and meets all the requirements of the safety codes in United States and Canada
so let's take a look next well here we go I got it all set up she's real sketchy guys you don't
want to be doing this yourself this is strictly for experimental purposes I got an angle grinder
plugged in and I've got a heat gun plugged in and I know both them together is over 15 amps but
they should be around 12 13 by the time they're finished I got all the conductors plugged into
the back of the receptacle I got my meter here let's turn them on and let's see what happens
we'll do the heat gun at full blast first there we go put the grinder on she's gonna get noisy
okay guys I'm not gonna leave this on for an hour to prove that you can use the connectors
on the back of any of these particular electrical connections and I think they are safe okay so what
do you think this isn't here guys like they don't fall out or stuff like that you have to actually
pierce them in the backside to get them out and you know what for the average do-it-yourselfer and
homeowner these are very easy to hook up you don't have to twist them around here none of that kind
of stuff and you know what as far as I'm concerned they are safe these this particular one here was
made by a Levitan and it's got all the approvals that you need in Canada and United States and of
course over in Europe they don't use this they're using a different type of electricity they're
using 240 volt 50 cycles I believe and so for me North America this is a certified unit and on the
switches they're all certified I bought this at Home Depot and you know I'm gonna do I'm gonna
put a link down below for a video that Levitan did showing exactly how to actually wire one
of these up yourselves if you don't believe it I mean for people who are skeptics and say you know
what this is not the right way to wire it up well you know what they don't have any credentials if
you won't take a look at a large corporation and see that this has been passed for years and years
and years and years and it has all the safety certifications so what else are you going to do
are you gonna you know listen to people on YouTube or are you going to listen to the regulator's and
in Canada United States this passed all the regulations it's passed all the safety testing
so what do you do right I mean what I've shown you here today I wouldn't repeat it myself you
know like you mean if you're not too sure about doing stuff this is strictly experimental use
as far as I'm concerned what I did today showing you a little bit about my little bit that I know
about electricity I'm not a licensed electrician and I don't have the background to say whether
anything is good or bad or whether it is safe or unsafe leave that with the regulator's and
leave that with your particular country and your Electrical Safety Board's that certify these type
of connectors and I think they're safe as far as I'm concerned so thanks for joining me here today
if you haven't seen this channel before you're welcome to subscribe come back again and I'm going
to do some more electrical testing in the future just a little bit and we'll have some fun Cheers
you