What's up everyone? Welcome back to The Durbin Compound! So if you haven't met me
already, my name is Devin Durbin and I do all kinds of man shit around here on the
channel. So if you like my content, go ahead and hit subscribe, but today this
is a kind of piggybacking on my troubleshooting the headlight video
that I did last week. I had been asked, actually, I've been asked a couple times,
how to hook up your dryer? And like what is going on with this plug? And mine has
four wires but the dryer has three terminals, what do I do?
So, what we're going to do is start off with some basics when it comes to residential
wiring. So I think that this is better learned if you have the basic
understanding of what's going on here. So, the number one thing when you're
plugging something into an outlet, like a regular extension cord, or a lamp, or a
DVD player, or TV, you're operating on 120 volts. So, when you're looking
at your basic circuit, we call it...it's 120 volts. A lot of people
will say 110. It's kind of just different on who you speak to, but
it's technically 120 volts AC, or alternating current. We're not going to
get into all that crazy stuff. So basically, what you're looking at is
three main wires. Over here, you have your hot, which is a black wire. Also known as
your power wire; where all the electricity is coming in from. That's
where your 120 volts will be. Then you have your white power wire, or your white
common wire. This is also known as your return. This is not a ground, even though
back at the panel, it is connected to your ground. That's not something we're
going to get into. That's going into advanced electrical and it's not a
big deal. Then you have your bare wire which is your actual ground. So
ultimately, at the panel they meet each other, but not a big deal. So this is a
120 volt circuit. So we're talking about dryer plugs, we're talking about a 240
volt circuit, or what some people will call it 220 outlet. So basically, this is
adding an extra wire in here. And this is why some people get confused on 4 wire
set up. So you have a hot wire and another hot wire. One is red. One is
black. So the key is here that each of these wires has 120 volts. 120 volts plus 120
volts makes 240, if you add them together. Right? And then you have your white wire
that's the same. And then when you go over to the 220, or the 240 circuit,
you'll get a green or a bare wire as your ground. So, I think previously to the
National Electric Code in 2014, you didn't have a green wire here. So
anything manufactured before then, or under the old code, only had three wires.
It had the power, power, and the common or the white. So that's why a lot of people
will battle back and forth about these dryer plugs and why you have to go get a
different dryer plug because your outlet doesn't match and what are you actually
looking for? So, how I explain that right there is that you can have a 4-prong
outlet, or a 4-prong cord, or a 3-prong cord. So your 3-prong cord here,
you can have your three blade here which would be a power, power, and neutral or
your common. And then this would be power, power, neutral, ground. So those two
different cords still do the exact same thing. The only thing that it is
adding is your green wire here on the end. So a lot of people get wrapped
around axle all about this, but this is the only wire that they're adding in
here. Like I said, after a certain time frame, when they figured out that
it's safer to do an extra ground, they added this guy in here. So if you're
messing with a 3-plug cord you're only worried about these three wires in
essence. This would give you a visual representation of what I'm talking about--
red which was 120 volts, black which is 120 volts, and then your common. If you
have a 4-prong, then you add your ground in there. If you don't have a
4-prong it looks like this. It's too easy. So whether you're messing with the
4-prong outlet, or you're messing with the 3-prong, concept is still the same.
Now on your actual coding here on outside of the wire, it will tell you
which one is neutral. It usually is the middle one. So you're going to have two
bigger wires and then the middle wire is going to be your neutral. So when
you're looking at this, it literally goes on the dryer exactly how you have it
oriented here in your hand. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to pull you in
close on the dryer. I'm going to show you the two different ways that it can be
hooked up. I'm going to take the clamp off. I've already taken the clamp off, but I'm
going to show you exactly how you would hook up a 3-prong, and then how you'd
hook up a 4-prong on the exact same dryer, just if you had a different plug
on the wall. Then we're going to go over to the wall plug and I'm going to teach you
exactly what to look for when you take the cover off. You do not have to touch
anything. You do not have to screw with anything, but you want to make sure that
you're setting this up the same way that your house is set up. So it's real easy
wire tracing. You just have to look at it and make sure that it's the same when it
comes to, you know, where this plugs into. You want to make sure that these are
hooked up correctly with where you're plugging into because I have run across
220 outlets, or 240 outlets, whatever you want to call it. I have run across them,
that they have been wired the wrong way. So then, in essence, basically that will
screw up exactly, you know, how you go about the actual, you know, the actual
wiring. And of course, I'm getting a phone call right now. Okay, so now that we've
zoomed in super close on our dryer here, this is clearly a 3-prong set up
dryer. There might be, dependent on what dryer you're looking at, you can look at--
there might be a fourth terminal over here for your ground, but this is a
3-prong dryer. So all you need to do is, you need to go to Home Depot, or Lowe's, or
wherever your store, Ace, whatever, and go get your power cord that matches the
terminal that goes into the wall. That's the one thing you need to
match. Once you've got the match, then you need to figure out how to hook it up
here. So one thing that you will look at is when you're hooking it
up to your dryer, these are kind of dummy-proof, but this is
exactly how the cord lays. I hope that this part is in frame here, but you have
your power, neutral, power, and then as it goes into the dryer, you have your power,
neutral, power. One of these blades is a different
color. So your common should be a regular silver color, well,
your power has a brass look to it, or a different color. So when you hook this up,
you have your power, neutral, power. If you hooked up a different plug, if I were to
take these off. Let's just go ahead and drop these out of the way,
and I'll show you exactly what I mean when I hook up a different plug. So let's
say that you get an old dryer and your old dryer is a 3-plug, just like mine
is here. It's an older dryer. I don't know what the year is on this bad boy. It's
probably not readily available right now. So, I take my 3-prong out.
Okay? Now, let's say that my house was a 4-prong. So what I do here is...
hopefully me hitting the tripod doesn't make a whole bunch of noise...
but here's the external ground here. So if you have a 3-prong, there's
more than likely a ground on the outside. So what you're going to do is, you're going to put
your wires back in right where you were. Okay? And you're going to hook it up just
like so. So now I have my power, neutral, power, and then I'm going to hook up my
ground here on the external ground connector.
Okay? So I just literally, if you had a... I'm trying to do everything
with stuff in my hands...but if you have a ground piece where you have a 4-prong,
then you just need to hook up your ground over here to the ground.
Obviously, this would go through the hole and hook up here to the ground. So you have your
power, neutral, power. Remember 120 volts, 120 volts, and then your common wire,
and then your ground over here. That's how you would hook up a 4-prong, you
know, a 4-prong plug to a 3-prong dryer. Now, if you had a 4-prong
dryer, which is often common, let's say you have your ground over here,
and you have your, you know, your 3-prong, there's actually four
terminals on your dryer, and you have an
older house, and you're trying to put a brand-new dryer in, well guess
what? You only use the three wires that you have. Okay? So you're
going to put these three wires on the terminals, and that ground you're going to
leave alone. Now you can, if you really wanted to, if you wanted to get picky with
it, yes, you could jump the common to the ground, but that's
not necessarily a common practice. You don't want to do that. You could if you
wanted to, but that technically violates code. So don't be doing all that trash.
Literally, just forget the ground because your plug doesn't have it. So you don't
want to connect the ground and the common up by the dryer. Don't try to
get smarter than the actual project here. So that's literally how you hook it up
at the dryer. If there's a fourth plug, you'd literally leave it empty because
you don't have that ground wire. It's too easy. I hope that was an easy explanation.
If you have a 4-prong, remember just hook it up, however it's supposed to.
Usually that silver is going to be a common and your two brass are going be
your powers. It's just as easy as that. And usually there's a ground somewhere.
Even on this old dryer a ground is right here. That's where I would get my fourth
wire. So too easy. That's how it goes. Now let's roll over to the outlet. I'm going
to show you an example of an outlet and sometimes how it could be wired
backwards. All right, bear with me as I try to make this the best video I can
here. So we're up underneath the bench now. Most of your dryer vent, or dryer
plugs, look like this. So this is a standard 3-plug. I actually have this
connected to the heater in my shop. So what you do is you take a flat head,
should be a standard flat head, and you literally just run this screw out that
is in the center. Okay, once you've run the screw out, the cover comes straight
off. So, here's a quick lesson for you. Your three blade when it looks like
this, okay, you can trace your wires.You have your common in the center, and
you have your hot, and your hot. So if it's wired anything other than what this
is right here, then it's wired incorrectly. If you want to see exactly how
the blade goes on here, you see the...trying not to cover up the light...apologize. So
you have it wired up so that this is hot, this is hot, and this is common up here
at the top. So if you want, just turn this directly around, and you put it into
the blades outside the cover, you can look at exactly how it's set up. So, you
know you have your black, and your red, and your white up here at the top. Now if
you had a 4-prong, then you'd have your bare, your common, or sorry, your
ground, or your bare, or your green, would go into another fourth prong on this
outlet, but I don't have any 4-prong outlets. I only have three. So my ground is
grounded to the box. So that's literally how it's set up.That is why I taught you that
black is power, red is power, and white is common. So when you open this up if it's
wired any other way, then you either need to switch it here, or you need to switch
this on the dryer. I recommend you switch it here. Shut the circuit off and wire
your house the correct way. If you don't know a lot about it, and you don't feel
confident after this video, hire an electrician to come out here and switch
the wires because it's not worth burning your house down, all because, you know, you
were stubborn, and you didn't want to mess with these wires or have somebody
come mess with them. It's definitely crucial that this is
wired the correct way and nobody's gone in here and done some stupid stuff. After
you verify that this is hooked up right, literally slide your cover back on. I
don't know how this could be any easier.
All right guys, so I hope you liked that
short video on how to set up a dryer plug. I hope this helps people in
the future. If you found my channel because you were looking at dryer plugs,
I've got a bunch of other man shit on the channel. So if you want to go check
it out, I encourage you to click subscribe. Check out my uploads
on it. I'm uploading Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at noon. Always doing something
fun and exciting. Trying to teach a little bit along the way. So, if I can
help you out, if you have any questions, comment below. I will try to...usually busy
because I do have a full-time job, but I try to respond as quickly as humanly
possible. And it's actually kind of like texting back and forth. So if you got any
questions hit me up. Otherwise I'll see you guys next video.