how do you replace a receptacle the right way [Music]
alright so this video kind of for the diy-ers now I know electricians are probably going to
hate this video because it's teaching DIY people to do electrical I get it I don't like doing that
but I figured at least if they're gonna be doing this stuff they need to have a video to watch that
like talks about the safe way to do it because we all know they're gonna do it anyways so for all
of y'all even if you're just an apprentice and you've never installed a receptacle before this
video is for you the first thing that we need to do when we're going to change out a receptacle is
deal with the fact that it's probably on there's a couple of different methods or things like testers
that we use out in the field pretty wise for you to have some test equipment if you're going to be
doing anything with electrical work and a lot of the testers and things that you can buy are really
cheap so I I definitely don't think you should be doing work unless you have test equipment as well
so one thing that you can do is take a plug tester or a receptacle tester this does not call the plug
this is called a receptacle this is a plug plug plugs into a receptacle anyways we still call it
a plug tester plug tester shows you whether or not power is on so right here you can see that
these two lights are on and if you look at the little diagram on it it actually says correct
like these it's showing that this thing is wired correctly so the cool thing about this kind of a
tester is that it will light up in certain ways depending on if you wired this thing wrong like
if you got the neutral on the wrong side or you put the ground on the wrong thing it'll show you
all that this model actually has a button as well to test whether it's a GFI circuit this is not a
GFCI circuit so the button is kind of meaningless but I think everybody should have a plug tester
if they're going to start doing any kind of electrical work electrician or non-electrician
the other thing that you can use is what we call a tick Tracer or a sniffer it's actually the ncv
on this means that it is a non-contact voltage tester meaning it doesn't need contact for it
to detect voltage which I would be arguable that it's actually detecting voltage it's really not
detecting voltage because voltage is a measure between two different things between one thing
and another thing so technically I'm not going to get into the mumbo jumbo but anyways this isn't
actually showing you anything you stick this in and it starts beeping at you sometimes if you push
these down a certain way it'll go without sound but it'll still light up so you have to be careful
sometimes these can hurt people because they don't really know how they're how they work and
when you should use them and when you shouldn't so sticking this thing in doesn't actually mean
anything it means that there's a presence of power but it doesn't tell you really anything
that's going on with this so it doesn't tell you that there's 120 volts it doesn't tell you
maybe there's 240 volts it doesn't really tell you anything accurately and sometimes these things lie
because they're using capacitance it's this thing called capacitive coupling and it's it's sensing
something but again I just don't recommend anybody that reuse these tools except for electricians and
even when electricians use them I tell them you need to understand when to use it it's not to
verify power it's just to detect whether or not there is the presence of power available so when
I stick this in the hot side of a receptacle is always the small one the big side on the left is
always going to be your big one older receptacles are not always going to be that way but the uh
the hot side just remember is always going to be on the right side now the third tester that you
need to have when you're messing around with electrical stuff is an actual multimeter this
is kind of a multimeter you can call it that but it's actually called a tester this is an
electrical tester people call this a multimeter because there's multiple different things you
can test but a multimeter has way more options than this so this is a tester so the other way
that you can test power is by going to voltage the V and sticking it one in the neutral and
one in the hot it'll give you this says 126 volts you'll probably get something 118-ish uh
125 like anywhere around there not everybody's power is going to be the same so in my area I
just happen to have 126 and I have a three-phase commercial environment so typically my voltage
is going to be a little bit higher anyways but still within the 120 ish range I always check
from hot to neutral like you just saw me do then the next thing I do is test hot to ground and I
should get the same number relatively there's one volt difference that's not a huge thing
and then the last thing I always do is check the voltage between neutral and ground and it
should be zero if you get a number especially a large number there's a problem there so those
are the three things that I think everybody should have if they're going to be working
on electrical equipment even if you're not an electrician all right so the first thing that I
need to do is I need to go and figure out which breaker this is so I can turn it off don't ever
work on electrical circuits live always always go shut them off and verify that they are indeed off
[Music]
all right now that my power is off this is safe to work on let me take my plate off
now you're going to notice here in a second that there is a metal box around
this receptacle again I'm in a commercial environment so um you know I have a metal
ring around here because we use metal boxes in commercial environments so yours might
look a little bit different than this you might have a plastic box but that's okay
now I'm using a screw gun you can call this a drill I suppose but it's only got one speed it's
specifically just meant for taking screws out of things and putting them in things
I have tons of drills I just like how this one's really lightweight and small and I can carry it in
my tools and then I pull out the big boys for the heavy duty stuff now what's different you know if
you're doing this in a house you're probably not going to have a blue wire you're going to have a
black one or maybe a red one depending on what kind of circuit you're working on but you will
most likely have a white on the left side either a black or a red on the red side and then you
might not have a green wire it might be just bare again commercial with our the type of wire we use
there's going to be green sheeting on it so the bare wire is always going to be the one that goes
on the green screw or your ground screw all right first thing that I do is I loosen up all my screws
start with my hot side then I'm going to go to my neutral side
and then my ground I do it this way instead of doing each one one at a time because I'm going
to change tools and I don't have to keep changing tools over and over next thing I do you might not
even need this needle nose but I like to just handle things with the needle nose it gives me
a little bit more precision and sometimes these suck to get out of here so it just gives you a
tool that's like really easy to kind of manhandle The Wire so once I get that off I'm going to grab
my new plug my new receptacle all right so I've got a new receptacle now you'll notice
on a receptacle that you've got like a silver side and you've got a gold Side gold side always means
that that's your hot side the silver side means that that's your neutral side so a lot of like
light fixtures and things like that attic keyless fixtures they're going to have colored screws like
that if it's not identified as like an H for a hot and an N for a neutral just know that your
gold side is going to be your hot side your silver side is going to be your neutral so I'm going to
go and put my ground on first there's not really it doesn't matter what order that you do these
in but I always recommend that people do it the same every time one of the things that I do when
I'm screening my when I put my wires on is I like to squeeze it a little bit so that way it doesn't
just come off if the screws loose it just hangs on do it a little bit better the other thing is
making sure that it screws around counterclockwise so as I tighten righty tighty this is actually
going to bite that wire down more if I were to put this on say the opposite way as I tighten
the screw to the right it's going to want to open up that wire so I always flip it around and make
sure that as I go clockwise as it tightens it's going to pull that wire closer together
I always close the other one as well you don't have to but since I've got a
metal box I don't want anything extra metal like sticking out that might hit that box
now notice too I'm not crushing that wire down all the way I'm just biting it a little bit more
because I also want it to sit down neatly inside of this little like rectangular area back here
I don't want it hanging off the side out here down tighten that side up too one last thing
that I like to do is I just like to make sure that it's hand tight so I'll go in here and
um sometimes drills don't get it all the way tight just make sure that it's that it's snug then you
saw at the beginning of this video that there was electrical tape on the receptacle now if you're in
a residential environment you don't have to worry about this you got a plastic box if this touches
the plastic box nothing's going to happen I just like to do this in commercial settings because
again there's people that will come behind you and they won't turn things off and they'll try
to work on stuff live and I think just trying to to like think about the person behind me I like
to put electrical tape around the studs around these terminals just in case somebody tries to
pull this thing out hot it gives like a layer of of protection that way if it's hot and it hits
that metal it's not going to short out and cause an explosion not a necessary step but you'll get
you're going to see some of these things that you take out you're going to wonder why there's tape
on them you might even see it in residential and they just didn't understand again a lot it
just comes from people trying to do work on live circuits which again I never recommend that you do
anything live unless you're trained and you have years of training on how to work on electrical
circuits and you know how to work with live circuits with PPE hot gloves you know insulated
screwdrivers things like that so for the for most people 90 of people out there don't do work live
ah all right then I just tighten it back down I make sure that the top of these ears on this yoke
or strap that this little metal part is called the Yoke or sometimes we just call it the strap
mounting strap but I make sure that the ears are flush with the drywall I don't put this screw in
so tight that it sucks it into the wall because then you'll never get your plate to sit on there
straight it's always going to be like kicked off to one side so let me not like not put this in
all the way and you can see that there's still a gap there so when I go and put this thing on
it won't sit there's a gap back there and no matter what I do that's not going to sit down
flush so it's always really important to make sure that you screw it in all the way another
thing that helps too is to try to get the screw in the center of this little rectangular hole
so instead of it being off to the side like that I make sure that it's in the center and that
guarantees that those ears are going to sit down flush and nice and even this
one's a little loose on the bottom so I'm just gonna go a little bit tighter
and last thing we do is put our plate back on [Music] now this plate looks like it's crooked
so take a little level figure out if it is or not sometimes you can kind of move the plug back there
if you if you put it too tight you're not going to be able to do that but you have a little bit
of flexibility and being able to kind of bump it and now that is level so that's it that's
how you replace a receptacle all right my friends I hope you gained something from
that got some value on it electricians I hope you don't hate me too much for talking to the diy-ers
again honestly I think just everybody knowing how to do this the right way and not getting
hurt and what the testers do and the methods behind it all and I think it's just something
that's needed so I put a video out there love you crazy people I'll see you in the next one