What's going on my friend this is Dustin Stelzer with Electrician U and today
we're going to talk about a whole bunch of different commercial materials that you should know if you're getting into commercial electrical work
Alright, so there's gonna be a whole ton of things that are not on this list
I'll probably do several more of these videos, but I just picked things that
doing commercial I knew as an apprentice coming in, I'm like, "why do I need to know that and what is that called?"
And why is this different than this?
And I think it'll just help give a foundation somewhere to start for apprentices to start understanding what these materials do
Number one is the 1900 box. So this is essentially a multi-use box
It's called a 1900 box because it's called a 1900 box. It's not actually 1900 of anything. That's just what it's called
There's a 2100 box that's a little bit larger than this
but what you do is you put a device in it so you could have a
receptacle or you could have a switch inside of here and you bring all of your wires into these knockouts around the sides
you can also just use it as a junction box a place to make joints and
You know hide the box somewhere
But you need to know in 1900 box because you're gonna use the crap out of these things. Next up is the industrial cover
So this is an industrial cover it actually fits on in 1900 box
So both of these together, you know
you probably mount this on a wall somewhere
and then you wire everything inside of the box put that on there looks all nice and pretty
that is the industrial cover. Next up is the mud ring. So there's a bunch of different size mud rings
They come and different depths, they come in different
numbers of devices, but essentially this is very similar to an industrial cover in that you would
put this on the front and you could put a receptacle in this and it allows you to put sheetrock over it
So if you're actually gonna hide some of this behind sheetrock, you know
you're gonna
want to use a mud ring and this whole box is going to be recessed in the wall a little bit more
Usually there's gonna be a bracket on that too. That's coming up. Next up is the bracket box
So this is still a 1900 box or a four-square box, whatever you call it
there's probably a lot of people that call it a 4 x 4 x 1
there's probably 30 names for this box. But what I call this is a 1900 bracket box and what it does is allows you to
Stand it up on something and then screw it in place. Normally you're gonna be doing this all wall, you know like
Well, I don't have a wall here so if this is a stud the box screws to it
But same thing 1900 box, just has brackets on it
So we call it a bracket box
The next box that you want to know is the gangable box. Some people call this a cut-in box or a pop-in box
but typically you're going to be cutting sheetrock and
sticking this inside of a hole into a wall and then running wires into it and then having a device inside of here
Whatever you call it, they call it gangable because there's screws here and you can actually remove
these plates and you can stack multiple of them together to make like a three or a four or five or a
Seven or a ten gang box if you want to
Kind of a neat idea actually to be able to remove the sides on these
But in practice, I personally think they could be way better accomplished with something else
These are some of the biggest pains in the butt to try to get in the wall. You got to cut them out
just right, make sure that the ears are adjusted a perfect way, and you know
depending on what kind of connector you use in and may have to cut a little bit bigger hole and there's just a pain in
the butt to work with but you're gonna work with them a lot so just know the cut in gangable box.
Next up are
MC connectors, so
There are single
MC connectors that a single piece of MC cable goes into
The wires stick out here the sheathing kind of snaps and locks in place
These are just two different styles of snap-in connectors
so
you would literally just knock one of these holes out and
Snap this thing in place it locks in and then you run your wire into it
But we call this a single barrel MC connector or a single barrel connector
These are double barrel connectors because you can put two wires in them. There's a whole bunch of different styles
This is one that actually has a lock ring on it. And you know, it's threaded
so you would stick it into a hole and you know
put the lock ring on tighten it in place. Whereas these ones actually snap in place
It's just a matter of preference really, but you're gonna run MC a lot in commercial
so you need to be familiar with the different kinds of MC connectors
Alright, so next on our list is MC cable. You just talked about the MC connectors. So this is MC cable
Essentially it's going to be the same thing as romex on the inside, you know
we talked about this in the residential one of these videos, but you know inside it's just got regular conductors
It's just the sheathing that's different this stuff rips and tears
It's okay for houses
Actually, you can use that for commercial too depending on your jurisdiction depending on the situation
But most of the time you're going to be using MC because it's a lot more rigid. It's harder to break
So just understand when people say MC
This is what they're talking about something that looks like this. There's all different kinds of MC
Just like there's a whole bunch of different kinds of romex. But so you can understand what MC is
Here it is. Alright next step for a conduit fittings
So these are a couple of different kinds of conduit fittings all for 3/4" conduit or tubing depending on what you're using
There's a bunch of different styles of these too, some of them are
Rain tight so they can be used outdoors. Some of them are just compression. They fit together really tight
and then there's set screw which
get fastened down with a screw. They're all you know, you're gonna use all of them in many different kinds of scenarios
So just knowing like this is a connector
Whereas this is a coupling you notice there's no threading on the couplings. They just it's it's a pipe in and a pipe out
Whereas a connector there's actually threading on one side that goes into a box so your conduit stops at that box
But just knowing conduit fittings, couplings and connectors, you're gonna hear those over and over again couplings - connectors
Another good thing to know is the blank. So the 1900 blank is something that goes on a 1900 box and
That's what you would cinch down after you get wires put on this thing
If you're gonna have a device again
You're going to use either an industrial cover instead of this or you're going to use a mud ring
But if there's not a device going in it and you're just making up joints and pushing them in the back
You're going to use a cover. So either 4-square cover
1900 cover depending on what you guys call it what area of the country you're in. Next up is the 12 x 12
Junction box. You're going to use a lot of these
This is kind of a cool style from Hubble or Arlington same company
but they make these little
stab-ins that MC goes inside of these so you just pop these out stick your MC in and they already snap in place
You're not going to find a lot that look like this
This is something that I was just sent recently, but it's cool because it's got all these different knockouts
You know, you can run 1 1/4", 1 1/2"
3/4", 1/2" conduits of all sizes. It's got some in the back
It already comes with a ground bus but you're gonna see boxes that look this size where it's four inches deep
By 12 inches wide by 12 inches down
These are just pretty much the same thing as a 1900 box, just a lot bigger
You can put bigger conductors
You can put more conductors inside of it, but understand when somebody says that a 12 x 12
they're talking about a twelve by twelve junction box. Another thing that you're gonna come across in commercial a lot are relays
I've got a whole different video that I've done on how relays work and what they are, but essentially just know that relays are
multi-pole switches so you can put multiple different things and switch
certain loads on while other ones off but it's an electronic remotely-controlled switch
So rather than somebody having to come in and flip a light on or go and flip like three different lights on
somebody could hook a photocell up or flip one switch and it turn on like three different things while it turns off some other things
So it's a way to introduce a little bit of logic to your circuits. So just know a relay is an electromagnetic switch
that you can switch multiple things with
Alright, so I can't talk about the relay unless I talk about the contactor as well
So a contactor is the exact same thing as a relay. It just handles more amperage
So it's used in a little bit more beefy situations
You can get them in multiple different poles. Like this is a four-pole contactor. This is a three-pole that is configured as a
Six pole but it can be a twelve-pole
Another three pole. This is a 12 pole
So there's all different kinds of contactors that you're gonna run into and commercial non-stop and just understanding that what it does
Is it allows you to take one action that affects a whole bunch of different circuits at the same time
You can sometimes turn some of them on and turn some of them off at the exact same time
So just again is introducing logic into a a pretty analog circuit. Alright, next up
we've got two things that are pretty similar kind of the same thing, but not
spring nuts and cone nuts
So spring nuts
go inside of unitstrut or kindorf or strut channel or whatever you call this stuff
but they twist in there and
it allows you to have a surface to bolt on to
so it has something pushing this way and something pushing that way
a lot of people don't like them because these little things just
get in the way and then popping through the back and falling out and just get in the way more than anything
so cone nuts are a good alternative. I love cone nuts. That's really all I use
but the same thing, they push inside and
They spin and just lock in place and they're nice because you can slide them. There's nothing in the back
like the spring getting in the way. I just hate spring nuts, but from time to time you got to use them
spring nuts and cone nuts.
Next up is strut, or kindorf, or cantruss or
strut rack, or channel
whatever
There's so many different names for what this is
But this is what you build racks out of so this is a really rigid material usually comes in 10-foot sections
Sometimes it'll come in 20 foot sections. Sometimes it's double stacked back-to-back
Sometimes it's thin strut that's only half this thickness. Sometimes it's you know, this is 1 5/8". There's a 7/8" strut as well
but get used to what strut is and knowing what it's for you're usually using
It because it's so rigid to mount things to you bolt it into concrete. You can bury it put
like pour fresh concrete and bury one of these and then when the concrete dries you get something really sturdy and rigid all kinds of
uses for these sometimes we even just use in the strap pipe
We'll build a service on a wall and we'll stick this behind our risers. So we have something to attach our riser to
on, you know, the side of a building. Next up...I'm gonna talk about two different kinds of conduit
EMT electrical metallic tubing this is kind of a I guess a thin walled tubing
People call it conduit. It's actually a tubing
It's really just in forums and really super
picky people that have nothing else to do with their lives that are gonna sit and pick you apart
on whether or not you're calling this tubing or conduit. It doesn't matter.
and the other one is rigid metal conduit, so
RMC this is really really thick stuff. I mean it is heavy duty
It's really difficult to cut this stuff. It's a thick walled
It's galvanized. So it's just a really super stout piece of conduit. That will not rust or corrode
I mean everything will rust and corrode after a certain amount of time in certain conditions
but this stuff lasts a really really long time and it's damn near impossible to break
whereas this can get crushed pretty easily
Corrodes a lot easier
So just knowing
what the difference is like you'll always be able to tell rigid when it's brand-new on a shelf, because it comes threaded and when you cut this
you will have an actual threader that you can use to stick this on like this end right now is not threaded
But you could stick this in a threader and actually thread new threads on it
So all of your fittings are gonna be threaded. (Not all of them, there are some that are not threaded or "threadless") couplings
But EMT, you're never gonna thread you're always going to use couplings and connectors and stuff to put on the ends of these things
so that's the big difference but I think you should know both rigid and
EMT because you're gonna use both of them on a pretty frequent basis
Alright the last one I want to cover is
flex or flexible metal conduit
Most people just call this flex though
It's not weatherproof, it's not raintight so water can get in this stuff
There's usually two different types that people use, this is aluminum and you can tell it's just like super floppy
Easy to break and then this is steel. A little bit harder to work with harder to cut harder to break
Certain environments certain things you're doing
will require one or the other or just whatever you got on the truck and will work
Again, it just kind of depends but knowing what it is. Not only that it's flexible metal conduit
That's the actual name of it. But most people out in the field just call it metal flex or flex
Alright my friends, so that's it. I mean there's definitely way more of those that I can cover
and I'll probably do that again another video
but I just wanted to give any of you apprentices or people that are about to get into commercial
kind of some perspective on some of the materials that we use so...Let me know if you have any other questions, other suggestions
I love you crazy people and I will see you in the next one!