What's going on my friends? This is Dustin Stelzer with Electrician U,
and today we're going to talk about installing recessed cans. This is a new construction can
meaning there's no sheetrock up on anything. All you have is wood frame and you take this
thing and hammer these nails into a piece of wood and hammer these ones in and it stays up
in the ceiling. First thing that you do is match this little flange up with the truss above you,
and it's really important because sheetrock is going to go here. It's important that you keep it
flat. You don't want to be hanging down like this because when they put sheetrock up you're going to
be in the way of the sheetrock. Then you're going to hammer each one of these in place. I typically
will hammer both on one side on one truss I'll hammer those first and then I'll extend these out,
and I'll hammer them on the other side. I make sure that the can is pushed all the way up against
the truss and then I'll nail it in. Then I will extend the legs out and push this all the way to
the other side and hammer those in, because that ensures that everything stays relatively straight,
and then you can move the can to wherever you need it. Now there are going to be situations where
these legs are too long. Sometimes, a can has to go in a very specific area and you've got two
trusses that are like 10 inches apart. Both the inside and outside piece have notches, and you can
actually cut these. Cut them down to the size you need and smash them back together. These legs are
typically about 24 inches wide, so sometimes you might have trusses that are like this far apart,
so what do you do? Well you have to block for that. You have to put a couple more two by fours
to bring it out to give yourself something to nail to. Now, once you've got this up in a ceiling,
you want to make sure that you tighten the screws. Most cans come with screws on at least one side,
but this screw secures this leg so that the can can't slide when it's up in the ceiling.
If you ever lose a screw or you don't have one around, what I do is take my Klein's and I just
pinch every single one of these tabs, and I will make sure through a different means that
that thing's not going to move anywhere. Another thing when you're working with cans - when you're
putting them up I will put this junction box on every single one of them facing the same way,
and I'm going to make sure that wherever I'm putting them I flip it to the side that has the
most room for me to work. The other thing I do if it's not in a line, if there's four cans together,
is I point the junction boxes at each other. That's just less wire that you have to use,
and you're running in between kind of the shortest points possible. So, once you've got your can up
in the ceiling you're going to have to run wire to it and you want to make sure that the wire is
secured. A couple of different options of securing the wire - it's got these half inch knockouts that
you could put a romex connector in, you could put a half inch bushing in, any kind of approved
method of securing the wire into this thing so it can't be pulled out, but then there's also these
little tiny tabs here that will fit one piece of romex, or one wire. There's these kind of
metal tabs so when you slide the wire in there it keeps that wire from being able to be pulled out.
So whatever you do just make sure that the wire is secured to this box that's actually code. The next
thing is once you leave here you need to staple within 12 inches of this junction box. That's code
as well. Once I've come out of here and stapled it I leave a loop, probably about an extra 12 inches.
So if you leave an extra loop you can move this thing, you know in any direction
two feet in any direction and you've still got the wire there you don't got to scrap all that wire,
and then waste even more wire, and re-run it all. Now when you're bringing your wires into the can
make sure that you don't strip too much wire out. You don't want breakers tripping because you've
got copper wire exposed and it's touching the metal and it blows up every time you try to turn
the light on. So strip out very little wire. I'd say like 3/8 of an inch is really all you need.
These from the factory, the insulation goes all the way into this wago. This is called a wago. So,
yours should be the same way there just shouldn't be any copper sticking out. The other thing that's
really important to do on cans is these are manufactured in mass in quantity, so what I do
is when I put a new can in, I actually push these in all the way. Once you've installed all of them,
pull a laser out so you can see you can line up with one can perfectly but you can also line up
with the one over there and the one down and just make sure that everything is perfectly straight.
Take a laser and set that thing on the ground and shoot up a line all the way down that hallway.
You'd be surprised at how many times you are off like a quarter inch or a half inch side to side on
all of these, and they need to be perfectly straight. That's my tips for recess cans.