what's up my friends dustin stelzner with electrician you today we are going to
install a mini split today's job is installing the wiring for a mini split so the ac contractor i do
a lot of work with them they're going to come back and actually put the mini split in so all i need
to do is get a disconnect in the area and then go you know hook it up to a breaker essentially
so what i've got is just this little area they're gonna put the mini split like right here so i just
need to get a disconnect top right of that and then they're gonna whip into it later so i'm just
going to run conduit probably put an lb there run a three-quarter conduit all the way down
underneath this whole entire ceiling there's no access because it's between floors
all of the panels are upstairs so once i get over here i've got a transition and go
right up by that window and get up into the eve up there and then try to get a hold of that
and go over to an electrical panel that's inside uh a closet over there so shouldn't be all that
difficult just kind of a pain in the butt once we get upstairs but there's really no other way
like they've got some uh panels that are like downstairs in the basement there's no way to
get up over in this area none of this ceiling is accessible so like i can't get you know
in there to like crawl around so uh the easiest thing to do is to put pipe so that's what i got
to do today so the first thing that i had to do is mount the disconnect where it was going
i had to mount that first because i had to take a picture and send it to the ac contractor and
just make sure that it was where he wanted to put it and that there was enough room and everything
so i started on that end and then i had to run conduit all the way up on the ceiling i'm using
lls lrs and lbs which are conduit bodies and i'm actually using all three of them on this job which
is a little rare but i'm using an lr on the far end of the conduit where i'm transitioning from
horizontal to vertical going up into a soffit i'm using an lb that's in the very center where i'm
transitioning around a tight corner and then i use an ll at the actual disconnect for the unit for
those who don't know those terms it's basically a a small conduit body so we call a conduit body
kind of like a transition junction box looking conduit raceway thing it's got removable cover
not meant for like twisting joints and putting actual joints in it's more meant for uh having
a pull point uh in between two different things so instead of trying to like bend this crazy 90
and have like a weird crazy 90 going around the corner that stuck out i was like nah let's just
hug the corner really tight we'll put the lb you know on one side we can do an ll and lr
and just make everything really tight and straight i got all of my conduits strapped
i did strapping probably about every four feet or every five feet you don't have to do that per code
electrical metallic tubing we're going to be in 358 that is what i ran 358.30 specifically
is the securing and supporting section emt shall be installed as a complete system in accordance
with 3.18 and shall be securely fastened in place and supported in accordance with 358.30
a and b a is for securely fastened and b is for supports so we're not running along any supports
we are securely fastening this to something so it says emt shall be securely fastened in place
at intervals not exceeding 10 feet in addition each emt run between termination points shall be
securely fastened within three feet of each outlet box junction box device box cabinet conduit body
which is what these lbs lrs and lls are or other two tubing terminations so it says basically any
uh where we have these conduit bodies within three feet somewhere i have to have a strap
i have to have it securely supported and then within every 10 feet i can't make my strap go
over 10 feet can you strap more than that you know like every foot yeah absolutely code is only the
minimum so you can strap as many times as you want i often think once every 10 feet is kind of a weak
method of of securing and supporting it is the minimums it's okay i just kind of like
doubling that up a little bit every five feet is my preference now for this job i wanted to get all
of the conduit up the quantity up as quickly as i could before i started doing any kind of crazy
bends or offsets or anything i always like to do that last just because if i under ordered conduit
i would rather know that ahead of time and just try to get everything up as much as possible and
then if i have to make a trip i'm probably going to be going out and getting lunch at some point
so like it makes sense while i'm going out to go get materials so my kind of methodology is
i like to do as much work and try to get the quantity of stuff done so i can get a material
count when i leave for lunch rather than trying to mess with these little kind of weird project
things and things that are going to be like a constant change i like to just get into a flow
early on first thing in the morning so that's what i did you notice that i'm using a milwaukee
reamer so this is a new tool this is actually the first time i've gotten to use this but milwaukee
makes this a little conduit reamer so it does half inch three quarter and one inch just like
the majority of the reamers out there it also has this lanyard attachment and it's got the flathead
on one side like we all like um what i noticed about it is it's a little loose like it doesn't
a lot of the other brands like klein you stick them in there and they fit solidly this milwaukee
was just kind of like wobbly and loose still did a great job i have no problems with it i don't
know if maybe it's just kind of a different design and so i'm not used to it yet but i did get to use
that also one of my favorite tools in the world to bring out is my band saw we got a portable
band saw i've got a couple different ones all the different sizes all the different battery
configurations and everything but i use this compact one not the sub compact the the actual
like i guess you would call it the average size it's not the big size where you can fit four inch
conduit this one fits two inch so i keep this thing on me everywhere i go i'd rather be doing
this than getting a sawzall out and trying to sit and cut that with you know a sawzall blade
the next thing that i did was finish the conduit run on the side of the building that the actual
unit was going to be hung so i finished running that conduit got the ll put in place used a close
nipple and some lock rings to get everything in place and then got that ready for the wire pull
then once i got all the conduit up in place i ran the lower section of my conductors first so
i got to use this brand new fish tape it's a battery powered fish tape by milwaukee and this
thing is so cool you can use it and pull a trigger and just allow it to feed down the conduit or you
can just use it to feed slack while you're pushing down the conduit either way works just fine
then i moved down to the complete other side because where the end of our long conduit run
was i had to 90 up and go up a wall past a window up into an eave and actually get a hold of the
the conductors up in an attic and then change over from th hhn which i'm running through this
entire convert run to romex which goes across the the wood structure and then into the panel
where they've already got romex run everywhere else throughout this occupancy so once i got all
of the conductors in the bottom portion all i had to do was close up all of my conduit bodies
and put the you know the weatherproof covers on and then land my conductors on the light side of
the disconnect so i was providing a disconnect i was hooking the line sidewires up and the ac
contractor said that he was going to come behind me and whip out of it and and actually hook up his
own equipment so i didn't have to worry about any of that stuff which was dope so everything
down below outside was finished last thing that i had to do was just finish getting the th up to the
top to a junction box that i had installed and then change over to romex so now i went inside
i had to go upstairs into this little closet it was like a janky little mechanical closet sort of
with a panel like down at foot level and it was just i could tell this was a handyman special
you know there was a two inch pvc male adapter in the top of this panel and they're just running all
their conductors so you can sit and pull on the conductors um so i wasn't gonna like do anything
with that that was all their janky special once i got the romex run up in the attic and got it down
i took my own path stapled my own stuff kept it separate put a brand new romex connector in so
it was secured did everything you know correctly i suppose um and then i just had to open it up
put a brand new 2-pole 20 in this is just a 240 volt system so i've got two unground conductors
and a lot of you are probably already busy commenting about how i'm re-identifying my
white conductor as red you're like no you can't do that you can't field identify if it's not number
four or bigger conductors and is that true so can i take a white conductor and re-identify it red
let's see what code says you get two code times with this episode
so how many of you think that you can only uh re-identify
you know tape field identify conductors that are number four or bigger
how many of you think that applies to all of the conductors or just the neutral let's dig in
okay so 200.6 means of identifying grounded conductors this is just talking about the
neutral we've gone over in other videos we've done this whole code time thing enough times and we've
covered this already and then under 200.6b it does say at the time of field installation that we can
identify a neutral conductor or a grounded conductor with white tape but anything smaller
than that number six or smaller you cannot field identify meaning you have to actually
install like number six or number eight number ten a white conductor this is for the neutral
so what does it say about ungrounded conductors can you re uh re-identify ungrounded conductors
and it does it says in 200.7 specifically using a grounded conductor and re-identifying it to make
it an ungrounded conductor there's a code for that use of insulation of a white or gray color
or with three continuous white or gray stripes part c is circuits of 50 volts or more and what
it says the use of insulation that is white or gray or that has three continuous white or gray
stripes for other than a grounded conductor so for an ungrounded conductor for circuits of 50
volts or more shall be permitted only in one and two number one if part of a cable assembly that
has the insulation permanently i re-identified to indicate its use as an ungrounded conductor or
by marking tape painting or other effective means at its termination and at each location where the
conductor is visible and accessible identification shall encircle the insulation and shall be a color
other than white gray or green it also goes into if you're doing like switch loops how
to handle situations like that and then flexible chords in number two so the answer
to the question is yes you can and it doesn't matter that it's only number 12 conductors that
i'm running it is a white conductor that i'm re-identifying from a grounded conductor to
an uh ungrounded conductor so at each point along the system where the wires are accessible
and visible you need to identify it as such now there were some crazy things in this panel um
i noticed all of the grounds none of the grounds are actually touching each other
so they're using the panel as a way to connect each one of the grounds to each other and then
they like put like three or four number 12s into one lug which you know it's not listed for that so
that's not okay to do either um and then they put these like two inch uh pop-in bushings as
their means of like all of the conductors coming into these panels there's nothing strapping them
holding the conductors at least on the top the few conductors that came in had some staples in
them so that within 12 inches of the enclosure to code they are stapled but this is not okay to do
and then they left like there's just all kinds of crazy conductor underneath this panel so it was a
nightmare this is way out in the middle of sticks out in texas somewhere there's a lot of places
way out in the sticks in texas somewhere that looked very much like this this actually wasn't
too bad compared to a lot of stuff i've seen but i wasn't there to fix uh old randy the handyman's
[ __ ] i was just there to fix my own so i put a brand new 2-pole 20 qo breaker in labeled the
panel and put everything back together and went through and tested i turned everything on went
and tested make sure that i had good power before i left because i didn't want a service call to go
drive an hour away to come back because i messed something up so just verified that i had power
and uh left everything in the off position because i knew an hvac contractor was going to come out
behind me and i didn't want them opening something up some green helper just reaching their silly
hands up in there and getting electrocuted um so i make sure to leave everything off and then i told
the ac contractor i let everything off and i put the handle of the disconnect in the off position
and that's how i left it and then i just cleaned everything up and got out of dodge so that was a
pretty good job a very simple job to do something i could do it by myself and it made a really
decent amount of money for one day it didn't even take me a day it took me like four hours
and that was with me moving cameras around to try to fill this stuff for y'all so it was like
wasting a lot of time and then the pastor would come out and talk to me for like 20 minutes which
is cool he's a really nice guy but it's like bro i'm trying to work and i'm trying to film and i'm
trying to not waste time so it was a nice easy little job but i love jobs like that where it's
like i can come in in a few hours make a whole bunch of money do a bunch of stuff and then get
out rather than having to be something that's like drawn on for you know eight hours a day
for multiple days at a time so let me know what you guys think i have another video that we'll
probably do of a mini split but in a residential situation so very similar to how uh we would do
something like this but a little bit different so that'll be coming up in the near future make sure
you hit like make sure you hit subscribe hit the notification bell let you know every time we're
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ask me all your silly electrical questions uh love you crazy people and i'll see in the next one
this can't music and video