If you're working on outlets, light switches, light fixtures,
or anything else electrical around the house,
then this funky little tool might just save your life.
If you've ever opened your circuit breaker panel only to find something like
this,
you've probably cursed the electrician that wired the house,
everyone who's ever lived there. And their little dogs too.
With around 400 deaths per year,
as the result of high voltage electrical injuries, just in the United States,
not to mention about 30,000 cases of electrical shock that often end in burns
and other injuries it's time we made things a bit safer. Today,
we're gonna look at several ways to make sure that you don't become part of
those statistics.
And we're also gonna look at a tool that will help you easily identify which
circuit breaker you need to shut down for the work that you're doing around the
house.
We'll also show you some ways to organize your circuit breaker panel so that
people who see in the future will want to name their kids after you.
I was recently installing some smart light switches in my living room,
and I was trying to play it safe.
I was actually making sure to take all the necessary precautions so I didn't get
shocked. And so what I did is I turned on the lights while the power was on,
came to my circuit breaker, identified, which one needed to be shut off,
shut it off, went back, made sure the light was off. Then just to double check,
I used a non-contact voltage tester to test the wires on that switch and make
sure everything was completely dead.
I really felt like I had covered all my bases and then some,
and so you can imagine how surprised I was when I went to pull out the switch
and this happened.
Oh wow.
Okay. As it turns out, in my case,
the switch that I was working on was on one circuit breaker,
but the one right next to it was actually on a different one.
And as I pulled those out one made contact with the other, which was still hot.
And then I got that sparking. Luckily I didn't get shocked,
but I have been shocked several times by assuming that things were good when
they actually weren't. When I asked you guys, if you've been shocked,
56% of you said that you had 32% said that you hadn't and the rest said,
they at least knew someone who has,
there are probably a dozen different reasons or more as to why we might think
the power is off on something that we're working on. When in reality,
it's actually not one of the problems that we as homeowners and DIYers run into
is that we often have to decipher this mess.
We go to our electrical panel and we see a bunch of gibberish in there.
Sometimes it's 50 years old, a hundred years old and maybe it's brand new,
but it's still written in such a way that we can't really understand it.
Maybe it's got labels on everything,
but you're not sure what that means is that light switch actually in the living
room or is that more in the kitchen when it says bathroom?
Does that mean the light switches and the outlets or just the outlets or just
the light switches? It can be pretty confusing unless it's all specified.
That's where a tool like this is so time saving and valuable.
This is called a digital circuit breaker finder, and it comes in two parts,
basically down here,
you've got the transmitter and this can just plug into an outlet.
And we'll talk about some of the other things that it can do.
And then we've got the receiver,
which will help you identify which circuit breaker is being powered by this
transmitter for outlets. You simply plug the transmitter end into the plug.
You want to identify, not only does this communicate with the receiver,
but it will also verify that the outlet is wired up correctly.
It's got these light patterns on here to help you understand if the neutral is
present, if it's properly grounded, if it's even working at all,
then you can use the receiver to scan the circuit breakers in your circuit
breaker box once.
And then on the second time,
it actually shows you which circuit breaker is powering the transmitter.
So you kind of have a learning phase that you go through once and then it'll
show you and pinpoint the exact circuit breaker with this.
You'll be shutting the power off to the correct breaker every time.
Now I do wanna point out that there are other less expensive ways to do this.
That don't require any special tools.
One of the oldest ways that's been around for ages for doing this is just to
take a loud radio, a boombox, a stereo, something like that,
plug it into the outlet that you want to disconnect the power to,
and then flip off your circuit breaker.
And then you'll hear that music turn off. And you're pretty sure at that point,
you've got the right breaker.
You might not be surprised to hear however that a lot of homes like mine,
we don't have a stereo or a radio that plugs into the wall.
Everything is digital and everything is Bluetooth.
So some other options are to use a lamp to do this.
You can plug a lamp in and see if that's working. Of course,
with light switches. Those are typically a little bit easier to see.
And then you always want to double check things.
But a lot of times that does require a lot of back and forth to check if the
lamp is off or if the radio turned off or whatever it is you plugged in is no
longer functioning.
One of my favorite ways that I've always used to do this is to have one of my
kids or my wife hop on a phone call with me.
I'll be in here testing with the circuit breakers,
and then they'll have something that they can see on their end to see if it goes
off. And then we can communicate back and forth and make that call.
But we don't always have someone available with us to help us out.
And that's where our circuit breaker finder comes in. This makes it extra handy,
especially if you need to do something quickly, you definitely wanna verify it.
And if you don't have someone else to help you out at the moment,
one of my favorite things about this method is that you can buy a little
accessory kit that allows you to test anything in your house,
not just outlets by themselves. So yes, we can plug this into an outlet like so,
and we'll get our lights and we'll be able to test that. That's awesome.
But what if you need to test an outlet, for example,
that doesn't have a ground on it.
Let's say you've got an older house and there's no ground, well,
we've got a little adapter here that it has a non grounded outlet that will
receive the grounded portion so I can plug it in like that,
test it and use it that way.
What if you want to test a light fixture instead with that, again, super easy.
You can take this little adapter and this has a light bulb socket on one side,
and then your non grounded tester on the other.
So we can plug that in thread it into your light bulb and then use a receiver to
see which circuit breaker controls that light fixture.
It even comes with an alligator clip tester for live wires. So with that,
you can plug this end right into here.
And then you've got these alligator clips that you can use for testing live
wires, which is really handy. Let's say, you're working on a new space.
You're finishing your basement and you wanna make sure you're turning the power
off to the right receptacles.
That haven't even been hooked up with an outlet yet you can use these to make
sure that current is running through them and that you can test which circuit
breaker they're connected to.
Now that we have some great ways to identify which circuit breaker panels are
powering,
which parts of your house let's go through and take a look at some of the ways
that you can clean up this area to make it super easy for you or anyone else who
works on your electrical panel to know what to turn off the first and simplest
option is just to go through and update the labels on your panel.
I think that's kind of the least you can do to make things easier in the future.
Now, when I finish my basement in this house, for example,
I wrote a lot more detail about which spaces were covered by which circuit
breakers that by itself has definitely come in handy many times in recent years.
Now another tip is to use a label maker or just to print off a list on the
computer so that everything is actually legible.
It doesn't do much good to take the time to identify everything and then write
it out in chicken,
scratch that you can't even read another tip when you're working in your circuit
breaker panel is to take a Sharpie or even a label maker and write the numbers
of each circuit next to it.
Those little engraved numbers are so difficult to read.
And a lot of times they're sideways.
Let's give ourselves every advantage by making those really easy to identify
another option is to actually drop a simple diagram of the home.
And you can do this on the computer,
or you can do this just with pen and paper and identify which circuit breakers
control,
which rooms including whether they're for light fixtures outlets or both.
I did a quick search and found a bunch of free and cheap floor plan creators
online that you can use to help with this. If you find that useful,
some other solutions for this include circuit breaker panel labels that you can
buy on Amazon or elsewhere,
where they have the pre-printed labels that you just pop right onto the circuit
breakers themselves.
Another suggestion I read was taking a picture of your circuit breakers and then
actually labeling them on your phone or on your computer and printing them out.
So you see exactly what your setup should look like.
I've also seen some people using Sharpies painters tape or labels on the inside
of their outlet or switch plates to identify which circuit breaker to flip.
And this is a pretty handy way to go,
but you do wanna make sure that you're testing everything.
So someone doesn't mix these up when they're painting or something like that.
On that note, all of these are just to make things more convenient,
but they don't replace the idea that you do need to actually go and test each
one of these use that circuit breaker finder use some sort of a test to make
sure that it's definitely off.
Don't just rely on labels anywhere to make sure that things are actually safe
and ready to work on. When you're wiring up your outlets,
I've discovered six common mistakes that us DIYers tend to make when we're
wiring up outlets. You can check that video out right here.
I'm NIS with learn to DIY. Thanks for watching.