What's going on my friends? This is Dustin with Electrician U and today
we're gonna talk wire nuts
Why is it important to know the difference between all of these
different wire nuts? Why are there so many wire nuts? Really
it's just a size factor for the most part for most general use wire nuts like
this back row here it's just size number of conductors that you can fit in
a wire nut and what size wire sometimes you get really big wires so you need
something huge like this sometimes you got itty-bitty wires so you need something
really tiny like that most of the time in the middle we're gonna use reds or
we're gonna use these whites or yellows I mean it just kind of depends on the
situation if you need a little bit more room inside of a box that you're trying
to push wires and you've got really big like lighting control system you know
dimmers, Lutron, Radio RA dimmers, or anything like that, and you're like
pushing to smash everything in well if you change all your wire nuts from reds
down to yellows you know if the wire permits it actually saves you a lot of
room so there's reasons size-wise why we would use all these different wire nuts
and then this front row is more like specialty wire nuts they have a very
specific purpose to them so you'll actually go out looking for that
specific thing so you know like these crimp sleeves not really a wire nut it's
more of a crimp sleeve that's got insulation on it I'll get into that in a
minute but you've got things that you use
specifically for grounds, specifically for copper and aluminum, for high
temperature, multi-use so it combines several different functions of other
wire nuts into one wire nut or you know direct burial, waterproof, something that
you're gonna put outside so let's start breaking into and we'll talk about each
one and why you should care about that one so first let's start out with the
itty-bitty gray's these gray's are used the minimum size is three number 22s or
max sizes two number 16 really if you're doing anything low-voltage with like you
know 16, 20 gauge wire a lot of that's going to be cat 5 or it's gonna be like
maybe security wire probably not speaker wire really anything that's like network
cable really small stuff that you have to strip out and put wire nuts on you're
going to use these tiny little ones same thing with the blues. The blues are just
a step up so this is three number 20s to three number 16s so it's a little bit
more forgiving this you could probably use for some really small
speaker wire a little bit larger or if you're putting more network cables
together under one wire nut if you're doing work in ballasts a lot of times
ballasts have like 16 or 18 gauge wire so you can use these up in ballasts and it
kind of just keeps everything out of the way although I like using wagos instead
we'll get into that in a different video next up on our list are the oranges
oranges are kind of a mid-sized wire nut so you can fit one number 18 in here all
the way up to two 14's so this starts getting into interior residential wiring
if you're ever doing stuff with 14 gauge wire which most of the time people
aren't using 14 gauge wire these days it just depends some municipalities don't
like it, some don't care, some you can do all your LED lighting in it because it's
such you know low current lighting, but like all of your regular circuitry they
would do it number 12 but these oranges are handy because a lot of like fixture
wires and things like that are really small so you can get away with packing a
whole bunch of these into a box and it just saves you space next up on our list
is the yellows. So yellows, I have probably just as many yellows, whites and
reds in my pouches at all times as the others I don't have really one more or
the other. I use these yellows when I can fit something into a tight space and
I'm trying to save space whereas I will use probably the reds if I don't really
care the reds are kind of my default but the yellows will save a lot of space
especially if you're doing like four gangs or if you have say you have a four
gang and you've got like two different circuits coming in plus you have
travelers and you've got two different three ways going on with the hot side of
one three way and the leg side of another, some crazy thing where you're
gonna have a whole bunch of wire nuts in there I would use these yellows just
because it's saves space you can fit three number 12s in it so that's
a really nice thing to have if you're doing more than that if you need more
than three twelves or if you want to start using number 10s these whites
are a really good place to start you can't fit a lot, I think you can fit
three number 10s max. The smallest that will bite in here is
two number 20s so that's still like two really small wires so that's a good
range this is kind of an all-around really badass wire or nut for everything
three number tens is gonna fill this thing up but like you know most of the
time when you're working with any number 10s you know you're probably
going to be doing two of them so that's really great I would still personally
probably use the Reds for number tens that's just because they fit in there
easier you got them on you all the time anyways and you don't have to really
worry about if anything's gonna be coming out of the backside of it or not
this covers it really well so that brings me to the reds. The reds are
probably the most commonly used wire nuts that you're gonna see out there
they will fit at minimum two number 18s that'll actually bite on in there
if you put like one 18 or like two number 20s and you try to stick them in
there it's just gonna keep spinning it won't bite so it'll actually bite on
two 18s and then the max that you can fit is four number 12s
that's why people use these for residential because we're using number
twelve wire the vast majority of the time and to fit four of them in one wire
nut is super helpful so these are my go-to for for most things or they have
been for the longest time next up on our list are the blues, the big blues. So big
blues are for really large wire or for a lot of wires now they're not necessarily
listed to put like eight number 12s in here but they're really handy if
you're doing stuff with like number 6 number 8 wire they're listed for
bizarrely enough they're not listed for like three number 8s they're listed
for one number 6, and two number 8s put together that's the max size
nobody's gonna do that then we're gonna have two number 8s and one number
6 that they're gonna stick in a wire nut so like I get it you're trying to
fit the marketing to make it seem like you can put a lot more in the wire nut
but realistically three number 8s is what this should be listed for as a max
because that's what circuitry we're going to be coming across and that's
what we're gonna use these for so three number 12s so you can actually use
this for three 12s if you had to as well I probably wouldn't do that because
they take up a lot of space you start sticking three of these in a box and
holy crap you know you're
run out of space very very quickly but these things are a lifesaver especially
four gang boxes where you got a whole bunch of neutrals sticking one of these
in there will definitely do the trick so that's it for our general
purpose wire nuts the the regular use so let's start talking about some more of
the specialty items these are crimp sleeves so these are actually insulated
crimp sleeves they're not even wire nuts they're not like twist on wire nuts
there's actually just a little crimp inside of here that you would crimp but
it has an insulated shield around it so these look like wire nuts and you're
gonna see them on a lot of ballasts and a lot of light fixtures that are pre
manufactured they crimp their connections in the factory but I just
figured I'd put them in here because it kind of looks like a wire nut so
people might think it's a wire nut anyways it's for number 22 to number 10
conductors next up on our list are the greenies or the ground wire nuts green
ground wire nuts these are specifically designed they're pretty much like a red
as far as what they can hold inside of them same spring, same build so
you're looking at two 18s all the way up to I think four 12s yeah but the
unique thing is that there's a hole right in the center of them and what
that's for is say you've got like three grounds but you only need one ground
coming out you'd have to bunch all three of those wires twist them together split
two of them off and and cut them off so that you've only got one coming out but
you don't want to just leave those wires like that and fold them in the back of
the box because that can start coming loose so you still want to put a wire
nut over all of them to keep them tightly together but you want one of
them to be able to come out at the end of it so it's kind of a very
specialized thing that you're only gonna use for grounds next up we're going to
talk about the copper to aluminum or CO/ALR wire nuts these are purple notice
purple everything in purple has to do with bringing aluminum and copper
together there's a special pookie that they make, Noalox, that you're supposed
to put there's a special kind of compound in here that's an anti
oxidizing compound so if you put copper and aluminum wires together so that they
have a less chance of degrading each other over time or rusting each other
you would stick this on those wires and there's all that stuff inside of it
Pookie inside of it so that's what these are listed for. Now
these are very expensive you notice I only have two of them here these two
probably cost like seven bucks so you get a you know big pack of them you're
gonna spend a whole lot of money but a lot of times people will go out in homes
that are built in like the 50s you know and they've got so a whole bunch of
aluminum wire and they're putting all brand new devices but they don't you
know they're instead of using CO/ALR devices and trying to use the
aluminum and hooking up to receptacles they want to pigtail aluminum and copper
conductors together bring the copper to the device so that the device and the
copper wire are like fresh or whatever instead of using CO/LAR devices I get
it I get like why people don't want to do that everybody's scared of aluminum
but that's when you're gonna run into these and it's really expensive next up
on our list are the high temp wire nuts so most of these wire nuts if not all of
them... yeah I don't know if all of them but the majority of these wire nuts are
all rated at 221 degrees Fahrenheit meaning that's what they can handle
before this plastic start from melting so high temp wire nuts are usually used
for up in like metal halide fixtures or environments where there's a lot of heat
like a whole lot of heat they need to be able to handle that high temperature
without melting because once it melts you just got metal inside here and two
wire nuts laying up against each other once they melt boom those conductors
touch each other and blow up so you need something high temp so these are 302
degrees Fahrenheit so not quite a hundred degrees hotter but like that's a
definite huge improvement that's like taking you know an entire like from 0 to
80 degree difference in temperature and adding that on top of the standard wire
nuts so you always want to use these when you're doing stuff with H.I.D. like
metal halide, high pressure sodium, mercury vapor, stuff like that next on
the list are the water proof, direct burial wire nuts so these are
characteristic blue pretty much all the time they come in all different sizes
just like these do but what's special about them is on the inside they've got
a silicone compound in there that's like just this goopy greasy stuff that they
fill with them so what it does is just keep water out, it repels water essentially it's not water-soluble so you would use these if
you're in a direct burial environment if you're doing something with UF now if
you're doing work outside then it's like 120 volts that you're running
underground I personally would not use these I'm gonna do something that's like
an actual splice kit an underground direct burial splice kit where it's
bolting the wires together and making sure that they are not coming apart
having twisted joints I don't know it's just my personal opinion these are rated
for it they're actually listed for it so if you had like UF that you were running
underground you could use these and bury them underground I just I feel like
that's kind of hacky I think that there's a better way to do it and I
think direct burial splice kits are the way to go all right the last part that
I'm going to talk about is a dual rated wire nut so this is the Twister Pro Flex
from ideal it's kind of a new product for them but if you go to like Home
Depot, Lowe's, anything like that, you're gonna see these everywhere
what's cool about them and why they're my favorites is that it mixes two
different wire nuts there's a reason it's two colors yellow and red
that's like mixing this yellow and this red together in one wire nut to give you
a wider range for the same size essentially and inside of it the actual
coil is wider in this one so you can fit 10s in this it's rated for four 10s
whereas this is only rated for four 12s so you need to be going by UL listings
and what these things can handle when you're using them out in the field but I
just find that this can go to smaller sizes and bite smaller sizes and larger
sizes than one of these and I like it's rubbery I don't know it's kind of like
maybe a gimmicky thing but the feel of a wire nut in your hand actually matters, I
don't know, there's a certain, like the more you do this the more you'll have
your go to wire nuts that you like because of the way that they feel
and you would think that that like rubbery and that extra size and everything
would make them a lot more expensive than just a standard red but they're not
they're like a few cents more per wire nut depending on like what you know if
you buy a 250 bag or a 100 bag or like a 10 or 25 or something
like that but on average they're really pretty close in cost so there's not a
huge cost differential like I will go to a bag of these all day every day
again because it's the same size and it gives you more one cool thing you're
probably gonna see is like orange blues that's another dual rating that they've
got it's like mixing oranges and blues putting them together into one wire nut
so that they can get a wider range and I you know for relatively the same sized
wire nut, a lot of those are also going to have a skirting on them to kind
of help fit all those things in there but anyways that's pretty much it that's
the majority of wire nuts that you need to care about I'm gonna do another video
coming up where I do all different types of wire terminations where it's like
briefcases or suitcases whatever you call them crimps crimp sleeves wire nuts
like all kinds of different terminations so I'll probably include some of these
in there but there's going to be a much more diverse selection of things that
you take wires and put them together with. So thank you guys so much for your
attention I hope you gained something out of this. Love you crazy people and I
will see you in the next one!
you