[music playing] I'm Chris Fredette.

I'm a Master Electrician.

I'm here to demonstrate how to do some electrical installations that include installing a duplex receptacle, a light switch, and installing a light fixture.

The most important thing we want to do is make sure we're doing it safely.

This includes wearing all our proper personal protective equipment that include a hard hat, safety glasses, a high vis shirt, work boots, gloves when necessary, and hearing protection when necessary.

And by far, the most important part when working on electrical circuits is making sure everything is safe and de-energized.

We can accomplish this with lock out tag out by opening a circuit breaker and putting a lock on it to make sure nobody turns that on inadvertently.

Some of the tools we use are lineman's pliers.

These are the most common tools we use as an electrician.

They're always with us.

We use them for cutting and twisting wires and many, many other purposes.

One of the other most common tools we use are screwdrivers.

I personally like a universal screwdriver.

It has several fittings on it.

You kind of always have what you need.

As an electrician, you don't always know what you're going to get yourself into.

You can carry many other tools.

Another very common tool we use is our wire strippers.

This particular type of wire stripper also strips the outer jacket of the Romex, which can be pretty handy when you're doing residential.

[music playing] We're going to install your standard 15 amp duplex receptacle, like you have in most of your houses.

In this case, we know there's no power in this room, but we have a panel board over here that doesn't have the electrical feed to it yet.

So there's no way we could possibly have power.

But in a normal situation, you want to take a meter and confirm there's no voltage present on the wires.

The first step is pull the wiring out and straighten it out.

This box has three wires-- a white wire to neutral, a black wire which is your hot conductor, and your ground.

Some boxes have multiple wires like this one, which you use to feed the power from one receptacle to another.

This is the end of the line, so there's three wires.

First thing you do is you take your linesman's pliers and cut them down to all the same length.

The next thing you do is take your wire strippers.

I know we install a 12 gauge wire here.

So I'm going to use the 12 gauge hole to strip.

You strip back about an inch of insulation off the wire and pull.

You do that to each wire, with the exception of the ground because it's already bare.

The next step, you take this little hole in your wire stripper, and you put it about halfway down the wire you stripped.

Then you take the pliers and bend them to close the loop.

You make a little hook on the wire.

Sometimes you can adjust it a little bit.

You do the same thing on the black wire.

It doesn't have to be done in any order whether you start with the white, or the black, or the grounds.

Now you start with the bare wire, your ground wire.

You hook the bare wire, or sometimes this is green, and you hook it to the green grounding screw.

This screw connects to the ground prong in your receptacle.

When you put this on, the hook will go around clockwise the way the screw turns when you tighten it.

You don't want to put it on backwards like this because it tries to undo the loop when you tighten the screw.

Sometimes you have to back the screw out a little bit to get it on.

So again, clockwise with the way you turn the screw when you tighten it.

Keep the wire straight and turn the screw till it's tight.

You want to make it fairly tight and you don't want to break the receptacle, but you certainly don't want your connection to loosen up.

Loose connections are about the worst thing you can do when it comes to electrical.

It creates heat and heat creates fires.

So you want to make sure you make a good, tight connection.

And next step, you hook up the white wire.

The white wire goes to the silver screws.

If you have two wires, there's a screw for each wire.

And you hook it same thing, clockwise around the screw.

Sometimes they pull on the receptacle a little bit.

Finally, we install the black wire.

Same thing around the screw, tight to the screw and tighten it up.

Now I usually go through and double check each connection.

It doesn't necessarily matter which order you do this in, just to make sure they're all still tight.

So a little background on electrical theory.

You have power that comes through on your black wire, that comes through the small part of the receptacle when you plug something in.

It goes through the appliance, back into the larger slot and back to the white wire, like a flow, and returns back to the source.

The ground wire is here to create a safe path back to ground in case the black wire touches metal, it'll cause a circuit breaker to trip.

At this point we've got out receptacle wired, checked our connections, and it's time to install it into the wall.

This is the metal box.

Sometimes you'll use plastic boxes.

What you want to do with your wiring, is folded up like an accordion, you push the wiring with your fingers back into the box.

Take caution not to let this bare wire touch either the silver or the black screws.

It's OK if it touches the inside of the box.

So you push it in.

I usually push it past a little bit to kind of hold yourself in place.

Then you take a screwdriver and tighten up the screws.

I start with a top screw, a bit, and then the bottom.

As we're tightening, you can see it's bringing the box forward.

You want to tighten it up so it stays in place.

It doesn't suck the receptacle in or pull the box out of the wall.

You want to make sure the reciprocal is level, the metal ears on it flush with the drywall.

And you'll put on your wall plate.

To install this, it's a slotted screw.

So we'll turn a screwdriver around and tighten it up again.

You don't need to over tighten it, just tighten it till it's snug.

We make sure the screw is horizontal.

It just makes a nice clean finish.

We are going to install what's called a single pull switch.

This is a 20 amp, 120 volt-- pretty similar to what you would find in most residential houses and buildings.

So what we have here are two black wires.

Our ground wire here, this is our wire, our power coming in.

And this is our power that goes to the light.

We straighten these wires out to prepare them to be wired.

This is a 14 gauge wire.

We will use our lineman's pliers to cut it back, leaving plenty of length.

We don't want our wires too short.

It makes it really hard to work with, especially in the future.

Cutting all three wires at the same length.

The next step, we're using our 14 gauge hole in our wire strippers to strip these wires.

We're stripping about an inch off, maybe a little bit less.

We're now using the hole in our strippers to go about halfway down the stripped part of the wire and folding a U in it, in all three wires.

The box is now prepared and ready for our light switch.

This differs from a receptacle because it has two gold screws.

This is because the neutral, the white wire, is spliced through.

The power comes into the bottom gold screw through the switch.

It's separated right now.

You turn the switch on, it closes the circuit in here and sends a power out the other screw up to the light.

We'll start with our ground wire.

This wire is bare or sometimes green, depending on your wiring method.

And we'll hook that around the screw.

Sometimes you want to take your pliers, your strippers, and close that a little bit so it's wrapped around the screw tightly.

Again, you want to go clockwise around the screw so the wire closes when you tighten it.

The next step is you're hooking the black wire to the gold screw.

You may ask yourself, how do I know which wire to hook to which gold screw?

Truth is, it doesn't matter in this application.

Same thing, going around making sure the screw is going clockwise.

We're tightening it up, and the second one.

Now we'll double check all our connections.

Make sure they're nice and tight.

Our switch is wired.

When you're installing the switch in the wall, it does matter which end goes up and down.

If you look closely at the switch, it says "off" and "on."

If you put it upside down, it says "ffo" and "no."

Now we're taking the wiring, folding it into the box like an accordion, and pushing it in.

Take our Phillips screwdriver, tighten it up.

You'll see the box pulling forward as you tighten it.

You don't want to tighten it up so much it's sucking the switch into the wall.

Make sure the switch is nice and level.

You can adjust it with your screwdriver if you need to.

The metal should be flush with the drywall, and the white part will be sticking out.

Just like we did with the receptacle.

We're going to prep our plate, tighten up our screws.

Sometimes you flip the switch on.

It can be easier to hold the plate in place.

Leaving the screws not too tight in the horizontal position.

The plate is sitting flush, and that's how you install a switch.

So now we're going to install a light fixture.

We're doing this on top of a ladder.

We make sure our ladder is set up securely.

And we set our materials and our tools up in a safe fashion so that it doesn't fall on anybody below us.

We have everything we need, our screwdriver, our wire strippers, our lineman's, and our light fixture.

The first thing we do is confirm there's no power present on the wiring.

We can use the meter.

In this situation, the electrical panel has not been energized yet, so we know there's no possible way there could be power here.

After confirming no voltage is present, we pull the wiring down.

We have our neutral, our hot, and our ground.

We take our lineman's pliers, leaving plenty of length.

Cutting the wiring down one at a time.

Next thing we'll do is strip the wires.

Unlike a switch or receptacle, we only need about a half an inch of wiring stripped back on here.

This is 14 gauge wiring.

We're using our 14 gauge stripper.

The next step we'll do is install our wiring connector.

Sometimes these are pre-installed in the light.

Sometimes the light doesn't have them.

In this situation it's easier to separate the connector from the light and plug the light in after.

Sometimes you need to strip a little bit more to get a full 1/2 inch of wire.

We'll start with our white wire.

We're lining the wires up next to each other, so they're even.

Take our wire nut and turn clockwise.

I'm holding the conductors from twisting as much as I can.

And tighten it up, so it's a little bit of pressure there.

It'll start twisting the wiring when you have it tight enough.

Next, we'll do it with the black wire.

Same thing, we line them up, take your wire nut, turn clockwise holding the wiring, and twisting until the whole wire twists together.

At this point, we'll push the black and the white wire up inside the box.

Now we're going to install the metal backing plate for the fixture.

We'll start by hooking the ground wire up the same way we hooked the black and the white wire up.

We'll push the ground wire up in the box and use the screws provided to mount it in the appropriate holes to match our box.

The plates are universal, you mount on many different boxes.

Tighten them up evenly making sure we're not pinching any wiring behind.

Tighten them until the metal plate is just about flush with the drywall.

Now we'll take our fixture and plug it into the provided connector.

These are polarity sensitive.

You can't hook them up backwards.

That means the black wire lines up the black wire, and the white wire lines up the white wire.

Push it together.

Make sure of a firm connection.

Push the wiring up.

Line it up with the bracket.

Press firmly against the ceiling.

Now your light is installed.

One thing I like about being an Electrician is the many types of electrical installations there are.

You can be doing something different every single day, whether it be a different wiring method or a different system.

Today we put in receptacle switches in lights.

But there's also communications and networking, building automation and temperature controls, fire alarm systems, mechanical equipment and wiring, including heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.

And different wiring methods that include metal clad cable, Romex, or electrical metallic tubing and others.

Major funding for I Build New Hampshire is provided by-- [music playing] With additional funding from-- [music playing]