M & G Electric – Your Local Electrician Chicago, IL and surrounding areas.

Installation of an outlet

Replacing an electrical outlet is a fairly simple task, but most people do not do it because they are afraid of getting shocked or afraid they might wire it wrong and burn down the house. It’s really not that scary and if you follow the directions I will give you will not burn down the house.

I remember when I started out in the electrical field about 12 years back the guy that I worked with thought it would be funny to let me work on a live outlet. I’ll be honest with you, now a days it’s not a big deal I can work on a live outlet with out to many problems but back then being a beginner I didn’t really understand that the human body could be a great conductor of electricity. I remember the nice jolt I got when touch the hot and neutral wires at the same time trying to hook them on the outlet, I don’t recommend doing that even when you know the circuit breaker is off just because you never know if someone turned it back on or  if you turned off the correct breaker.

The first thing you want to do is turn off the circuit breaker controlling the out. You can purchase a volt tester from your local home center or you can simply plug in a lamp to test it out. Once you made sure the power is off you unscrew and cover plate and unscrew the outlet from its housing and you pull the outlet and wires connected to out so that they are serviceable. Typically there should be about 6” of play with the wires but that can vary job to job. Then what you do is with either a flat head or phillips screw driver undo the hot terminal which is usually a gold or bronze screw with a dark colored wire on it, typically red, black, blue. Then you undo the neutral terminal which should be a silver screw and the wires should always be either a white or a grey per NEC (National Electric Code). Now your old outlet is off and you are ready to install your new outlet. You basically reverse your order now and install the white/grey wire on the silver screw terminal and you install the dark wire on the gold/bronze terminal. To ground the outlet just take a 6”-8” of green wire and connect it to the green screw on the outlet and then connect it to a screw inside your box that houses your outlet there should be a screw hole for a 10-32 machine screw that you can use or you can just ask your home center rep for a self grounding out which does not need a separate grounding wire. Turn the power back on, plug in your lamp and you just installed your first out.

By Marcel Suiugan

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M & G Electric

Your Local Electrician in Chicago, IL

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