How To Install Rough In Electricity In A New Construction House - Beginners Guide To Electrical

In this video, I'm going to show you how to install a rough-in electrical in a new construction house. In the room I'm standing in right now, I'm going to show you A to Z on how to do the outlets, the light, the ceiling fan, all of that. If you're new to this channel, my name is Josh. This channel is all about building your own house, saving time and money, so be sure to subscribe. Ring that bell so you get a notification every time I release a new video, and hammer that like button for me. That's all I ask in return for making this video. So we've got a lot to do today, so let's get started. When I go to wire my own house, I like to put each bedroom on its own circuit, and what I mean by its own circuit is it's going to have a breaker and a home run right to the panel box, so that way that one breaker powers that whole bedroom. So if you need to shut the power off to that bedroom, you just hit that breaker and it kills the power to the lights, the receptacles, and everything. So the first thing I'm going to do is put up the switch box, because the switch box is going to be used for the ceiling fan and the light, and that's going to be where the power comes in as well. So this is a two gang box, and what I mean by two gang box, there's a place for two switches or two receptacles for that matter if you need to, but this is going to be for switches in this case. So I'm going to show you the height in which to put switches. There's really no exact height in which to set a switch box, but I always like to go ahead and mark four foot on the stud that it's going to be anchored to, and then I either set the whole house, and this is up to you, you either set it at the top of that four foot mark at the center, or place it at the bottom. So I like to just go ahead and put that right at the top, it gives you a nice precise area to go by. And if you notice these notches here, or not really notches, but these like flanges, what this does, I'll show you up close, is that butts right against the stud, and what that does is gives you a half inch, so a place for your drywall to go around. So by the time you install the drywall, it's going to be flush with this double gang box here. And in order to anchor it, you just drive these nails in. All right, and that baby is not going anywhere. And as far as the placement of this, you always place it on the door knob side of the door. So if the door swings in like this, you want to just reach in and kick the switch on the light up the room, which I figured you probably assumed that, but I just want to make that clear. All right, so now that we have this mounted, we know our power is going to be coming into this box, okay? So we're not going to do that right now, but that means that's going to be what powers our light and fan. So what I'm going to do is get some 12-3 wire and run it up to a ceiling fan mount, and I'll show you how to do that. I'm going to use this product called the Saddlebox, and it's for ceiling fans or any light fixtures or any hanging light, anything like that that's going to have some weight to it. And I'll put a link to my Amazon store in the description below if you want to check these out. And if you do purchase it, I do get a small commission because I'm an affiliate, but there's no extra cost to you to do that. But these things are phenomenal, and the reason why is the design of them. It just saddles right over your rafter or your floor joists if it's a two-story. It would go right over it, and that's what mounts the ceiling fan to hold that weight. So it's a great invention. So first thing I do is find the center of the room and mount this into place. So if you look here, there's a little screw in the center and these two larger screws. So you just mount it with these for now, and then after the drywall's up and you hang your fan or light, then you use these bigger lag bolts. So for now, we're going to find the center, and then we're going to mount it. So to do this, just take the little screw out of the center and then place it on an impact driver or a drill, and I mark the center of the room right here. And I just so happen to be sitting on an actual rafter, but here's the thing. If there's not a center rafter like there is in this instance, which you get very lucky if that happens, what I would have had to done is put a block in this space here between the rafters, and then that would have been what this saddles onto. So if it was in between the rafter, it'd go over the block like this. But I got really lucky here. This never happens, by the way. But in this case, it did. So you just put it up where it goes. Now that we have the saddle box sitting in the center, all we got to do is reinstall the little screw through the hole you got it from, and we're done. So what holds the weight is those lag bolts once you go to install your actual ceiling fan. So that's for another video, so be sure to subscribe for that. So now I'm going to run 12-3 wire up to this saddle box and to that switch. To get that 12-3 wire over to that saddle box, I got to drill up through this plate of the wall. And since I'm doing a 12-3 wire, meaning there's three 12 wires in one wire, which I'll show you that in a minute, I'm going to use a half inch drill bit. And I use a 3-H drill bit when I'm doing 12-2 wire, which there's only two wires in the one wire. Okay. So since I'm doing 12-3, half inch, and then I go to the stud in which the box is anchored to for our switches, then I drill right up through and make sure you stay in the center of the wall. Boom. Right like that. Now I'm just going to run it right from that switch box over to that saddle box. So what I like to do is unravel the wire as it comes out of the spool. So that way it's nice and flat by the time it gets to where you need to go. Because if you pull it straight out of this spool, it's going to be all twisted and we don't want that. All right. So now, as you can see, it's nice and flattened out. So now when I get over here to the switch box, I just take it, wrap it around, hold about five inches out of the box, then take a pair of wire cutters, just cut it off there. And this stuff is kind of stout. And now what you need to do is go ahead and put it into the switch box and always push the backs of these out a little bit before I run a wire in them. Okay. And now go ahead and slide it into place. And I'm not going to staple this yet because I got some more wires coming into this switch box. Now it's time to start placing these single gang electrical boxes around the room for your outlets. Before I do that, I want to explain to you what the 6-12 rule is. So I want to go to the whiteboard and draw a diagram of it because it's way easier to explain because when it comes to outlets, spacing is very important for code. Let's go over it. Before I go over the 6-12 rule on the whiteboard behind me, I just want to disclose that I am not an electrician. I just learned all this from trial and error from building my own houses throughout time. And I had an inspector explain the 6-12 rule to me a while ago and it stuck with me. So I wanted to spread it to all you guys that may find benefit in it. And again, go with your local building codes. Don't go off something you see on YouTube. Let's get to it. So this diagram is probably the easiest way to understand the 6-12 rule for outlets. So it more or less means 12 foot is the max distance between outlets on a wall and 6 foot means that's how far you need to be from a door. There needs to be one outlet at least 6 foot from the door on each side. So as you can see here, here's a 4 foot door in the middle of this 11 foot 6 wall, okay? So it's only less than 4 foot on each one of these walls. So if the wall is over 2 foot, it needs to have a receptacle on it. So you'd have to put one right here and right here somewhere in between this wall and the door needs to have a receptacle and the same goes for here. So if it's over 2 foot, you need to have a receptacle on it. And another reason for the 6 foot means from each corner, it can't be no more than 6 foot. So as you can see here, we're just at the maximum distance from that corner to the 6 foot. And in between, we have 6 foot here and from this corner to this outlet is 6 foot. And as you can see, that wall is 18 foot long. So that is within code. So this is the max distance of 12 foot refers to this wall down here. So from the corner of this wall to this first outlet, we got 5 foot. So that's within code. And then from this outlet to this outlet, it's over 6 foot, it's 8 foot. So we can have up to 12 foot. So it can't be longer than 12 foot. So we're 8 foot. So that's within code and we're within 5 foot from this corner to this outlet. So that's good to go. So if we look at this 11 foot 6 wall, this wall only needs one right in the center because as you can see here, it's 5 foot 9 from the corner to the outlet. So that is less than 6 foot. So that meets code. So that's good. And as you can see, this whole room would meet code. All right, let's get back to physically installing these outlets. Let me explain to you what I just did there. So what I did, I measured up off the floor 18 inches where I figured there is going to be a receptacle. And then I put an X on the side of the stud so it's easily visible. And then I went through and just dropped a receptacle box, electrical box, whatever you want to call it, next to the floor beside where it's going. And then I'm just going to go ahead and anchor that right to that mark. The top of this outlet box is going to be right there. Then all you got to do is drive the nails in on the side to anchor it just like did the switch box and it's going to be spaced out a half inch. All right. So just like this, guys, line it up to that mark, hold those flanges tight against the stud, and then just take a hammer and then drive those nails in. Now it's time to drill holes all through the studs to connect all the outlets together. And what I like to do is, I'm a little OCD, I like to keep my wires running straight. So what I do, I pull up from the floor two foot and it's just an easy measurement to remember. So I'll go ahead and drill right in the center of that two by four stud or two by six, depending on what you constructed with, right through that mark, but in the center of the stud. Now I go through and mark the studs as I go and keep on drilling. I'm here at the window and obviously we can't continue the 24 inch measurement, so I come up around 16 inches on these five foot windows and it seems to be pretty comfortable. But I just wanted to point out to you, whenever you have a tight space like this, a right angle drill of some kind is definitely going to be your best friend. This is a Jobmax with the right angle drill attachment. And how it works, you just simply slide it into the space and drill it out. Now it's time to start running some wire to each one of those outlets. I'm going to be using 12-2 wire, and 12-2 is heavier than the 14-2 you'll see a lot of people using. But I just like to use a little heavier gauge because it can handle a little more load than the 14-2 wire. Even though it's overkill, I just feel better about it. So the first thing I'm going to do is un-spool a bunch of this wire because I've got to be able to go around this whole room, and then I'm going to go ahead and go from this outlet up to the switch first because that's going to be the power to energize all these receptacles. Just come up into the switch box first thing, and then I want to make sure there's enough to be able to staple this at least four to six inches from the switch, and then we're going to come over, come down, come down, loop around the receptacle box. Now it's the length, and I'm going to go ahead and cut that right there using a pair of wire cutters, and then we're going to push it through into the outlet box. Now our power going to our receptacles has ran from the switch, and now we need to go to the next outlet. So I got the end of the wire, and I'm going to have to go around the doorway, so I'm going to have to drill up into the rafter space and come back down on the other side of the doorway. These are half-inch staples that are used for 12-2 wire. You'll have to get three quarter-inch staples for 12-3 wire that we ran earlier. So now what we do, pull those wires to about the middle of that stud, and you got to stay within six inches and staple it of that receptacle. So that way, it will pass code, and check your local building codes to see what you need to do, but here it's within six inches. Now every four foot, I'm going to place a wire staple to meet the requirements here. So this is 12-3 wire right here. So we got a red for the fan power, and then we got the black for the light power, and then we got the neutral, which is white, then we got the copper, which is for ground. Then this is the 12-2 wire here. This one has just one black for the receptacles, and that's just the power of those, and then you got your bare copper, which is for the ground, and then you got the white that's for the neutral. I just wanted to show you guys the difference between 12-2 and 12-3. All right, as you can see, the power that's going to be coming to the switch box runs down here to this receptacle first, and it's going to come back up and continue running up over this door opening here and down to this next receptacle. So now all we got to do is continue that sequence to each one of these receptacles until we end at this one. All right, I want to show you guys a little pro tip. When you get to a corner like this where you got to come in and then come out this side, so you got to make a 45-degree angle, what I like to do is take the wire and go ahead and pre-bend it something like that, so you kind of have a hook on it, and then just fish it in like that and see if you can get it to hit that hole, and that's definitely the easiest way I've found to try to push these wires through. All right, so there we go, and I used to not do it that way, and it was always a pain until I figured out the arc. Now we got to tie these wires together, and to do that, simply go ahead and take the sheathing off the wire itself. So all you got to do is take a utility knife and lightly go over the jacket, and then just spread back the casing like so, reach up in the box, go ahead and cut that off. Any paper that's on there, be sure to get that off too, and then do that to the other wire, and this stuff, like I said, is very, very pliable, so it cuts easy, and go ahead and separate all those like so, and now all we got to do is strip these wires. I got a pair of these wire strippers. They're really easy to use. I'll put a link to my Amazon store where you can purchase these. Anyway, so you just slide that over that wire. You want to leave about a half inch. Go ahead and strip all those, and these things work so slick. All right, now, so we want our black and whites over to the side. The copper wires are what we're going to be addressing. We want to use these copper crimp sleeves, and they're also called stay-coms, but they're really easy to use. All you got to do is take the little copper sleeve, slide it over both of the grounds like so, and then after you do that, you want to take a pair of pliers and just smash that crimp ring down like so, okay, and then go ahead and twist. You'll form one solid copper wire. You don't have to twist it super tight to where you break it, but it's nice and snug, and then bend one to the side and always cut a little shorter so it isn't so obvious, and then just take that and bend it to the side. You'll have this little piece of copper left, and then smash it together there. This ground's all tied together with this single wire now, and then shove all these back in the box, and then you'll hook that to the outlet or the receptacle, whatever you want to call it. Whenever the time comes, shove them in the box, and we will address that after the drywall is hung. Now, all I got to do now is take this 12-2 wire and run it from this switch box over to this panel box, and in order to get there, I just got to run the cable all the way up into the attic space and down to the panel box. This is our power coming from the panel box. This is going up the ceiling fan and light combo, and then this is the receptacles, their continued power. So now we're just going to line all those up and go ahead and take a wire staple and then staple those in place, and this is a 3-1⁄4-inch staple since we got a 12-3 wire we're dealing with. I'm going to show you how to tie all these wires together in another video. So what I do, so I know what they are when I go to tie them together after the drywall is up, I go ahead and label them now. So I know this one was the power coming from the panel box, and this wire here is the continued power, but I'm going to put receptacles just to make it simple to remember. Then the 12-3 wire is a given. It's the fan and light combo, but I'll go ahead and do that anyways for demonstration purposes. And now what we do, we're just going to roll those back into the box until the drywall is hung. All right, one final walkthrough, powers to the switch, going up to our ceiling fan light combo that's going to be operated off a switch. So we're going to have a light here, fan here, and then the power is going to tie into that switch box and continue to all the receptacles around the room using the 6-12 rule. And everything looks good, and we're all stapled off, and there is nothing wrong with this job. Looking very nice. Before everybody gets in an uproar in the comments about this panel box cover being off and how unsafe it is, it's because it's actively being installed. I'm actually going to be making a how to install a panel box video, and I'll be installing this bedroom we just wired up. So be sure to subscribe so you get a notification when I release that video. And that's all I got for you today guys, and again be sure to ring that bell so you get the notification, and I'll see you in the next video. Have a good one.