Depending on where you want to add an electrical outlet can also determine the difficulty of the project. This is where a little research can possibly make the job a little easier to complete. If it is on an inside wall instead of an exterior wall, take a look on the opposite side of the wall to see if there is an existing receptacle somewhere on that side of the wall. If so, it is best to locate the new one between the same two wall studs. You will need a cut in or old work electrical box.

Grab a tape measure and get the distance from a door or the corner over to the center of the existing receptacle and then measure on the other side from the same point to see where the new electrical outlet would be. The existing outlet box will most likely be nailed to a wall stud and it is important to know which side of the box that the stud is on. You can find out with a stud finder or by removing the outlet cover and push a wire or a screwdriver beside the box and the edge of the sheetrock opening.

If you were standing and facing the existing outlet and the stud is on the left of the box then on the other side where your new outlet will be then that stud will be on the right of the measurement that you made earlier so you will need to move over to the left a few inches to cut your new box in the wall.

When you have clear area for the new electrical outlet just hold your old work box on the sheetrock and mark the perimeter with a pencil and saw the hole for the box. Kill the power to the existing outlet and push the 12-2 electrical wire through the knockout hole in the existing box and reach in the new hole and grab the wire. Stick the wire in the box and install the electrical box in the wall.

Strip the black and white back about 3/4" or so and put a curl in the end so you can slip the curl under the side lugs of the electrical outlet. White goes to the silver screw and black goes to brass screw. Tighten securely. Bare wire goes to the green screw which is the equipment ground. Same goes for the existing outlet and your new romex. Fasten the outlets into the boxes, install the outlet cover and turn the breaker back on.

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3 way switches can be wired many different ways but they all work basically the same way. Understanding how they work can make troubleshooting and repair much easier for you. The key to fixing your 3 way switch problems starts with the proper placement of your common wires. All 3 way switches need 1 common wire and 2 traveler wires to work. They also need a constant hot from the power source and a switched hot up to the light fixture along with the neutral wire. They will also need a 3 conductor cable going from one switch box directly over to the other switch box. This cable will have the 2 traveler wires and 1 common wire in it.

A 3 way switch has 3 lugs for the wires to attach. The common lug on the switch will be a darker color than the 2 traveler lugs. The common lug will not have a lug directly across from it on the switch. This is basically how a 3 way switch works. The common lug on the 3 way switch makes contact with one of the two traveler wires at all times. Say the common lug is A, the first traveler wire is B, and the second traveler wire is C.  If the 3 way switch is flipped up then A will make contact with B and when the switch is flipped down then A will make contact with C. The common simply switches back and forth between each traveler wire. Each time the switch is flipped the common switches and makes contact with the other traveler wire.

Determining which wires are the common in your switch boxes is not that difficult of a process but is extremely important and comes first when troubleshooting 3 way switching problems. One of the common wires will be the hot feed and the other common will be the switched hot going up to the light fixture. Finding the constant hot wire in one of the switch boxes is the first order of business. You will need a voltage meter for this.

In most situations you will have either one 2-conductor and one 3-conductor romex in each switch box. Or you may have two 2-conductor and one 3-conductor romex in one switch box and the other switch box will have just one 3-conductor romex in it. The constant hot that you want to find will normally be in one of the 2-conductor cables. Check the black and white from each 2-conductor until you find the constant power.

Once you have located this constant hot feed wire then that will be one of your common wires. Then locating the switched hot wire that goes up to the light fixture is the next task and that will be your other common wire. As long as you have the common wire attached to the common lug on your switch, it does not matter which traveler wire goes to which traveler lug on the switch. But if a traveler wire gets attached to the common lug on the switch then that is why the 3 way switches will not work right. In this case you can turn the light off or on from one end but can't turn it back off or on from the other end. So the easy fix comes from finding the two common wires and getting those two wires hooked to the common lugs on your switches.

Depending on how your particular 3 way system is wired will determine which wires go where on your 3 way switches. Sometimes the hot feed romex and the switch leg romex that goes up to the light fixture will be in the same switch box and sometimes the hot feed will be in one box and the switch leg will be in the box on the other end. Then sometimes the hot feed may go into the light box along with two 3 conductor cables, one going to each switch box. But in every situation there is always a constant hot and a switched black wire going to your light fixture and these two black wires are the two that you must find above all others.

If you have a 3 way switch wiring configuration that you do not understand then please see this article for more information: Learn The Different Ways To Wire 3 Way Switches.

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Your house ground is the single most important part of your home electrical system to insure maximum safety and protection from accidental electrocution. I can’t stress this enough about having a properly bonded ground for your entire home electrical system.

Here are a few pointers on what and where to check to insure that your house is properly grounded.

1. Go to your outside electrical service where your meter base is attached to your house. You will either have an overhead or an underground service. You will have a meter base with either a pipe or cable going up or a pipe coming from underground going into the meter base. You may or may not have another electrical box attached underneath or out to the side of the meter base. If so, this is a main disconnect or an outside panel where you can kill the power to the house from that point.

What you want to look for is a bare copper wire that comes from either the meter base or the disconnect and runs down the wall to the ground below. You want to follow this wire until you see where and what it attaches to. There should be a driven ground rod in the ground with a clamp for this wire to attach to the rod. Make sure the wire is hooked here and the clamp is tight. Also notice what type of rod is driven in the ground. It should be a solid rod about the size of a nickle or a dime.

If the rod appears to be hollow in the middle like a piece of water pipe then I would advise purchasing a 5/8″ X 8ft. copper or galvanized ground rod and driving it right beside this rod and move the ground wire over to it.  Before driving a ground rod you should have any gas, power and water lines located and marked so you don’t drive the rod into one of them. Now, if you do not see this ground wire at your electrical service then see step #2 below.

2. In some instances the house ground may be coming from your indoor electrical panel or load center. You can verify this by carefully removing the panel cover then looking for a buss bar in the panel with lots of white and/or bare wires attached to it. Somewhere there should be a bigger copper or aluminum bare wire attached to this bar.

This bare wire will be leaving the panel and either go under the floor or in the attic over to it’s grounding point, which should be a driven ground rod. It is possible that it attaches to a metal water pipe which is ok IF it also leaves there and attaches to a driven ground rod. If it does not do this and this is the only place that it hooks to then I would advise calling a qualified electrician in your area to fix this to meet local code requirements.

The reason that this can be a dangerous situation is, if at any time this metal plumbing pipe in your home is changed over to plastic PVC pipe then your house ground will be lost from that point. This is also the case if the water supply line from your water meter to your house is ever changed from metal to plastic pipe and your house is using this pipe as the main ground for the electrical system.

This shouldn’t be a problem in newer homes but older houses can certainly fall in this category due to the lack of proper inspections in those days. If you do not feel comfortable with verifying this yourself then it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have someone qualified in this area to check this for you. Again if your house is fairly new then you most likely are good but if you live in an older home it would be wise to have this checked to insure you and your families safety.

Sometimes there is a need to add a circuit breaker to a panel that is already full of breakers. This can be done by replacing one or more single pole breakers with tandem breakers. A tandem breaker takes up only one space in the panel but it provides two circuits. It will have two handles with two separate lugs for the wires to go.

These tandem breakers are not to be confused with a double pole breaker which would take up two spaces in the panel and provide 240 volts. If you are needing to add just one 120 volt circuit to the panel then replacing one regular single pole breaker with one tandem breaker will do the trick.

If you need to add a double pole breaker for a 240 volt circuit then you would need to remove 4 regular single pole breakers from the panel which would open up 4 spaces and then put two tandem breakers in two of the spaces. These two tandem breakers will have the four places you need to feed the four wires from the removed breakers plus you will have the two empty spaces that you need for the new double pole breakers that you are adding.

For example, the four single pole breakers take up four spaces in the panel. Two tandem breaker only take up two spaces but give you the capability to re-feed all four wires from just two spaces in the panel, leaving you two open spaces for the new breaker.

There are a couple of things that you will need to verify before doing this. You must check the amperage rating for each single pole breaker that will be removed and make sure that the tandem breaker ratings match back up to each circuit. If all four breakers are rated at 20 amps each then you would need two tandem 20/20 breakers. You can also look at the wire size. #12 awg wire would go on a 20 amp breaker and #14 awg wire would need a 15 amp breaker.

If two were 20 amp and two were 15 amp breakers then you could get 1 tandem 20/20 and 1 tandem 15/15, or you could get two tandem 15/20 breakers.

The second thing to verify would be that all four romex cables are two conductor, in which they probably will be. You don’t want to have a 3 conductor cable that would be feeding two 120 volt circuits but using a common neutral and have those two hot wires from the same 3 conductor cable end up on a tandem breaker together. Two circuits that share a common neutral must be placed on opposite phases in the panel or you can overload the neutral.

See a Siemens Q2020 Tandem Breaker Here.

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Here are a couple of diagrams of how some 3-way switches that I have seen were wired. Take a look at the available wires and see if you think they can be wired to work properly. In both diagrams, each 3-way switch basically has a hot, a neutral and one single wire going up to the light fixture. 3-Way Switch Diagram 1: In the above diagram I ran up on this situation one time on a service call for a 3-way that wasn't working right. I have to admit that upon first looking at it I had to scratch my head for a few minutes before I was able to get it working right. This next diagram was how one was wired that I ran up on that did work and it made me wonder how it could possibly work right. After seeing how they had it wired it made sense then. 3-Way Switch Diagram 2: I have seen 3-way switches wired about every way possible but these two had to be tops in the unusual department. To see the answers or solutions on how to wire these to make them work just click here. *

A three way switch can control a light or set of lights from two different locations. Plus, you can have as many four (4) way switches as you want as long as they are in between two three way switches. It takes 3 wires for a three way switch to work. One common wire and two traveler wires. Both three way switches will have one common and two travelers for each one.

The two common wires will be the black hot feed on one end and the load, which is the black hot wire from the switch to the light fixture, on the other end. The common lug on the three way switch will either make contact with one or the other traveler wires. If the switch is up it connects the common to traveler A and if it is switched down it makes contact from the common to traveler B.

The constant hot feed is hooked to the common lug on one end so it sends the hot to the other switch on one or the other traveler wires. When the hot feed reaches the other three way switch depending on which traveler wire is making contact with that switches common lug, it will either send the power up to the light or keep it at the switch.

Remember one traveler wire will always be making contact with the common. If the right traveler that is carrying the hot feed matches up with the common lug going up to the light, then the light will come on and if not the light will turn off.  At either end of the three way switches when you flip the switch it changes the traveler wire that is making contact with the common and if the light is on it will go off and vice versa. Simple stuff huh? If you are having problems with your three way switches below are some links to help you get it figured out.

How To Troubleshoot 3 way switches

Learn The Different Ways To Wire Three Way Switches

How To Wire A 4 Way Switch

A GFCI breaker has two lugs for your wires to go plus a white wire that is made into the circuit breaker. If you are replacing a regular single pole breaker with a GFCI breaker you will need to remove both the hot wire from the breaker and also the neutral wire for that circuit from the neutral bar in the panel.

Turn the breaker off that you are replacing. Loosen the lug on the breaker and remove the black wire from the breaker. Gently remove the existing breaker from the panel. Depending on what brand of electrical panel you have will determine exactly how the breaker snaps in on the bussbar. Most all brands except Square D QO Series just hook on the side first and then slides over the flat bussbar in the center of the panel.

The busswork on the Square D QO Series panels are made a little differently than most other brands of electrical equipment. The QO breakers snap in the same way on both ends of the breaker.

On the GFCI breaker you will have a silver colored lug and a brass colored lug along with a white wire coming from the breaker. The white wire from the breaker will tie back into the neutral bar in the panel. The white neutral from your circuit will tie to the silver lug on the breaker and the black hot wire from the circuit will tie to the brass colored lug on the GFI breaker. Once all these connections are made turn the breaker on and push the test button. The breaker should trip out if it is working properly. Replace the panel cover and that is all there is to that project.

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When your ovens heating elements are not heating up it is time to locate the problem and repair it. Usually the two most common problems turns out to be the heating element is bad or there is a power problem to the actual oven unit. With these new digital type controls now the circuit board could be going bad also.

The first thing to check on this would be the power to make sure the unit is receiving 240 volts. You can check this at the oven receptacle with a multimeter set on AC 600 volts. If your particular unit is hard wired and difficult to get to the power connections you can remove the element and check it first.

Most elements are secured to the inside back wall of the oven with two screws. The element ends go through two holes and have wires plugged into the ends of the element. Pull the wires off of the element and set your multimeter on the continuity beeper setting and touch the meter leads where the two wires were connected. You will hear the meter beep if the element is good and no sound if it is bad.

The power loss to the oven can be caused by a tripped breaker or a blown fuse. Sometimes you might notice that the lights work on the oven but it doesn’t heat up. This could be due to one of the fuses being blown and the oven is getting 120 volts from the good fuse but not getting 240 volts to heat the elements. Replace the bad fuse or reset the breaker should fix this problem for you.

Installing a new element is not hard either as you seen how it came out so with the new element in hand just install it by plugging in the two wires to each side of the element and inserting it through the two holes and replace the two screws that hold it in.

Make sure to kill the power to the unit before removing the old heating element.

There are actually 4 things that can cause fluorescent light fixtures not to work. Bulbs, ballasts, tombstones, or no power.

• Bulbs- This is usually the culprit when fluorescent light fixtures will not work.  Try changing the bulbs first to see if this corrects the problem. Also remember that even if a bulb is working but has turned black on the ends it should be replaced because these bulbs put added pressure on the ballasts trying to burn them.
• Ballasts- A fluorescent ballast will last for a good long while but eventually will fail. Sometimes these ballasts will emit a strong odor that will verify the need for replacement. If you see any leakage coming from the ballast that resembles tar that is another verification for replacement.

1. The most common fluorescent ballasts are for 4′ and 8′ fixtures. Most 4′ ballasts will burn two bulbs with a four bulb fixture having two ballasts in it. One ballast will feed the two inside bulbs and the other ballast will feed the two outside bulbs.

Changing the ballasts is not a difficult job but can be somewhat dangerous if not done properly. You should always make sure the power has been turned off to the circuit before attempting these repairs.

A 4′ 2 tube ballast has 8 wires coming from it. 2 reds, 2 blues, 2 yellows, 1 black and 1 white. The black is the hot feed and the white is the neutral. These two wires should be removed first. Then you can cut the the remaining wires loose one at a time and take out the ballast.

Match the colors from the ballast to the same colors from the fixture. It doesn’t matter which two colors hook to each wire as long as the colors match.

8′ 2 tube magnetic ballasts only have 4 wires and they just match up to the colors in the fixture.

• Tombstones- These are the end sockets that the bulbs fit in to and they tend to break sometimes if the pins from the bulb are not inserted properly.  If you have to change any of these the wires just push into the bottom  of them.

Bulbs or ballasts are usually the problem in these fixtures and neither ones are very hard to change.