Sawdust on the Floor

Do you have a defective electrical outlet in your home? One that simply doesn’t work, or only works sometimes? If so you don’t need to call an expensive electrician to replace the defective outlet. You can replace it yourself as long as you follow a few rules.

The most important rule that we all need to follow is to ensure that all power is removed from the outlet before we ever consider doing maintenance on the outlet. In modern homes, the power is controller by a circuit breaker; older homes will have a fuse box. The circuit breaker or fuse controls the power to separate circuits in your home.

The purpose of these devices is to limit the amount of current that can pass thru the circuit. If too much of a current draw is felt by the circuit breaker or fuse, it will open the circuit and remove the power from that circuit. The only real difference between the circuit breaker and the fuse, is that the circuit breaker can be reset once the over current problem is corrected, the fuse has a link that opens and can not be reset, the fuse must be replaced.

We can use the circuit breaker to remove power to your circuit simply by manually flipping it off, the fuse you will have to physically unscrew from the fuse box. The only real problem is figuring out which breaker is connected to your outlet. One of the easiest ways to figure this out to connect a radio to the outlet, turn it on, starting flipping the breakers off, one at a time until the radio goes off. That is the circuit breaker or fuse that controls that outlet. Or if you are a gadget freak like I am, you can use a Circuit breaker locator. You simply plug the sender unit into your outlet, and then take the receiver to the breaker box, when you put the tester next to the correct breaker , it alerts you either by a sound or a light on the receiver, kinda cool.

If the outlet is totally dead or intermittent then this method will not work. Then the best approach is to totally shut down the power to the entire house. You can accomplish this by tripping the large breaker at the top of the circuit breaker box. If this is not a practical option then I would suggest getting a simple device that is called a non contact voltage sensor. This battery operated device will light up when ever it is near a voltage source. Simply place it near the outlet, check for a light indicating that power is on, then trip the breakers until the light goes out.

One word of advice on the use of the non contact detector, verify that it works before you start using it. Use the old idiom, “DO NOT ASSUME” .

OK, so now that the power is off, here is the easy part. Remove the outlet cover by removing the two small screws on the cover. You can now remove the outlet itself, by removing the two screws holding it to the electrical box. Normally there will be a couple of inches of extra wire, so pull the outlet out until you can see the screws on the side of the outlet.

Electrical wires used in modern homes will normally have three wires inside a rubber cover. Typically you will find one white wire, one black wire and a bare wire. The black wire is known as the high or power lead, the white is the low or ground wire, and the bare wire is the safety ground. Your outlet may have more than one set of these wires, don’t let that scare you away. The electrician that originally wired your house, choose to use the outlet as a junction, this is very normal. Just understand that the position on the defective outlet is important, and need to be installed in the same location on the new one.

The best way to change the outlet is to remove one color at a time from the defective outlet and reconnect it to the same position on the new outlet. Repeat until you have all of the wires connected to the new outlet. You will see that most of the wires are bent into a half circle that will fit over the back of the screws, the only thing you need to be aware of is that the circle should be installed so that it in the same direction that the screw tightens up otherwise, when you tighten the screw it will kick the wire off.

You should now have all of the wires reconnected, only one thing left to do before you reinstall the outlet into the electrical box. As a added safety step, I like to wrap the back of the outlet with electrical tape. I do this so that if you have the cover plate off, there are no exposed wires you can come in contact with. A lot of people remove the covers when they are painting or hanging wall paper, so this simple thing may make your home safer.

Ok, let’s put everything back inside the box, and install the cover. Now you can turn the breaker or fuse back on and you’re done. Oh yeah one more thing, I like to check the outlet before I connect any thing to the outlet. There is this neat little outlet tester that you simply plug it into the outlet, and it verifies that the outlet is wired correctly. If you get three green lights, all is ok. But if you crossed the white and black wires, then you will only get two lights. If so turn the power off, and reverse the white and black wires.

Everything checked OK, so clean up the area, and give your self a pat on the back. Just remember, verify that the power is off before you start any work on the outlet.

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