ive been a commercial/industrial electrician for 15+ yrs and a overhead lineman for 5 yrs. i still love watching you teach your techniques because you take pride in your work..keep it up brother God Bless and stay safe
Ya, really took a lot of pride in literally putting tape on a known code violation, collecting money and rolling out so fast he didn’t have time to video the lights working. I’d really hate to see your level of someone not taking pride in their work. I can appreciate your sentiment. Dustin is a fantastic electrician however this is by far his worst video and something we’ve all done but should really keep to yourself.
The one important item that I always do when making up connections in a wet location is to make sure the wire nut is facing up. This prevents any water from pooling inside the wire nut and wire connections. It becomes ‘self-draining’. You never want to caulk around the base of a vertical fixture, as caulking can also prevent any water that may have gotten inside the fixture and base from draining. Exterior light fixtures such as the ones in the video are not water tight. Rain water will enter via the top finial or around metal to metal joints or glass to metal joints. Also every exterior fixture has rusted rivets holding the lamp sockets or a socket with a rusted center (hot) tab.
@@darylsavage119 no doubt. I have an incandescent pole light on my corner of house 8 feet or so from corner. Lightning on this iron ore ground 300 feet from distribution lines apparently has blown a hole in 2 plus bulbs so far. I kept the last 2. I like the dual level motion detectors so there is a little light until you trip motion.. I drove ground rods on all four corners of home, attached to slab and specialty construction methods of walls. I may just need to abandon the dual bright motion and go with a good led fixture. Looks like I need to drive a rod at that light, too. It's the only one on the hill ever affected. Crazy.
Cement is water permeable, the amount depends on cement mixture, hence it is a wet location when exposed to the ground or outdoor conditions. It does not take high amounts of moisture to damage romex so the small amounts of moisture that make it through the permeable cement can do heavy damage to the insulation.
The real problem with using type NM cable in a situation like this, even if it was for a 12 or 24 volt circuit, is the jacket and inner paper, even though the conductor insulation might be THWN, the paper soaks up water, the outer jacket holds it in, everyone has seen THWN fail eventually because of a scuff in the nylon outer jacket on the conductor after a few years, but that is on a conduit that is more than likely filled with water because of condensation and elevation seepage, now couple that with rotting paper.
Those fixtures were not sealed to the mounting surface. There was plenty of room for water to enter the splice area from rain or pressure washing. Also, there is no way to know if those conduits were continuous between fixtures or were punctured during construction. We have all seen crazy stuff like "direct buried romex".
There comes a time where you can only do what the customer is willing to pay for. Really sucks when a couple of hours of troubleshooting has been spent to diagnose the problem correctly just to half ass the repair.
Twist the up and apply tape. I for one soldered them and then taped. I noticed the code book is different than when I retired many years ago. Never felt confident in the crimp splices but I saw them hold up in very bad environments. I considered the book as a minimum standard and approached wiring from an engineering standpoint--often better than the code. Engineering was my background.
Seems to me that it would be best to always treat EVERY outdoor electrical component as if they were constantly soaked and use materials and methods appropriate for a wet environment as a normal practice. Yes, that would be overkill in most circumstances but you would never have to worry about anything being not quite enough.
You can do a neat job of taping if you wrap your tape around a small 1/4" drive socket first and use this "mini roll" that you created to dispense the tape around the conductor tightly. Marine heat shrink tube with sealant is also a decent choice and maybe a braided sleeving for abrasion resistance. I love the 'real world' service calls. It's great content.
Same here. Sometimes some flickering if the filament opens up and then moves a bit but I've never seen a broken filament cause a short. Although I once had a short when I tried to unscrew a light bulb on which the glass had separated from the base. As soon as I started turning the glass, poof....
Same. Wouldn't the filament just illuminate or burn up if it shorts? I also believe that most incandescent bulbs have fuses in them (Basically the wires leading up to the filaments are designed to act as fuses in cases of excessive current draw).
I think he was referring to incandescent light bulbs identifying as shorts (continuity) if you don't remove them from the circuit prior to testing-- as opposed to LEDs.
Incandescent are better in wet locations show it as a open circuit from I've heard so far LEDs that are rated for wet locations don't hold up. Maybe they have improved over the years...
AS an electrician it is your responsibility to ensure the installation is safe. I agree with all your comments however I would have done an insulation resistance test (I dont know what the regs are in America but if the results show problems with the cables which I suspect they might in that installation. I would have disconnected that circuit and informed the client why it was disconnected and offered to give various quotes for fixing the installation properly. Yes I know they may have to have walls dismantled to achieve the same job or surface conduit etc etc but that is better than water getting back into that circuit and the wall becoming live and someone getting a shock. Awkward situation to be in would like to know your thoughts on this
Would never just “tape” it up where I am in Australia, always perform an IR test and in this instance I would definitely use resin heat shrink on the exposed conductors and then apply silicone inside the conduits and fitting and then outside around the base to completely seal that chamber and keep it free from moisture, like his fault finding methods but his repair work seems very cowboy to me
@@marcgaskett yes, it was so weird to have the guy that says, ‘Get out your code book’ just slap electrical tape on as a fix - where’s that in the NEC?
7:08 - The reason it's ALWAYS the last one you check... is because once you find the problem there's no reason to keep on checking. Its like when you lose your keys or something and you tear the house apart looking for them... you always find them in the last place you look because once you found them you stop looking.
Congrats dude !!! It’s a rewarding career. I remember my instructor sharing advice with the senior class just before writing our national exam (ie Red Seal in Canada). You might have already heard this from a colleague or instructor. Mine said a newly licensed electrician is at the most dangerous point of his/her career. Newly licensed tend guys put a lot of unnecessary expectAtions on themselves. Remember, you can’t POSSIBLY know everything just because you are now licensed. A license is a minimum standard of independence and competence. Often, a competent decision is one where u decide to admit to yourself that you need to ask a more experienced colleague for guidance because u are not comfortable with the scenario you are in. I’ve been licensed for over 10 years now, and am not afraid to ask a colleague for their opinion. Equally, my opinion is often sought. Keep this advice in mind and you will be fine.
There's still *one* valid use for incandescent bulbs.. when the heat they give off is actually something worthwhile. EZ-Bake oven for your kid, chicken egg incubator, and maybe for stoplights .. Read something a couple of years ago where a city replaced the bulbs in its traffic lights and had to do an expensive re-engineer because they were getting caked with snow that the bulbs used to melt
Statements dealing with absolutes are rarely a good thing. Telling everyone they should never use incandescent bulbs is one of those times. I'm an amateur radio operator. Almost all of the LED replacements for incandescent bulbs on the market are noisy for RF. I avoid them whenever possible. Even the LEDs of neighbors 3 doors down can cause issues. Other than that, this was a great video and I learned a good deal.
I had wondered about that, because at my mother in law's house, an electrician had run PVC conduit from the main panel, through the exterior wall of the garage to outside, up along the outside, then connecting back through the attic above the 2nd story. The family was discussing whether they could use that conduit to wire something through the attic, and the insulation surely looked like NM-B/Romex to me, but everything I kept seeing kept mentioning "no Romex through any conduit" and I kept wondering what was going on.
the simple rule of thumb is never use romex (nm) outside the envelope of a conditioned building. uf cable is approved for wet, damp locations & for direct burial. pvc conduit is also great for outdoor installs. pulling uf cable thru conduit is a lot of work, & unecessary. 3m makes gel filled wirenuts for outdoor use. wirenuts filled with vaseline work good in a pinch. in all my 50+ years as an electrician & electrical inspector, i never had the owner of a high end house wanting to cut corners by using sub-standard wiring practices. the nec, (national electric code) is the minimum standard for wiring. always feel free to go above & beyond the code.
What I would recommend for stuff like this is liquid electrical tape it's like glue/silicone but electrically rated and if used right waterproof like heatshrink. I get there is no rating, but a layer if followed by regular electrical tape is vise versa, it's just a nice piece of mind.
Not sure if I missed it but main reason why it's frowned upon is because you lose amperage overhead. Conduit, especially EMT, can reflect the heat from high amperage back into the wire, so the 12ga-20a rating is for THHN in conduit when it has room to breathe and cool off. When 12ga Romex is in the wall, the insulation holds in heat like EMT does to regular pull wire. Free-air THHN can handle at least an extra amp or two when compared to Romex or EMT, but for obvious reasons we don't do that. For heat buildup reasons, we don't do both. EMT or Romex (except when necessary, like in basements where the Romex is exposed in the ceiling joints and it runs down the wall 🧱 to an outlet) (use fittings at BOTH ends of the EMT)
I like the way you brought the code book into play while doing the job. Yea going through the code book just doesn’t interpret everything clearly at times. Much appreciated
@@ScottHz or maybe just don't be a douche. The code book can be complicated with the way they word things and the way inspectors interpret things. The work itself isn't complicated. Have a good one, or dont...
Conduit is wet because of warm, damp air inside the conduit, causing water to condense on the inside of the conduit due to the colder ground (and conduit). Romex also shouldn't be used in conduit because the extra insulation in an enclosed space can overheat.
Things must be different in America, TPS (is that called Romex in the USA?) is fine underground in conduits - it can be rated higher too because the ground is cool and cools the cable.
@@matticussilverman6179 I’m in Canada and only single leads can be pulled in outdoor conduit. From the #0 from the pole underground to a #14 for a 15A 125v circuit, only single sheathed strands are permitted in conduit.
@@markstevens1729 nec in us is same. romex shouldn't be in conduit due to overheating . but in this case with 12 g wire and only 4 lights i can't see it pulling no 20 amps. or 16 amps either at 80%
It's a bitch to pull Romex through conduit if you have any bends. But in this case, it would be a bitch to pull it out to replace it with THHN, like code requires. Hope it never gets inspected!
I don't think there's anything you could do to make a conduit outdoors not "wet" water will _always_ get in unless the conduit is fully potted. If air can get in (which it will, eventually), then water will get in via condensation, and then it will accumulate. At least that's my take on it.
You're right air has moisture, warm air meets cold air and condensation occurs over time water will buildup if not vented for evaporation. It probably would've been better if the Mason had slightly dome shaped around the pipes allowing the water to escape...
I’ll open you up to a really good troubleshooting tip for stuff like this If you want to see if you have a shorted line in the ground or if you want to know if you have to start taking fixtures apart. If you go to the hardware store and buy one of those rubberized light sockets this design to hang from the ceiling in a wet environment to screw a bulb into, you know the old-school ones And keep it in your toolbox… If you run into a situation like this and you want an easy way to find a short, what you can do is disconnect the hot lead from the breaker and connect one end of the light socket to the breaker and then wirenut The black wire that you removed from the breaker onto the wire coming off of the portable socket. Then screw in a 60 W incandescent bulb, yes it needs to be incandescent for this purpose LED or CFL will not do. What you are accomplishing by putting the incandescent bulb right at the breaker is basically placing a visiual current limiting resistor at the beginning of the circuit before any short could take place. If that light comes on, that indicates you have a neutral return path either on the neutral or a ground wire back to the panel in some form or fashion. Because electrical current must return to the source in order to complete the circuit for that light to light up. If none of the other lights on the circuit were lighting up before, but this one lights up when you put it in circuit, then logically that would indicate you have an underground short or a short in the wall somewhere in a junction that’s hidden and you’re going to have to investigate.
The previous owner of my house installed a TT-30 receptacle with "Romex" on a 20A breaker. Luckily, he ran it in 1 inch PVC. Ripped it all out and ran proper THWN to a new RV panel. The old ground was nice and green.
@@timgraham7851 Thats pretty normal on an AC. In fact the MOCP is the breaker size. They dont have to atch on an AAC and usually don't. Its common to see #12 on a 30 Amp breaker or #10 on a 50. The breaker only provides short circuit and ground fault protection in those cases.
Incandescent bulbs are especially useful when running a generator or inverter because they create a resistive load on the system and convert noise into heat.
@@sergeig685 AC Inverters and generators do not usually produce a perfectly clean and smooth sine wave. If you hook up an oscilloscope to the line and neutral, you will typically see "stair-stepping" , "saw teeth" or noise on the curve Putting a restive load on the generator plays the same role as the fuzzy cover on a microphone or the vibration damper between a motor and chassis. Resistance generates heat, be it a light bulb, a toaster or the brakes on your car.
@@sergeig685 What we perceive as sound is oscillations in a medium being picked up by our eardrums. If you converted the oscilloscope output into an audio wave form or connected a speaker coil to the mains you will hear what the ac sounds like. , A true sine wave at 60 hz is just above B1 with 432hz tuning. Impurities in the sine wave will sound like distortion or noise. Adding a resistive load or a ballast can attenuate some of that noise, while smoothing spikes and dips so that there is less risk to sensitive electronics.
These are my favorite videos along with how to s. Also the way the fixtures are mounted to the pillars is an issue thats probably why its all getting wet. There is no sealant between the base of the fixture and the stone which will let water in.
In the house where I grew up from the mid 70's to early 90's, we had tube fluorescents in most rooms. At one point, a red and standard color ring fluorescent were combined to give a more natural light spectrum for one room. We almost never had to replace the fluorescent bulbs.
I think you mentioned it but some clear silicone around the fixture base may have helped. I really appreciate your videos, I was an electrician over 20 years ago before I got into Healthcare, I still do all my own stuff and here and there for family but have lost a ton along the way.
310.10(C) says that insulated conductors and cables installed in WET locations have to meet only one of several alternative requirements. one of those is sheathing in moisture-impervious metal conduit. therefore, the code does not require a conductor listed for a wet location when you are running cable through a wet location, if the cable is run through approved sheathing as provided in 310.10(C). there's nothing ambiguous or complicated about this. you can use NM in any type of location, include under a swamp, as long as it run through the right conduit
I worked for 38 years as a construction electrician, I started wiring houses, I wired over 250 homes, most were very large homes, and then I went into doing commercial work, I have worked on some very big projects, airports, hospitals, Schools prisons jails and some very large buildings, so I have a good idea of how things work. What kills me is how a lot of people just don't understand how much WORK goes into doing electrical work?, it's really hard work you must work in all kinds of places and conditions, AND!!!, people don't seem to understand why Electrical work is so expensive, just go out and buy a bag of wire nuts today and you will see why it cost so much. I do my own work at home/farm today and just to add a few plugs and switches will cost a few hundred dollars even if I do it myself ) : ?
Fun fact, those filaments are shorted, which is why they produce light. It is also why they take so much power to produce that light and why they get so hot. In fact, they are designed to eventually burn out. If the filament breaks off, the short is broken and no light is made.
Love your videos... they're not only educational and informational, but entertaining as well. It's nice to see you always referencing code so everyone knows it's not just opinion. Keep em coming! Thanks for all your hard work you put into these videos! 👍
I never really had anyone teach me how to troubleshoot in the right way, just a lot of error eventually turned into a streak of success. When you understand how the electricity moves, when you see the dumbest little things lead to the trips and the funky voltages, and if you get sent to a lot of troubleshooting calls, eventually all decent electricians will naturally go into doing exactly what he documents in the video. I wish this type pf content was more widely available a few years ago, this is good stuff.
The technical terms to your debug approach is Occam's razor followed by binary search problem solving (split in half). For all those that sat through the video, the answer to the video title is at 7:14 is the fault, and electrical code at 7:40 (note to author, use TH-cam timeline chapters to improve content quality). Thanks for making the video, I had this wet question buried in my mind for some time.
1:58 " A lot of times it shows up as a short circuit." I don't know what's going on out your way, but after 20 years now, I can't remember the last time I saw that as being an issue. I was very glad you told people that you usually start in the middle. That's a HUGE time saver on longer runs that have multiple devices. Why did you NOT at least caulk around the base of the fixtures???? If there's another issue, most home owners will only remember and understand ONE THING. That is you were the last person to work on these lights. Not to mention it was you that went through all of the trouble to explain how this is not ok because it's a damp or wet location.
I agree with Joshua. The most likely water incursion is at the fixture base. I might cut up an old bicycle tube, and wedge it into the gap. Also, I might advise the client that LEDs are available in that candelabra mount, and likely in his color preference. You could install them for the client, and get their gratitude (= repeat business).
Ever since I became a 480V member, my muscles have gotten bigger, women are coming up to me and asking me my name, and my hairline has filled in. Thanks, Dustin.
Buchanan's became my favorite way to put wires together. Sometimes if there were any chance of moisture I could finish the connection by filling it with silicone. Eliminates that corrosion in joints which can drop voltages and heat up which is not good for compressor motors like outdoor refrigerators. Plus if used correctly they will not looses due to vibration. A good hard crimp on the wires insuring mechanical and electrical connections.
I use the newer klein hybrids (grey/black handle)....by far my favorite hand tool. The only negative, is the smallest hole size to strip wire, is 16 awg solid.
Agreed, I finally switched to the hybrids and stopped carrying my linesman and croc jrs in my tool pouch. It's so nice to use one tool for multiple uses. and I can comfortably twist 4 12 ga. wires together to place under a wire nut with the hybrids. so not many applications where I miss carrying the linesman now. I used to be so stubborn about using multi tools. I hated the feel of them. But now that I realize how convenient they are, and my tool pouch is much lighter to carry. Wouldn't have it any other way. I still keep the other tools in the truck just in case lol
@@andrewbargo1 exactly. Was so use to my basic strippers, and having to pull out the linemans, back n' forth. I've been using the hybrids for a couple years now. We call our linemans "the electrician hammer" lmao
I have always considered if Romex is listed for use inside conduit? If you only have romex and need to pull it into a pipe then strip the outer jacket. Good video and evaluating the wet location and rating of the wire which should be THWN
Incandescent? No. But I like Halogen light. Damn hot though. Strip type LED looks cool too, but not the same. LED just doesn't have great looking 3000k light.
@@hgbugalou Nope, there are not. Heat cause LED bulbs to decay. An incandescent bulb is quite happy in all that heat but LEDs are electronics and prefer their heat kept well away from them.
@@roycsinclair sorry dude. You’re plain wrong. I’m a manager of an Electrical Wholesaler here in The UK. We stock and sell LED lamps for ovens and cooker hoods… very common if you know where to look
@@garyowen201 I cannot find them on Amazon AND every article I can find (even written in the last few months) say No WAY! There are some that say "range" but those are NOT for positioning inside an oven since the electronics WILL melt and burn in an oven. In short, provide a link. I wouldn't be totally unhappy to be proven wrong but until I can find one that IS labeled as for use in an oven I'll say you shouldn't even try.
I wired RVs for years, and someone stored our 12/2 Romex outside... I spent 20 minutes diagnosing a hipot fail on a unit, tracked it to a faulty 12/2 running to the second air conditioner, couldn't find anything wrong, ran a new wire. Cut apart the bad wire and all the paper inside was wet. It wicks in moisture like crazy.
It won't be inside the bulb, but in the lampholder (seen heat lamps arc and melt the solder on the bottom of a bulb, causing it to run into the lampholder and short). I agree a bit though, he was off the mark implying it could short out inside the bulb. That and not splitting the circuit in 2 right away. Seemed like he was milking the job
@@Ernesto11 The thing that annoyed me the most was him not properly repairing the problem(heat shrink?) and on top of that he did not clean the wires which were totally oxidated!
I like the chanel. Bro im a plumber by trade started doing that in 84 out of local 77 in Massachusetts then over the yrs due to boredom mostly i worked for a biddy doing residential electrical mostly but between that and what i learned on my own i would like to think im a fair electrician anyhow anytime ive done any job ive passed inspection with flying colors and even had them say wow nice job so and those are the two trades most guys shy away from and i chose them and dove in both feet i tell people yeah you like the way i ran that you should see my plumbing lol it helped with my piping skills being a plumber so lol anyway im watching and enjoying so keeo it going
Keep in mind that inspectors (for the most part) don’t know jack. I had an inspector ask me why I didn’t use a 10 amp breaker. After doing a service upgrade, I had an inspector tell me I needed a 600 amp service instead of a 150 amp service for a 1300 square foot house with all gas appliances.
600 amp service ? Lmfao i hear ya but they are not all like that and mostly are retired contractors themselves just trying to.subsidise their retirement income at least here its the case and usually are quite. Knowledgeable .. Maybe some are stuck in the past but most are up on new code stuff such as two ground rods in lieu of the single one for a 200 amp service upgrade here in fla theres a lot on poles that are weatherproof panels and of course meter cans etc that is common setup for mobile homes etc the last one i did the pole. Was so rotted out it was almost falling by itself needless to say it got replaced along w everything attached to it and it lol it had to be 30 yrs old and a clusterfiddle at best
No matter what you do water will find a way in, not to mention condensation, I know this sounds stupid and it's most likely against code but I always drill small drain holes in my junction boxes, I also always use single conductors suitable for wet locations in conduit
We will never stop using incandescent bulbs. They are obsolete for indoor/outdoor lighting. But they are used in extreme environments. One of which is your oven. They are also used in commercial and industrial applications were high heat is a factor. Where an LED would not survive
@@electricaf365 nobody’s talking about appliance repair.. We’re talking about changing lightbulbs. Whether it’s my pizza parlor with it’s giant rotating oven. Or a little lady down the street from me I’m going to change a lightbulb in their oven. If you consider changing lightbulbs appliance repair. Do you call yourself a mechanic when you change your oil or put air in your tires. Of course not so when I change a lightbulb in someone’s oven I don’t consider myself an appliance repair man. I’m just a guy who changes lightbulbs.
DO YOU KNOW IDEAL SAYS NOT TO TWIST WIRES WITH PLIERS THIS LETS NUTS COME LOOSE NUT IS TO TWIST WIRES AT LEAST 3 TURND OF WIRE TO PASS INSPECTION THIS COME FROM SALES REP AND THERE INSTRUCTIONS . CHIGAGO LICENCED ELECTRIAN 40 YRS Have found many loose nuts on wires were twisted with pliers .
@@richardrussell4288 I don’t get why you’d twist with pliers first, it’s a waste of time, when the wire nuts twist them for you (in addition to your reasoning).
@@richardrussell4288 interesting! So many people twist beforehand with the lineman's pliers. Of course, if you overdo the twisting, it creates metal fatigue and weakens the splice. At the other extreme, I've seen wire nuts that weren't torqued enough to keep them in-place over time. I prefer the wire nuts with two wings which gives you more leverage. Afterwards, I tug on the individual wires to make sure they're not loose. Some people wrap tape over the wire nut, which I think is overkill.
Incandescent lights are visually attractive when the bulb is clear and you see the glowing filament. LED does not look that way. The best imitation down with LED still looks like the light is vibrating like a fluorescent. So LED is good for most applications where you can use frosted bulbs, but they don’t look as nice as incandescent bulbs when you use clear bulbs.
Putting tape on it definitely seems like a hack, when you know that tape will get inevitably get wet, dry out and fall off and the short will reappear in probably just a few years. You absolutely should've used heat shrinking for a more permanent fix.
I used water sprinkler tubing put lots of silica gel packs and packed it with 20 year GE silicone as far as it would go. Then I put the water sprinkler tubes through PVC pipes for my outdoor lighting. Did this in 2003, still OK no sign of corrosion and the PVC is pretty well sealed with even more GE silicone. 4 light poles and the light over the garage. I used an ordinary timer which I have replaced once for the controls which is plugged into the inside wall of my garage.
@@ScottHz Thank you for the input, now I will stay awake at night trying to figure out a ventilation method, maybe a forced air situation with out vents at the terminal end of the conduit. I can always a small air pump at the end that starts at the timer in the garage. Off course the cooling fan would be housed in a box with a filter on it and would be connected to the timer. At the other end it would also have to have some sort of method to prevent bugs from getting in.
Thanks for a real world example and your care to check the codes. In my reading of this topic, one of the points brought up was heat dissipation, which is very different when one compares NMWU90 alone vs NMWU90 surrounded by conduit. The extra volume taken up by the cover reduces the volume of air inside the conduit, so the tables for conduit fill would need adjustment. Even though NMWU90 is not designed to be run inside conduit, I would guess that both mechanical and water protection would be better! Around here, inspectors will allow a short run for a few feet, which may help avoid an extra box for transition. The problem in your case was the lack of a plastic bushing and clamp to protect the wires from the sharp edge as they enter each light box.
When I was doing service, a lot of electricians I worked with liked to pull Romex from the hand hole of a pole light to the fixture just because it was easier than pulling individual conductors. One of them was even a master electrician. Somehow it didn’t occur to them that they could use cable and stay code compliant if they just used UF cable.
@@RB-xv4si well he’s right. And the insulation on the UF doesn’t have the same ambient temperature rating as romex or THWN. It will crumble with the heat from the metal halide or high pressure sodium lights. Nowadays with everything going to LED, it’s probably not a problem anymore. Oh, and I’m a master electrician and I’ve done it before.
@@electricaf365 thwn is fine for wet locations but it’s not ok to run into an HPS or MH fixture because it’s only rated 75*C. You need to splice to higher rated conductors prior to entering the fixture. Same goes for UF cable. Ok to run until you get to the pole light fixture. Congratulations on being a master electrician. I’m a journeyman.
@@RB-xv4si which means nothing by the way. Being a journeyman. Being a master electrician. Means nothing. A well trained monkey could become either if those.
In 35 years I've never seen an incandescent lamp cause a short, I have had them cause an arc fault. I am completely with you on the superiority of led lighting, but sometimes I wonder how some of your surmises come from.
I had the exact same question. Both sides of the filament have to be attached or there would be no light. Broken filament touches itself can't be a short, it is just simply open.
It's called running up the bill. milking the customer. I only get paid if i'm working and theres no more customers today so I'm gonna stretch this one out.
The part that is holding the two wires that holds the filiment is called a post. Living in Australia with different codes, stranded and solid wire, 240 volts etc. I still find your videos very informative and well put together. By the way ive been an electrician for 65 years.
Been working 13 hours today and come home and watch this. Ha. You give good advice and troubleshoot well. Had a job where the concrete guy and carpenter got together (you know where this is heading) to install floor receptacles in New deck addition. Hmm. Let's use steel bx in direct burial in dirt and concrete, with no fittings, into metal gangable boxes, and cover with a wp cover. Lasted 4 months. Then he calls me, his regular electrician. He's still waiting on me 2 months later. Last of list you go. I was thinking your job install looked about 10 years old then you said it. I really should record what I do, too. Sometimes the first line item on invoice should read "#1 Looked for weird shit.", as you said! How many times I've come to troubleshoot and a store owner says they already checked '_____' and that is exactly where fault is. The light bulb shorting you said...many electricians don't even know this. Keep doing what you do!
The glass 'rod' is often called the stem. The two filament end support wires can be called lead-in wires. The rest of the support wires are, well, support wires. Thanks for the great videos!
You should also include unprotected Romex run in a soffit where squirrels can build nests around the Romex then use those chompers to cause a spark. My boat builder neighbor did just this and the fire cost him 400 hundred thousand bucks. Afterward, he asked me, " shouldn't the breaker trip?" I said, possibly, but the spark comes first.
I love that you hold the leads from your tester in place by your thumbs. You can get continuity through your body also if your fingers are sweaty or damp. ;)
You are correct. However, with experience, you will learn to tell when that is significant or not, in a low resistance application or in high resistance application.
I mean he said he would have to cut drywall and that might not help much so it could easily be like $5,000 or $10,000 if they have to break up the foundation and repair which for 4 lights it's just not worth it
@@james10739 Replace with some sort of Solar/Battery powered lighting, if the outlet is not needed. Even if wealthy, homeowner's mason could be 2 years out on availability. I know an ornamental iron guy... no business cards, no van graphics.... he works for 5 families only.... in order..... so your project is likely 1-3 years wait. Wealthy people spend on their own stuff. But busting everything up sucks. If the guy that built that outside space made a plan... (I still have the carpenters drawings of my kitchen. I wish his work was as good as his ability to make renderings). A tradesman who assumes wealthy people do not pay big money for their stuff is a handyman. Identifying the short, and making a temp repair is fine, but I would sell client on the proper fix, if they wanted additional outlets, or wiring to a firepit all as part of a deck renovation. And if the guy is selling the house in a year.... "good 'nuff the girls he goes out with" (Yeah, stole that one from AvE.. he can not sue me, without showing his face! )
@@SF-tb4kb i just got screwed from the freeze in midwest power and gas cycles controlled outages insurance left me with the damages on busted copper pipes even though it was declared a state of emergency car insurance low balled us on two hail damage claims on brand new vehicles they never notify of lapsed insurance....the list goes on seems more like a scam to me
As a homeowner I found that out . I searched forever for some THWN at Lowe’s and Homedepot . Even The helpers at the stores always told me they didn’t carry THWN. Then one day I picked up a roll of THHN and read the label and it said also THWN!!!!
@@Nunya_Business_ thanks. i thought so. im a 30 year fairly experienced novice with automotive and household electrical. im still learning more though.
@@SgtJoeSmith THHN and THWN are the individual coated conductors for running inside conduit. They dont have the yellow or white sheathing that most assoc with Romex (brand name) or NM (non metallic) cable.
Best aspect of this channel and your teachings is the Use of the Code Book . That is amazingly good.. affirms what you say and assert with Evidence . Thats what i like to see . Not some bloke talking but Proiving what theyre saying is correct . Cheers mate, keep up the great work .
I got my first car for $50, because of a shorted bulb. The left rear running/brake light bulb had shorted between sections. The left turn signals didn't work, if the running lights or headlights were on. Also, you could turn on the running lights, flip the lever for a left turn and play the radio without a key. It was a '61 Ford Galaxy, with a tube radio, so it quickly discharged the battery. My uncle had taken it to the Ford dealership, and they gave up, so he sold the 10 year old car to my dad. He was really pissed off that I repaired it for 29 cents!The short was between two of the support wires, inside the bulb, and the defective bulb was likely installed by the Ford garage since my uncle wasn't mechanically inclined.
I am going to tulsa welding school to be an electrician i am a female and just love everything about this career and super excited to start my career in april and love these videos
The tungsten filaments are connected to lead-in or contact wires, that come in through the stem. There are also support wires coming from the stem to support longer filaments. The lead-in wires are often connected to the terminal contacts by fuse lead in wires, most of you can guess what those might be for.
@@SF-tb4kb Even with abuse that won't blow a typical lighting circuit breaker. Those tiny leads inside a bulb would vaporize carrying a 15 amp/115vac (1725 watt) feed if they touched. He's in lala land thinking (saying) they could blow a breaker and not burn up and blow open. Whatever!
@@zacharythebeau163 The posts that hold the filaments, I have always called "stand-offs." There might be a technical name for them, but any time it comes up in conversation (not very often) people know what I mean.
Good to see you! The video was great in both content and quality. Regarding the conduit, Ryan Jackson says the conductor is rated for what it is rated for. The conduit doesn't do anything to change what the conductor (or cable) is rated for. Once again thank you for the great content. I really enjoyed the service call edition with code reference. Take care.
I've been there done that. Wished I filmed everything. I was caught the first time filming my passion but a homeowner walked in and caught me and he called my boss and told him I was just standing around on my phone instead of working. He told me if he ever caught me filming or taking pictures on the job he would fire me right away for not being productive enough. I wish I would have continued because the stuff I seen as an electrician was epic and worthy of a channel. Those days are done and I have a boring life now that doesn't have many good events going on.
while not a licensed electrician i do most of my own and the family's wiring needs the wildest system i ever worked on was in an old church in Mexico ; the fuse box was in upside down( fuse was live all the time), the wiring to the chandeliers was lamp cord and were 20 feet up and we didn't have a ladder that would reach!!! So we nailed 2x4s to the straight ladder put 2 ropes on and 4 guys holding the ropes while i went up to wire in the lights . I did make them pull the meter to turn the fuse box right side up tho!!!! One of the coolest things that we did was run electric up to the stage/ pulpit area , the building was originally a sugar cane plant and made of 3 FEET thick blocks of limestone . To hide the conduit we cut a grove in the wall with a circular saw and a carbide blade. The conduit was held in with nails driven in a V over it and then plastered over. But the conduit bulged out some (roll pipe ) and we were having trouble getting it to stay in. An older man came over and showed us (we didn't speak Spanish and he didn't speak English), he picked up a trowel full of mortar, bobbed it up and down a couple of times to settle it and then swung it to splat right in the grove! the pipe was sucked in to the grove and we just had to smooth the top over a bit. The Moral of the story we Both learn some new things
These are awesome videos! I love these service call videos, they help a ton! If you could also add info about how you bid your jobs or how you determine how much to charge your customers, that would make your awesome videos even more awesome I think. But other than that, keep up the great work, these videos are really great!
Any time you tape in an environment like that, you should put a small zip tie on top of the tape. That way the tape stays put even if the adhesive on the tape fails due to heat
New wirenuts and a little noalox or whatever brand you want put inside will prevent the rust, always replace rusty wirenuts. You said it was too much of a PITA to install heat shrink, looked pretty simple too me. If it is too much of a PITA to do it right, don't do it in the first place. Your complacency will get worse, until it bites you, or someone else, in the rear...
When replacing the fixture on the stub, why no caulking or sealant? Maybe even a gasket or O ring. Just throwing it back on seems like you're asking for trouble.
Seals are often imperfect in operation and frequently have the opposite effect where water will make its way in but then cannot get out. You'll often find that occur where a seal edge at the top of a luminaire or enclosure exposed to rain fall will seep water through over time due to tiny dirt particles gradually working their way into the seal creating a path for water to seep through. This then presents a problem as, once water has gotten past the seal and into the enclosure, it'll flow down onto a bottom edge seal and remain stuck there unable to drain away as the internal bottom seal is invariably much cleaner having never been exposed to the elements. So the solution to this is to always give water a means to escape once inside an enclosure, which could mean having no seal on a bottom edge, drain holes, or it simply by leaving it open to the outside world.
@@UCCLdIk6R5ECGtaGm7oqO-TQ It sounds like you're going to have trouble no matter what so you should just make the best of it by allowing for faults - and not using BX in those instances.
trouble shooting is an art. You have a good perspective. the "wifi" symbol is not for continuity. It's for audible or tone. One point, a good incandescent lamp will show continuity or short
In 53 years I have had ZERO incandescent bulbs short out and the only time I've had a bulb shatter is when the bag it was in got tossed into the trash. Never mind the fact that non-incandescent light is frankly crap.
@@lw7238 It just causes eyestrain. I do note that LEDs have been improving in that regard, they don't flicker nearly as bad as they used to. The light is still not as pleasant as incandescent though, and the best incandescents are the halogen bulbs.
Fun fact in my lifetime I have never had an incandescent bulb short as far as I can remember except for the Christmas tree style micro bulbs. I've had the filament break and make contact then incinerate but always blow clear. There is a couple of useful remaining of the incandescent bulbs, heat it's a very efficient way of providing a little heat like say to keep a well house warm to prevent freezing or to keeping traffic lights clear of ice and snow... Technology connections... And I generally prefer them for outside lights. The market should be adopting LED, we shouldn't be forced to adopt them.
It probably didn't make difference if it was Romex or even direct burial cable the original electrician probably cut into the wire while stripping the outer sheath of the Romex or that jagged cut of the PVC cut into the unprotected wire once the sheathing was removed. Wires move everytime a current is produced so I would have tried to put a plastic bushing of some sort on the conduit...
@@heynow7363 if you ever seen a downed Power line dance like a Snake it's because of a extreme current flow to ground. This is a exaggerated version of what is happening inside a conduit everytime a current is generated. Usually so miniscule it's almost undetectable, but this why when wires leaving a ridged conduit, a plastic bushing is required...
BINGO !! - BING-Fricken-OOOO! The guy is a CLOWN to state that the PVC insulation on the (red) wire in the Romex "breaks down if sitting in water". That is utter BS considering that the high pressure water in house, sprinkler systems, and other WATER delivery systems are made OUT of the same PVC that makes up the insulation in the Romex. I absolutely HATE people in TH-cam videos who make uneducated, ignorant, and false/misleading claims! He needs to update the video and state this very important correction! Also, the dad give-away of the 'cut insulation' evidence mentioned here, is the "green" corrosion seen on the wires.
(UK viewer) Cool vid dude. Splitting a circuit mid point is often very time consuming and difficult to do unless you spend the time to measure resistance of conductors and estimate length of run etc using the values and it is at best an estimate but can give you a good starting point. Even harder to do on lighting circuits with switch drops etc and who knows how many JB's tucked away. Luckily you only had 4 points on this one to go through so hitting it one by one proved to be the best method. I do love a bit of fault finding but it can seem daunting when you are trying to work out how the previous installer was running on the day.
Nice video. Tape is fine but it needs to be good quality, heatshrink tubing is also acceptable us DB type. Buttsplice although acceptable IMO is a no go, I would avoid cutting building wiring so close to the conduit end just to put a butt splice. In the video you focused on the NM cable but the cable is not the real problem, the real issue is the workmanship of the installation. Yes, NM is not suitable, but also look at the ENT it does not terminate in a suitable enclosure.
No reason to use incandescent lighting? I can think of lots of reasons ranging from welding rod cabinets, the fact that they aren't as sensitive to power quality issues, they tolerate transients without flickering badly, and in many cases LED bulb driver circuits don't last as long as good heavy-duty incandescent bulbs so it doesn't matter if the LED's themselves have 50,000 hours of life when the circuit board burns out in 2000 hours or less.
It is called planned obsolescence. The light bulb companies have been doing it for 100 years. Early incandescents could last over 3000 hours. Sales high first year, sales low second year, bulbs don't last over 1250 hours third year... LED's, boards not designed to last either. Capitalism has its negatives for the consumer, but at least we can buy them. ;)
Hi Bob. I have probably a dozen of the first generation LED screw-in bulbs and not a single one has burned out yet. You are correct. The manufacturers started to rig them with cheaper components when they realized they would last practically forever.
@@MoneyManHolmes You are a lucky man. Bet they weren't cheap, I still had a lot of fluuorescents when they came out. I don't have any yet. They claimed fluorescents would last as long as 5 incandescents too, another lie. A predictable pattern. I will probably buy some eventually and when the first 2 or 3 die, figure out what the flaw in the circuit is and modify the design and fix them (likely cheap capacitors). Yes, I can, I just don't have a lot of spare time.
First time viewer, now subscriber, age 70+. Great way to teach us, the unwashed and wondering DIYer. ESPECIALLY liked that you actually looked up and showed us requirements in the NEC. Wow, a BOOK! Yes, I do know when to call a licensed electrician and write the check. However, you may have missed a teaching moment when the electrician uses a jackhammer to troubleshoot and then calls his mason buddy to finish the job? Kidding. Really enjoy your teaching style.
for the record... "Glass Stem" or "Glass Mount" :) now, the question on a lot of minds is "how can an intact bulb 'short' out a circuit? If the bulb is intact (ie the envelope is not broken), I don't think you can short out the contacts - even though the circuit could short through the socket... but not within the bulb. The "Simple lamp issue" would have to be faulty socket connections due to weather. Otherwise, excellent practical video! Thanks for sharing this.
ive been a commercial/industrial electrician for 15+ yrs and a overhead lineman for 5 yrs. i still love watching you teach your techniques because you take pride in your work..keep it up brother God Bless and stay safe
Ya, really took a lot of pride in literally putting tape on a known code violation, collecting money and rolling out so fast he didn’t have time to video the lights working.
I’d really hate to see your level of someone not taking pride in their work.
I can appreciate your sentiment. Dustin is a fantastic electrician however this is by far his worst video and something we’ve all done but should really keep to yourself.
I wish everyone would say God Bless. 🙏
The one important item that I always do when making up connections in a wet location is to make sure the wire nut is facing up. This prevents any water from pooling inside the wire nut and wire connections. It becomes ‘self-draining’.
You never want to caulk around the base of a vertical fixture, as caulking can also prevent any water that may have gotten inside the fixture and base from draining. Exterior light fixtures such as the ones in the video are not water tight. Rain water will enter via the top finial or around metal to metal joints or glass to metal joints. Also every exterior fixture has rusted rivets holding the lamp sockets or a socket with a rusted center (hot) tab.
Or you could just use the expensive WP wire nuts like an adult. LOL
@@jasonj4865 my thought also. Seems like use of silicon filled wn would have been a good plus up
@@jasonj4865 😭UL listed for damp environments too!
I do irrigation wiring as part of my lawn service. Even with the jelly filled wire nuts, I still point them face up so they can drain.
Yup, that's the rule with moisture: things get wet; the goal is to allow them to dry..
Well, actually there is one good reason to use incandescent bulbs. That is when you need light AND heat.
Such as in incubators or warming cabinets.
Yes gotta keep those chicks warm 🐣
@@electrofrying1685 what led lights are you buying with li-fi?
Or when they are totally enclosed.
Sometimes a good old incandescent is a great value...they just work.
@@heynow7363 incandescent outside is a pain, sodium or mercury fittings however are still great outside
@@darylsavage119 no doubt. I have an incandescent pole light on my corner of house 8 feet or so from corner. Lightning on this iron ore ground 300 feet from distribution lines apparently has blown a hole in 2 plus bulbs so far. I kept the last 2. I like the dual level motion detectors so there is a little light until you trip motion..
I drove ground rods on all four corners of home, attached to slab and specialty construction methods of walls.
I may just need to abandon the dual bright motion and go with a good led fixture. Looks like I need to drive a rod at that light, too. It's the only one on the hill ever affected. Crazy.
Cement is water permeable, the amount depends on cement mixture, hence it is a wet location when exposed to the ground or outdoor conditions. It does not take high amounts of moisture to damage romex so the small amounts of moisture that make it through the permeable cement can do heavy damage to the insulation.
The real problem with using type NM cable in a situation like this, even if it was for a 12 or 24 volt circuit, is the jacket and inner paper, even though the conductor insulation might be THWN, the paper soaks up water, the outer jacket holds it in, everyone has seen THWN fail eventually because of a scuff in the nylon outer jacket on the conductor after a few years, but that is on a conduit that is more than likely filled with water because of condensation and elevation seepage, now couple that with rotting paper.
Those fixtures were not sealed to the mounting surface. There was plenty of room for water to enter the splice area from rain or pressure washing. Also, there is no way to know if those conduits were continuous between fixtures or were punctured during construction. We have all seen crazy stuff like "direct buried romex".
I’ve taped many wire on service calls where they just need to get it going again. Only some of us will admit it though! Good find
I've been on service calls where it needs fixed NOW and then a date and time will be scheduled for it to be fixed right. Usually within a few days.
There comes a time where you can only do what the customer is willing to pay for. Really sucks when a couple of hours of troubleshooting has been spent to diagnose the problem correctly just to half ass the repair.
Twist the up and apply tape. I for one soldered them and then taped. I noticed the code book is different than when I retired many years ago. Never felt confident in the crimp splices but I saw them hold up in very bad environments. I considered the book as a minimum standard and approached wiring from an engineering standpoint--often better than the code. Engineering was my background.
@@paisleyprince5280 charge for the troubleshooting and say have a nice day call someone else.
So much wasted video on a simple fix
Seems to me that it would be best to always treat EVERY outdoor electrical component as if they were constantly soaked and use materials and methods appropriate for a wet environment as a normal practice. Yes, that would be overkill in most circumstances but you would never have to worry about anything being not quite enough.
@mariaelisakevin1 What about running a new length of replacement Romex through polyethylene tubing and attaching it to the masonry?
We need more videos of you working on real world shit. I love it
You can do a neat job of taping if you wrap your tape around a small 1/4" drive socket first and use this "mini roll" that you created to dispense the tape around the conductor tightly. Marine heat shrink tube with sealant is also a decent choice and maybe a braided sleeving for abrasion resistance. I love the 'real world' service calls. It's great content.
I use a short section of heavy gauge wire use a low torque small drill motor to turn it
I've NEVER had a bulb short out. They almost always burn out open.
Same here. Sometimes some flickering if the filament opens up and then moves a bit but I've never seen a broken filament cause a short. Although I once had a short when I tried to unscrew a light bulb on which the glass had separated from the base. As soon as I started turning the glass, poof....
Same. Wouldn't the filament just illuminate or burn up if it shorts? I also believe that most incandescent bulbs have fuses in them (Basically the wires leading up to the filaments are designed to act as fuses in cases of excessive current draw).
I think he was referring to incandescent light bulbs identifying as shorts (continuity) if you don't remove them from the circuit prior to testing-- as opposed to LEDs.
Incandescent are better in wet locations show it as a open circuit from I've heard so far LEDs that are rated for wet locations don't hold up. Maybe they have improved over the years...
Same here. I think Juice might be right. I've messed my words up plenty of times.
AS an electrician it is your responsibility to ensure the installation is safe. I agree with all your comments however I would have done an insulation resistance test (I dont know what the regs are in America but if the results show problems with the cables which I suspect they might in that installation. I would have disconnected that circuit and informed the client why it was disconnected and offered to give various quotes for fixing the installation properly. Yes I know they may have to have walls dismantled to achieve the same job or surface conduit etc etc but that is better than water getting back into that circuit and the wall becoming live and someone getting a shock. Awkward situation to be in would like to know your thoughts on this
Would never just “tape” it up where I am in Australia, always perform an IR test and in this instance I would definitely use resin heat shrink on the exposed conductors and then apply silicone inside the conduits and fitting and then outside around the base to completely seal that chamber and keep it free from moisture, like his fault finding methods but his repair work seems very cowboy to me
@@marcgaskett yes, it was so weird to have the guy that says, ‘Get out your code book’ just slap electrical tape on as a fix - where’s that in the NEC?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@ScottHz as if you’ve ever opened an NEC
He should have disconnected the circuit as it is unsafe. The circuit breaker was also not a ground fault.
Filiment is the 'spring' thing. It is held in place by two contact wires which go to the base & foot of the bulb
Of course Dustin knows what a filament is. I think he was speaking on the glass rod ..
@@MrMaxyield no. he wasnt
Filament actually, but I think we got the idea. :)
@@phenry5083 yes he was.
@@xenonram no, he wasn’t.
7:08 - The reason it's ALWAYS the last one you check... is because once you find the problem there's no reason to keep on checking. Its like when you lose your keys or something and you tear the house apart looking for them... you always find them in the last place you look because once you found them you stop looking.
I’ve been saying this for years and never met anyone else who thinks this way!
Its a metaphysical phenomenum- mena- menum- menum
I like it, that's good and so true!
Came to post this and knew it had to already be here…. Well done sir
RIP George Carlin
Dustin bro,I passed ny journeymans exam today and I wanted to say thank you for your videos you helped me out alot.keep up the good work brother
Congratulations! I wish you a full, and satisfying career sir! Welcome to the fold!
Congratulations!
Congrats, also handymen will now be the bane of your existence.
Congrats dude !!! It’s a rewarding career. I remember my instructor sharing advice with the senior class just before writing our national exam (ie Red Seal in Canada). You might have already heard this from a colleague or instructor. Mine said a newly licensed electrician is at the most dangerous point of his/her career. Newly licensed tend guys put a lot of unnecessary expectAtions on themselves. Remember, you can’t POSSIBLY know everything just because you are now licensed. A license is a minimum standard of independence and competence. Often, a competent decision is one where u decide to admit to yourself that you need to ask a more experienced colleague for guidance because u are not comfortable with the scenario you are in. I’ve been licensed for over 10 years now, and am not afraid to ask a colleague for their opinion. Equally, my opinion is often sought. Keep this advice in mind and you will be fine.
Congrats
I found the ending of this video to be just as satisfying as if seeing the actual fixture lights working properly! Thanks for the closure! 👍🏼
There's still *one* valid use for incandescent bulbs.. when the heat they give off is actually something worthwhile. EZ-Bake oven for your kid, chicken egg incubator, and maybe for stoplights .. Read something a couple of years ago where a city replaced the bulbs in its traffic lights and had to do an expensive re-engineer because they were getting caked with snow that the bulbs used to melt
Statements dealing with absolutes are rarely a good thing. Telling everyone they should never use incandescent bulbs is one of those times. I'm an amateur radio operator. Almost all of the LED replacements for incandescent bulbs on the market are noisy for RF. I avoid them whenever possible. Even the LEDs of neighbors 3 doors down can cause issues. Other than that, this was a great video and I learned a good deal.
Never use incandescents
@@electricaf365 , you are a Sith!
Don't run romex through ANY conduit. It's incredibly hard to pull this stuff through. Use separate wires-- THHW or whatever.
I had wondered about that, because at my mother in law's house, an electrician had run PVC conduit from the main panel, through the exterior wall of the garage to outside, up along the outside, then connecting back through the attic above the 2nd story.
The family was discussing whether they could use that conduit to wire something through the attic, and the insulation surely looked like NM-B/Romex to me, but everything I kept seeing kept mentioning "no Romex through any conduit" and I kept wondering what was going on.
the simple rule of thumb is never use romex (nm) outside the envelope of a conditioned building. uf cable is approved for wet, damp locations & for direct burial. pvc conduit is also great for outdoor installs. pulling uf cable thru conduit is a lot of work, & unecessary. 3m makes gel filled wirenuts for outdoor use. wirenuts filled with vaseline work good in a pinch. in all my 50+ years as an electrician & electrical inspector, i never had the owner of a high end house wanting to cut corners by using sub-standard wiring practices. the nec, (national electric code) is the minimum standard for wiring. always feel free to go above & beyond the code.
What I would recommend for stuff like this is liquid electrical tape it's like glue/silicone but electrically rated and if used right waterproof like heatshrink. I get there is no rating, but a layer if followed by regular electrical tape is vise versa, it's just a nice piece of mind.
Not sure if I missed it but main reason why it's frowned upon is because you lose amperage overhead. Conduit, especially EMT, can reflect the heat from high amperage back into the wire, so the 12ga-20a rating is for THHN in conduit when it has room to breathe and cool off. When 12ga Romex is in the wall, the insulation holds in heat like EMT does to regular pull wire.
Free-air THHN can handle at least an extra amp or two when compared to Romex or EMT, but for obvious reasons we don't do that. For heat buildup reasons, we don't do both. EMT or Romex (except when necessary, like in basements where the Romex is exposed in the ceiling joints and it runs down the wall 🧱 to an outlet) (use fittings at BOTH ends of the EMT)
I like the way you brought the code book into play while doing the job. Yea going through the code book just doesn’t interpret everything clearly at times. Much appreciated
Maybe if they didn't write the damn thing in Olde English it might easier to understand. Lol. It's like they don't want you understand it at times
@@nunyabidness2143 maybe find a line of work that’s not so complicated. ;)
@@ScottHz worry about yourself. I've been doing this a while. I'll be just fine
@@nunyabidness2143 Not worried about you at all - maybe don’t post TH-cam comments if you don’t want comments about your comments XD
@@ScottHz or maybe just don't be a douche. The code book can be complicated with the way they word things and the way inspectors interpret things. The work itself isn't complicated. Have a good one, or dont...
Conduit is wet because of warm, damp air inside the conduit, causing water to condense on the inside of the conduit due to the colder ground (and conduit). Romex also shouldn't be used in conduit because the extra insulation in an enclosed space can overheat.
Things must be different in America, TPS (is that called Romex in the USA?) is fine underground in conduits - it can be rated higher too because the ground is cool and cools the cable.
@@matticussilverman6179 I’m in Canada and only single leads can be pulled in outdoor conduit. From the #0 from the pole underground to a #14 for a 15A 125v circuit, only single sheathed strands are permitted in conduit.
@@markstevens1729 nec in us is same. romex shouldn't be in conduit due to overheating . but in this case with 12 g wire and only 4 lights i can't see it pulling no 20 amps. or 16 amps either at 80%
@@ronblack7870 ... there may be an outlet on that circuit so if part of the branch is #12 then the rest must also be #12.
It's a bitch to pull Romex through conduit if you have any bends. But in this case, it would be a bitch to pull it out to replace it with THHN, like code requires. Hope it never gets inspected!
I don't think there's anything you could do to make a conduit outdoors not "wet" water will _always_ get in unless the conduit is fully potted. If air can get in (which it will, eventually), then water will get in via condensation, and then it will accumulate. At least that's my take on it.
But with the right wire, it still works. I've seen plenty of wire running literally under water with no problems.
Water in conduit is usually from air. Condensation.
You're right air has moisture, warm air meets cold air and condensation occurs over time water will buildup if not vented for evaporation. It probably would've been better if the Mason had slightly dome shaped around the pipes allowing the water to escape...
Every piece of conduit in the ground has water in it
Primer, glue, putty
I’ll open you up to a really good troubleshooting tip for stuff like this If you want to see if you have a shorted line in the ground or if you want to know if you have to start taking fixtures apart.
If you go to the hardware store and buy one of those rubberized light sockets this design to hang from the ceiling in a wet environment to screw a bulb into, you know the old-school ones And keep it in your toolbox… If you run into a situation like this and you want an easy way to find a short, what you can do is disconnect the hot lead from the breaker and connect one end of the light socket to the breaker and then wirenut The black wire that you removed from the breaker onto the wire coming off of the portable socket. Then screw in a 60 W incandescent bulb, yes it needs to be incandescent for this purpose LED or CFL will not do.
What you are accomplishing by putting the incandescent bulb right at the breaker is basically placing a visiual current limiting resistor at the beginning of the circuit before any short could take place.
If that light comes on, that indicates you have a neutral return path either on the neutral or a ground wire back to the panel in some form or fashion. Because electrical current must return to the source in order to complete the circuit for that light to light up. If none of the other lights on the circuit were lighting up before, but this one lights up when you put it in circuit, then logically that would indicate you have an underground short or a short in the wall somewhere in a junction that’s hidden and you’re going to have to investigate.
The previous owner of my house installed a TT-30 receptacle with "Romex" on a 20A breaker. Luckily, he ran it in 1 inch PVC. Ripped it all out and ran proper THWN to a new RV panel. The old ground was nice and green.
That may have been compliant.
@@lloydmills9619 Nope. Conduit was underground and NM-B is not rated for "wet" locations. The conductors were also undersized.
So a 30a outlet on a 20a breaker. Not so goodly
@@rbryanhull Not so good for running AC.
@@timgraham7851 Thats pretty normal on an AC. In fact the MOCP is the breaker size. They dont have to atch on an AAC and usually don't. Its common to see #12 on a 30 Amp breaker or #10 on a 50. The breaker only provides short circuit and ground fault protection in those cases.
Incandescent bulbs are especially useful when running a generator or inverter because they create a resistive load on the system and convert noise into heat.
I use an incandescent bulb as a poor man's synce light to sync two generators to run in parallel..
An led build will not do this.
noise into heat? Uhm what?
@@sergeig685 AC Inverters and generators do not usually produce a perfectly clean and smooth sine wave. If you hook up an oscilloscope to the line and neutral, you will typically see "stair-stepping" , "saw teeth" or noise on the curve Putting a restive load on the generator plays the same role as the fuzzy cover on a microphone or the vibration damper between a motor and chassis. Resistance generates heat, be it a light bulb, a toaster or the brakes on your car.
@@946towguy2 ah, you did not mean "noise" literally . Yes, incandescents are far less finicky with irregular or unstable power supplies.
@@sergeig685 What we perceive as sound is oscillations in a medium being picked up by our eardrums. If you converted the oscilloscope output into an audio wave form or connected a speaker coil to the mains you will hear what the ac sounds like. , A true sine wave at 60 hz is just above B1 with 432hz tuning. Impurities in the sine wave will sound like distortion or noise.
Adding a resistive load or a ballast can attenuate some of that noise, while smoothing spikes and dips so that there is less risk to sensitive electronics.
These are my favorite videos along with how to s. Also the way the fixtures are mounted to the pillars is an issue thats probably why its all getting wet. There is no sealant between the base of the fixture and the stone which will let water in.
In the house where I grew up from the mid 70's to early 90's, we had tube fluorescents in most rooms. At one point, a red and standard color ring fluorescent were combined to give a more natural light spectrum for one room. We almost never had to replace the fluorescent bulbs.
I think you mentioned it but some clear silicone around the fixture base may have helped. I really appreciate your videos, I was an electrician over 20 years ago before I got into Healthcare, I still do all my own stuff and here and there for family but have lost a ton along the way.
310.10(C) says that insulated conductors and cables installed in WET locations have to meet only one of several alternative requirements. one of those is sheathing in moisture-impervious metal conduit. therefore, the code does not require a conductor listed for a wet location when you are running cable through a wet location, if the cable is run through approved sheathing as provided in 310.10(C). there's nothing ambiguous or complicated about this. you can use NM in any type of location, include under a swamp, as long as it run through the right conduit
I worked for 38 years as a construction electrician, I started wiring houses, I wired over 250 homes, most were very large homes, and then I went into doing commercial work, I have worked on some very big projects, airports, hospitals, Schools prisons jails and some very large buildings, so I have a good idea of how things work. What kills me is how a lot of people just don't understand how much WORK goes into doing electrical work?, it's really hard work you must work in all kinds of places and conditions, AND!!!, people don't seem to understand why Electrical work is so expensive, just go out and buy a bag of wire nuts today and you will see why it cost so much. I do my own work at home/farm today and just to add a few plugs and switches will cost a few hundred dollars even if I do it myself ) : ?
A bag of wire nuts in my neck of the woods is $140. I’m sorry but that makes me Sick to my stomach
Fun fact, those filaments are shorted, which is why they produce light. It is also why they take so much power to produce that light and why they get so hot. In fact, they are designed to eventually burn out. If the filament breaks off, the short is broken and no light is made.
This is true. Just like a heating element
Love your videos... they're not only educational and informational, but entertaining as well. It's nice to see you always referencing code so everyone knows it's not just opinion. Keep em coming! Thanks for all your hard work you put into these videos! 👍
I never really had anyone teach me how to troubleshoot in the right way, just a lot of error eventually turned into a streak of success. When you understand how the electricity moves, when you see the dumbest little things lead to the trips and the funky voltages, and if you get sent to a lot of troubleshooting calls, eventually all decent electricians will naturally go into doing exactly what he documents in the video. I wish this type pf content was more widely available a few years ago, this is good stuff.
Butt splices also aren't really great for solid conductors so the tape works.
The technical terms to your debug approach is Occam's razor followed by binary search problem solving (split in half).
For all those that sat through the video, the answer to the video title is at 7:14 is the fault, and electrical code at 7:40 (note to author, use TH-cam timeline chapters to improve content quality).
Thanks for making the video, I had this wet question buried in my mind for some time.
its going through cement regardless its a wet location water goes through cement, UF is not more costly so, they should have just ran UF
uf is more costly than romex.
It’s definitely more costly but still, yes it should be used to stay code compliant.
Water goes through cement?
@@mrseanpride6449 asphinctersayswhat?
@@mrseanpride6449 yes
1:58 " A lot of times it shows up as a short circuit." I don't know what's going on out your way, but after 20 years now, I can't remember the last time I saw that as being an issue. I was very glad you told people that you usually start in the middle. That's a HUGE time saver on longer runs that have multiple devices. Why did you NOT at least caulk around the base of the fixtures???? If there's another issue, most home owners will only remember and understand ONE THING. That is you were the last person to work on these lights. Not to mention it was you that went through all of the trouble to explain how this is not ok because it's a damp or wet location.
I agree with Joshua. The most likely water incursion is at the fixture base. I might cut up an old bicycle tube, and wedge it into the gap. Also, I might advise the client that LEDs are available in that candelabra mount, and likely in his color preference. You could install them for the client, and get their gratitude (= repeat business).
Ever since I became a 480V member, my muscles have gotten bigger, women are coming up to me and asking me my name, and my hairline has filled in. Thanks, Dustin.
Maybe I should try it. Top of my Head looks like I have the mange.
Buchanan's became my favorite way to put wires together. Sometimes if there were any chance of moisture I could finish the connection by filling it with silicone. Eliminates that corrosion in joints which can drop voltages and heat up which is not good for compressor motors like outdoor refrigerators. Plus if used correctly they will not looses due to vibration. A good hard crimp on the wires insuring mechanical and electrical connections.
I use the newer klein hybrids (grey/black handle)....by far my favorite hand tool. The only negative, is the smallest hole size to strip wire, is 16 awg solid.
Agreed, I finally switched to the hybrids and stopped carrying my linesman and croc jrs in my tool pouch. It's so nice to use one tool for multiple uses. and I can comfortably twist 4 12 ga. wires together to place under a wire nut with the hybrids. so not many applications where I miss carrying the linesman now. I used to be so stubborn about using multi tools. I hated the feel of them. But now that I realize how convenient they are, and my tool pouch is much lighter to carry. Wouldn't have it any other way. I still keep the other tools in the truck just in case lol
@@andrewbargo1 exactly. Was so use to my basic strippers, and having to pull out the linemans, back n' forth. I've been using the hybrids for a couple years now.
We call our linemans "the electrician hammer" lmao
I have always considered if Romex is listed for use inside conduit? If you only have romex and need to pull it into a pipe then strip the outer jacket.
Good video and evaluating the wet location and rating of the wire which should be THWN
No reason for an incandescent bulb? Try putting an LED into your oven. Other than that though, I agree.
Incandescent? No. But I like Halogen light. Damn hot though. Strip type LED looks cool too, but not the same. LED just doesn't have great looking 3000k light.
Point taken, but there are also LED bulbs designed for ovens.
@@hgbugalou Nope, there are not. Heat cause LED bulbs to decay. An incandescent bulb is quite happy in all that heat but LEDs are electronics and prefer their heat kept well away from them.
@@roycsinclair sorry dude. You’re plain wrong. I’m a manager of an Electrical Wholesaler here in The UK. We stock and sell LED lamps for ovens and cooker hoods… very common if you know where to look
@@garyowen201 I cannot find them on Amazon AND every article I can find (even written in the last few months) say No WAY!
There are some that say "range" but those are NOT for positioning inside an oven since the electronics WILL melt and burn in an oven.
In short, provide a link. I wouldn't be totally unhappy to be proven wrong but until I can find one that IS labeled as for use in an oven I'll say you shouldn't even try.
I wired RVs for years, and someone stored our 12/2 Romex outside... I spent 20 minutes diagnosing a hipot fail on a unit, tracked it to a faulty 12/2 running to the second air conditioner, couldn't find anything wrong, ran a new wire. Cut apart the bad wire and all the paper inside was wet. It wicks in moisture like crazy.
Honestly that wouldn’t cause a problem. Romex gets wet all the time. Doesn’t hurt a thing.
Never seen a light bulb fail to short... You really need to revisit your remarks on the topic because it really calls your knowledge to question.
I agree, the broken filament will just burn off.
It won't be inside the bulb, but in the lampholder (seen heat lamps arc and melt the solder on the bottom of a bulb, causing it to run into the lampholder and short). I agree a bit though, he was off the mark implying it could short out inside the bulb. That and not splitting the circuit in 2 right away. Seemed like he was milking the job
@@Ernesto11 The thing that annoyed me the most was him not properly repairing the problem(heat shrink?) and on top of that he did not clean the wires which were totally oxidated!
I like the chanel. Bro im a plumber by trade started doing that in 84 out of local 77 in Massachusetts then over the yrs due to boredom mostly i worked for a biddy doing residential electrical mostly but between that and what i learned on my own i would like to think im a fair electrician anyhow anytime ive done any job ive passed inspection with flying colors and even had them say wow nice job so and those are the two trades most guys shy away from and i chose them and dove in both feet i tell people yeah you like the way i ran that you should see my plumbing lol it helped with my piping skills being a plumber so lol anyway im watching and enjoying so keeo it going
Keep in mind that inspectors (for the most part) don’t know jack. I had an inspector ask me why I didn’t use a 10 amp breaker. After doing a service upgrade, I had an inspector tell me I needed a 600 amp service instead of a 150 amp service for a 1300 square foot house with all gas appliances.
600 amp service ? Lmfao i hear ya but they are not all like that and mostly are retired contractors themselves just trying to.subsidise their retirement income at least here its the case and usually are quite. Knowledgeable .. Maybe some are stuck in the past but most are up on new code stuff such as two ground rods in lieu of the single one for a 200 amp service upgrade here in fla theres a lot on poles that are weatherproof panels and of course meter cans etc that is common setup for mobile homes etc the last one i did the pole. Was so rotted out it was almost falling by itself needless to say it got replaced along w everything attached to it and it lol it had to be 30 yrs old and a clusterfiddle at best
If you siliconed around the base of the light it would most likely keep the water out. It is most likely where the water is coming in.
Water coming in wasn’t the problem
No matter what you do water will find a way in, not to mention condensation, I know this sounds stupid and it's most likely against code but I always drill small drain holes in my junction boxes, I also always use single conductors suitable for wet locations in conduit
@@gurjindersingh199 and grease all outdoor wire nuts with noalox or dielectric grease.
We will never stop using incandescent bulbs. They are obsolete for indoor/outdoor lighting. But they are used in extreme environments. One of which is your oven. They are also used in commercial and industrial applications were high heat is a factor. Where an LED would not survive
Ummm no. LED’s are used in commercial and industrial. Before that HID lighting was used.
@@electricaf365 So you’re going to put an LED in an industrial oven.
@@TheLoboindio electricians don’t do appliance repair. A little context, pal
@@electricaf365 nobody’s talking about appliance repair.. We’re talking about changing lightbulbs. Whether it’s my pizza parlor with it’s giant rotating oven. Or a little lady down the street from me I’m going to change a lightbulb in their oven. If you consider changing lightbulbs appliance repair. Do you call yourself a mechanic when you change your oil or put air in your tires. Of course not so when I change a lightbulb in someone’s oven I don’t consider myself an appliance repair man. I’m just a guy who changes lightbulbs.
@@electricaf365 i’m not your pal buddy
Fellow Sparky here. Just ordered my 2020 code book. Long overdue so thank you Dustin.
Hell ya my friend, enjoy reading...lol...though to be honest, you may get more enjoyment out of biting your own arm off 🤣
DO YOU KNOW IDEAL SAYS NOT TO TWIST WIRES WITH PLIERS THIS LETS NUTS COME LOOSE NUT IS TO TWIST
WIRES AT LEAST 3 TURND OF WIRE TO PASS INSPECTION THIS COME FROM SALES REP AND THERE INSTRUCTIONS .
CHIGAGO LICENCED ELECTRIAN 40 YRS Have found many loose nuts on wires were twisted with pliers .
@@richardrussell4288 I don’t get why you’d twist with pliers first, it’s a waste of time, when the wire nuts twist them for you (in addition to your reasoning).
@@richardrussell4288 interesting! So many people twist beforehand with the lineman's pliers. Of course, if you overdo the twisting, it creates metal fatigue and weakens the splice. At the other extreme, I've seen wire nuts that weren't torqued enough to keep them in-place over time. I prefer the wire nuts with two wings which gives you more leverage. Afterwards, I tug on the individual wires to make sure they're not loose. Some people wrap tape over the wire nut, which I think is overkill.
Incandescent lights are visually attractive when the bulb is clear and you see the glowing filament. LED does not look that way. The best imitation down with LED still looks like the light is vibrating like a fluorescent. So LED is good for most applications where you can use frosted bulbs, but they don’t look as nice as incandescent bulbs when you use clear bulbs.
You just got yourself another 1000V member. Me and my guys LOVE your content, keep up the great work.
Putting tape on it definitely seems like a hack, when you know that tape will get inevitably get wet, dry out and fall off and the short will reappear in probably just a few years. You absolutely should've used heat shrinking for a more permanent fix.
go with the spirit of the code. this is a wet/damp environment, the cable is sitting in water for substantial period of time
I used water sprinkler tubing put lots of silica gel packs and packed it with 20 year GE silicone as far as it would go. Then I put the water sprinkler tubes through PVC pipes for my outdoor lighting. Did this in 2003, still OK no sign of corrosion and the PVC is pretty well sealed with even more GE silicone. 4 light poles and the light over the garage. I used an ordinary timer which I have replaced once for the controls which is plugged into the inside wall of my garage.
Keeping all that heat from the Romex inside the conduit? :D
@@ScottHz Thank you for the input, now I will stay awake at night trying to figure out a ventilation method, maybe a forced air situation with out vents at the terminal end of the conduit. I can always a small air pump at the end that starts at the timer in the garage. Off course the cooling fan would be housed in a box with a filter on it and would be connected to the timer. At the other end it would also have to have some sort of method to prevent bugs from getting in.
@@silentvoiceinthedark5665 Sounds like a plan! ;)
Thanks for a real world example and your care to check the codes. In my reading of this topic, one of the points brought up was heat dissipation, which is very different when one compares NMWU90 alone vs NMWU90 surrounded by conduit. The extra volume taken up by the cover reduces the volume of air inside the conduit, so the tables for conduit fill would need adjustment. Even though NMWU90 is not designed to be run inside conduit, I would guess that both mechanical and water protection would be better! Around here, inspectors will allow a short run for a few feet, which may help avoid an extra box for transition. The problem in your case was the lack of a plastic bushing and clamp to protect the wires from the sharp edge as they enter each light box.
A plastic bushing for a plastic pipe?
@@electricaf365 if the plastic pipe has a sharp bur-round the edge off and you have a bushing
@@bruceanderson9461 it’s smurf tube bro. There are no sharp edges.
@@electricaf365 something was sharp-maybe you can tell me what damaged the insulation as it is important to this discussion.
When I was doing service, a lot of electricians I worked with liked to pull Romex from the hand hole of a pole light to the fixture just because it was easier than pulling individual conductors. One of them was even a master electrician. Somehow it didn’t occur to them that they could use cable and stay code compliant if they just used UF cable.
In reality it'll work fine as long as it's protected from UV sunlight. And Romex is much easier to strip than UF.
@@andyandy4459 this is not really the forum for hacks. Are you lost?
@@RB-xv4si well he’s right. And the insulation on the UF doesn’t have the same ambient temperature rating as romex or THWN. It will crumble with the heat from the metal halide or high pressure sodium lights. Nowadays with everything going to LED, it’s probably not a problem anymore. Oh, and I’m a master electrician and I’ve done it before.
@@electricaf365 thwn is fine for wet locations but it’s not ok to run into an HPS or MH fixture because it’s only rated 75*C. You need to splice to higher rated conductors prior to entering the fixture. Same goes for UF cable. Ok to run until you get to the pole light fixture. Congratulations on being a master electrician. I’m a journeyman.
@@RB-xv4si which means nothing by the way. Being a journeyman. Being a master electrician. Means nothing. A well trained monkey could become either if those.
In 35 years I've never seen an incandescent lamp cause a short, I have had them cause an arc fault. I am completely with you on the superiority of led lighting, but sometimes I wonder how some of your surmises come from.
I agree when a bulb burns out it don't short a short is working problems this guy I would not trust to do any work on my house or garage ...
I had the exact same question. Both sides of the filament have to be attached or there would be no light. Broken filament touches itself can't be a short, it is just simply open.
Haha true I've never seen that either in my 15 years
It's called running up the bill. milking the customer. I only get paid if i'm working and theres no more customers today so I'm gonna stretch this one out.
@@iamthundermug I charge by the job not by the hour you charge by the hour when you don't know what your doing
The part that is holding the two wires that holds the filiment is called a post. Living in Australia with different codes, stranded and solid wire, 240 volts etc. I still find your videos very informative and well put together. By the way ive been an electrician for 65 years.
Thanks. I love when you go through the code book. It’s extremely educational.
Been working 13 hours today and come home and watch this. Ha. You give good advice and troubleshoot well.
Had a job where the concrete guy and carpenter got together (you know where this is heading) to install floor receptacles in New deck addition. Hmm. Let's use steel bx in direct burial in dirt and concrete, with no fittings, into metal gangable boxes, and cover with a wp cover. Lasted 4 months. Then he calls me, his regular electrician. He's still waiting on me 2 months later. Last of list you go.
I was thinking your job install looked about 10 years old then you said it. I really should record what I do, too. Sometimes the first line item on invoice should read "#1 Looked for weird shit.", as you said!
How many times I've come to troubleshoot and a store owner says they already checked '_____' and that is exactly where fault is.
The light bulb shorting you said...many electricians don't even know this.
Keep doing what you do!
The glass 'rod' is often called the stem. The two filament end support wires can be called lead-in wires. The rest of the support wires are, well, support wires.
Thanks for the great videos!
Heatshrink with heat activated adhesive works well for that. How much moisture will that tape withstand?
Definitely more repair videos like this would be great. I appreciate all you do. Many thanks!
You should also include unprotected Romex run in a soffit where squirrels can build nests around the Romex then use those chompers to cause a spark. My boat builder neighbor did just this and the fire cost him 400 hundred thousand bucks. Afterward, he asked me, " shouldn't the breaker trip?" I said, possibly, but the spark comes first.
I’ve been on a couple “so ready to get out of there” jobs.
We all have..."don't hate the player, hate the game" kind of a day lol
I love that you hold the leads from your tester in place by your thumbs. You can get continuity through your body also if your fingers are sweaty or damp. ;)
You are correct. However, with experience, you will learn to tell when that is significant or not, in a low resistance application or in high resistance application.
million dollar home “this guy doesnt wanna pay to bring this up to code” seems typical too much money spent on the yacht and golf clubs
That's how they afford the home. Rich people are misers. Poor people spend money on junk food, liquor and cigarettes.
I mean he said he would have to cut drywall and that might not help much so it could easily be like $5,000 or $10,000 if they have to break up the foundation and repair which for 4 lights it's just not worth it
@@james10739 Replace with some sort of Solar/Battery powered lighting, if the outlet is not needed. Even if wealthy, homeowner's mason could be 2 years out on availability. I know an ornamental iron guy... no business cards, no van graphics.... he works for 5 families only.... in order..... so your project is likely 1-3 years wait. Wealthy people spend on their own stuff. But busting everything up sucks. If the guy that built that outside space made a plan... (I still have the carpenters drawings of my kitchen. I wish his work was as good as his ability to make renderings). A tradesman who assumes wealthy people do not pay big money for their stuff is a handyman. Identifying the short, and making a temp repair is fine, but I would sell client on the proper fix, if they wanted additional outlets, or wiring to a firepit all as part of a deck renovation. And if the guy is selling the house in a year.... "good 'nuff the girls he goes out with" (Yeah, stole that one from AvE.. he can not sue me, without showing his face! )
@@SF-tb4kb right 😂 meanwhile insurance low balls or denies every claim of mine...forget taxation insurance is the new scam of the government
@@SF-tb4kb i just got screwed from the freeze in midwest power and gas cycles controlled outages insurance left me with the damages on busted copper pipes even though it was declared a state of emergency car insurance low balled us on two hail damage claims on brand new vehicles they never notify of lapsed insurance....the list goes on seems more like a scam to me
Thank you. I ran Romex to my shed. Wrong. I ran it in 2" schedule 40. Right. I hate tight conduit in bad places. Fix it in the spring. Great lesson.
THHN isn't listed for wet locations either, but most are dual-labelled as THWN as well. :)
As a homeowner I found that out . I searched forever for some THWN at Lowe’s and Homedepot . Even The helpers at the stores always told me they didn’t carry THWN. Then one day I picked up a roll of THHN and read the label and it said also THWN!!!!
isnt romex THHN?
@@SgtJoeSmith Yes
@@Nunya_Business_ thanks. i thought so. im a 30 year fairly experienced novice with automotive and household electrical. im still learning more though.
@@SgtJoeSmith THHN and THWN are the individual coated conductors for running inside conduit. They dont have the yellow or white sheathing that most assoc with Romex (brand name) or NM (non metallic) cable.
Best aspect of this channel and your teachings is the Use of the Code Book . That is amazingly good.. affirms what you say and assert with Evidence . Thats what i like to see . Not some bloke talking but Proiving what theyre saying is correct . Cheers mate, keep up the great work .
In. All my years, never heard of an incandescent bulb causing a short,
Not from a broken filament. But I've had the glass bulb work loose from the edison base, and if someone rotates it bulb, the two conductors can short.
i have actually had someone tell me they had two high dollar LED bulbs burst into flames, and burn the fixture up
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunt_%28electrical%29
I got my first car for $50, because of a shorted bulb. The left rear running/brake light bulb had shorted between sections. The left turn signals didn't work, if the running lights or headlights were on. Also, you could turn on the running lights, flip the lever for a left turn and play the radio without a key. It was a '61 Ford Galaxy, with a tube radio, so it quickly discharged the battery. My uncle had taken it to the Ford dealership, and they gave up, so he sold the 10 year old car to my dad. He was really pissed off that I repaired it for 29 cents!The short was between two of the support wires, inside the bulb, and the defective bulb was likely installed by the Ford garage since my uncle wasn't mechanically inclined.
I am going to tulsa welding school to be an electrician i am a female and just love everything about this career and super excited to start my career in april and love these videos
"What is it, comment below?" It's called a filament and it's made of tungsten.
He's talking about the post that the filaments hang from.
The tungsten filaments are connected to lead-in or contact wires, that come in through the stem. There are also support wires coming from the stem to support longer filaments. The lead-in wires are often connected to the terminal contacts by fuse lead in wires, most of you can guess what those might be for.
@@SF-tb4kb Even with abuse that won't blow a typical lighting circuit breaker. Those tiny leads inside a bulb would vaporize carrying a 15 amp/115vac (1725 watt) feed if they touched. He's in lala land thinking (saying) they could blow a breaker and not burn up and blow open. Whatever!
@@zacharythebeau163 The posts that hold the filaments, I have always called "stand-offs." There might be a technical name for them, but any time it comes up in conversation (not very often) people know what I mean.
@@zacharythebeau163 it's the Filament Support
Good to see you! The video was great in both content and quality.
Regarding the conduit, Ryan Jackson says the conductor is rated for what it is rated for. The conduit doesn't do anything to change what the conductor (or cable) is rated for.
Once again thank you for the great content. I really enjoyed the service call edition with code reference. Take care.
If I have to tape something up outdoors or where it’s wet I use self amalgamating tape. if it has to be colour indicated I wrap over it.
I've been there done that. Wished I filmed everything. I was caught the first time filming my passion but a homeowner walked in and caught me and he called my boss and told him I was just standing around on my phone instead of working. He told me if he ever caught me filming or taking pictures on the job he would fire me right away for not being productive enough. I wish I would have continued because the stuff I seen as an electrician was epic and worthy of a channel. Those days are done and I have a boring life now that doesn't have many good events going on.
I like the “get your code book out” pause LOL
while not a licensed electrician i do most of my own and the family's wiring needs the wildest system i ever worked on was in an old church in Mexico ; the fuse box was in upside down( fuse was live all the time), the wiring to the chandeliers was lamp cord and were 20 feet up and we didn't have a ladder that would reach!!! So we nailed 2x4s to the straight ladder put 2 ropes on and 4 guys holding the ropes while i went up to wire in the lights . I did make them pull the meter to turn the fuse box right side up tho!!!! One of the coolest things that we did was run electric up to the stage/ pulpit area , the building was originally a sugar cane plant and made of 3 FEET thick blocks of limestone . To hide the conduit we cut a grove in the wall with a circular saw and a carbide blade. The conduit was held in with nails driven in a V over it and then plastered over. But the conduit bulged out some (roll pipe ) and we were having trouble getting it to stay in. An older man came over and showed us (we didn't speak Spanish and he didn't speak English), he picked up a trowel full of mortar, bobbed it up and down a couple of times to settle it and then swung it to splat right in the grove! the pipe was sucked in to the grove and we just had to smooth the top over a bit. The Moral of the story we Both learn some new things
These are awesome videos! I love these service call videos, they help a ton!
If you could also add info about how you bid your jobs or how you determine how much to charge your customers, that would make your awesome videos even more awesome I think.
But other than that, keep up the great work, these videos are really great!
Any time you tape in an environment like that, you should put a small zip tie on top of the tape. That way the tape stays put even if the adhesive on the tape fails due to heat
Not a bad idea
New wirenuts and a little noalox or whatever brand you want put inside will prevent the rust, always replace rusty wirenuts. You said it was too much of a PITA to install heat shrink, looked pretty simple too me. If it is too much of a PITA to do it right, don't do it in the first place. Your complacency will get worse, until it bites you, or someone else, in the rear...
Wouldn't putting dielectric grease on the wire nut help add some protection?
When replacing the fixture on the stub, why no caulking or sealant? Maybe even a gasket or O ring. Just throwing it back on seems like you're asking for trouble.
Seals are often imperfect in operation and frequently have the opposite effect where water will make its way in but then cannot get out. You'll often find that occur where a seal edge at the top of a luminaire or enclosure exposed to rain fall will seep water through over time due to tiny dirt particles gradually working their way into the seal creating a path for water to seep through. This then presents a problem as, once water has gotten past the seal and into the enclosure, it'll flow down onto a bottom edge seal and remain stuck there unable to drain away as the internal bottom seal is invariably much cleaner having never been exposed to the elements. So the solution to this is to always give water a means to escape once inside an enclosure, which could mean having no seal on a bottom edge, drain holes, or it simply by leaving it open to the outside world.
@@UCCLdIk6R5ECGtaGm7oqO-TQ It sounds like you're going to have trouble no matter what so you should just make the best of it by allowing for faults - and not using BX in those instances.
When you said "Stripper lineman's pliers" the picture that popped in my head... oh gawd.
More like that, teaching/troubleshooting well appreciated.
trouble shooting is an art. You have a good perspective. the "wifi" symbol is not for continuity. It's for audible or tone.
One point, a good incandescent lamp will show continuity or short
In 53 years I have had ZERO incandescent bulbs short out and the only time I've had a bulb shatter is when the bag it was in got tossed into the trash.
Never mind the fact that non-incandescent light is frankly crap.
LED's never last as long as they should. Crappy color on them also.
@@lw7238 I know it many not bother many if not most people, but I can see the 60hz flicker in non-incandescent lighting.
@@realityquotient7699 Not me, that's too bad. Does it bother you or do you try to ignore it.
@@lw7238 It just causes eyestrain. I do note that LEDs have been improving in that regard, they don't flicker nearly as bad as they used to. The light is still not as pleasant as incandescent though, and the best incandescents are the halogen bulbs.
@@realityquotient7699 That's too bad about the flickering for you, I never knew that this problem ever existed.
Fun fact in my lifetime I have never had an incandescent bulb short as far as I can remember except for the Christmas tree style micro bulbs. I've had the filament break and make contact then incinerate but always blow clear. There is a couple of useful remaining of the incandescent bulbs, heat it's a very efficient way of providing a little heat like say to keep a well house warm to prevent freezing or to keeping traffic lights clear of ice and snow... Technology connections... And I generally prefer them for outside lights. The market should be adopting LED, we shouldn't be forced to adopt them.
Pretty sure technology connections dispelled the need for incandescent traffic lights.
It probably didn't make difference if it was Romex or even direct burial cable the original electrician probably cut into the wire while stripping the outer sheath of the Romex or that jagged cut of the PVC cut into the unprotected wire once the sheathing was removed.
Wires move everytime a current is produced so I would have tried to put a plastic bushing of some sort on the conduit...
I'm gonna need some documentation on that last statement. This is not fluid dynamics, you know.
@@heynow7363 if you ever seen a downed Power line dance like a Snake it's because of a extreme current flow to ground. This is a exaggerated version of what is happening inside a conduit everytime a current is generated.
Usually so miniscule it's almost undetectable, but this why when wires leaving a ridged conduit, a plastic bushing is required...
@@heynow7363 it does vibrate a little bit under load
BINGO !! - BING-Fricken-OOOO!
The guy is a CLOWN to state that the PVC insulation on the (red) wire in the Romex "breaks down if sitting in water". That is utter BS considering that the high pressure water in house, sprinkler systems, and other WATER delivery systems are made OUT of the same PVC that makes up the insulation in the Romex.
I absolutely HATE people in TH-cam videos who make uneducated, ignorant, and false/misleading claims!
He needs to update the video and state this very important correction!
Also, the dad give-away of the 'cut insulation' evidence mentioned here, is the "green" corrosion seen on the wires.
@@steve-o6413 so using a plastic bushing according to nec is good, but using romex outdoors (against nec) is ok?
Just found the channel and had to sub. I love watching solid tradesmen doing what they do best
1:05 Googling says either "stem" or "arbor"
(UK viewer) Cool vid dude. Splitting a circuit mid point is often very time consuming and difficult to do unless you spend the time to measure resistance of conductors and estimate length of run etc using the values and it is at best an estimate but can give you a good starting point. Even harder to do on lighting circuits with switch drops etc and who knows how many JB's tucked away. Luckily you only had 4 points on this one to go through so hitting it one by one proved to be the best method. I do love a bit of fault finding but it can seem daunting when you are trying to work out how the previous installer was running on the day.
If you make a 1000 more episodes like this I will watch them all. Loving this content! 🤘⚡💡
Nice video. Tape is fine but it needs to be good quality, heatshrink tubing is also acceptable us DB type. Buttsplice although acceptable IMO is a no go, I would avoid cutting building wiring so close to the conduit end just to put a butt splice.
In the video you focused on the NM cable but the cable is not the real problem, the real issue is the workmanship of the installation. Yes, NM is not suitable, but also look at the ENT it does not terminate in a suitable enclosure.
No reason to use incandescent lighting? I can think of lots of reasons ranging from welding rod cabinets, the fact that they aren't as sensitive to power quality issues, they tolerate transients without flickering badly, and in many cases LED bulb driver circuits don't last as long as good heavy-duty incandescent bulbs so it doesn't matter if the LED's themselves have 50,000 hours of life when the circuit board burns out in 2000 hours or less.
It is called planned obsolescence. The light bulb companies have been doing it for 100 years. Early incandescents could last over 3000 hours. Sales high first year, sales low second year, bulbs don't last over 1250 hours third year...
LED's, boards not designed to last either. Capitalism has its negatives for the consumer, but at least we can buy them. ;)
Hi Bob. I have probably a dozen of the first generation LED screw-in bulbs and not a single one has burned out yet. You are correct. The manufacturers started to rig them with cheaper components when they realized they would last practically forever.
@@MoneyManHolmes You are a lucky man. Bet they weren't cheap, I still had a lot of fluuorescents when they came out. I don't have any yet. They claimed fluorescents would last as long as 5 incandescents too, another lie. A predictable pattern. I will probably buy some eventually and when the first 2 or 3 die, figure out what the flaw in the circuit is and modify the design and fix them (likely cheap capacitors). Yes, I can, I just don't have a lot of spare time.
Here here!
@@electrofrying1685 Which kid? Not exactly clear. Do you mean the TH-camr speaking, or a commentor?
Shout out to this Man paying it forward spreading knowledge to fellas who want to learn or expanding on skills
hahaha the end was so funny hahaha . dustin your the man
isnt that the best part.. when the lights go on and they all work
First time viewer, now subscriber, age 70+. Great way to teach us, the unwashed and wondering DIYer. ESPECIALLY liked that you actually looked up and showed us requirements in the NEC. Wow, a BOOK! Yes, I do know when to call a licensed electrician and write the check. However, you may have missed a teaching moment when the electrician uses a jackhammer to troubleshoot and then calls his mason buddy to finish the job? Kidding. Really enjoy your teaching style.
Thanks for watching and subscribing!
Tells us not to ever use incandescent lights.
Uses an incandescent light for the turn on reveal at 21:00 😂
HA HA Incandescent are great to use in specific locations. I'll take them over LED's in most situations.
That was actually an LED specialty lamp.
for the record... "Glass Stem" or "Glass Mount" :) now, the question on a lot of minds is "how can an intact bulb 'short' out a circuit? If the bulb is intact (ie the envelope is not broken), I don't think you can short out the contacts - even though the circuit could short through the socket... but not within the bulb. The "Simple lamp issue" would have to be faulty socket connections due to weather. Otherwise, excellent practical video! Thanks for sharing this.