At my latest general home building course with Threshold I learned the basics of electrical work. Our tasks for the night were to hook up a light to a switch and also add a power outlet. Check it out!
The first thing we did was strip wire and make little hooks at the ends. Then we followed specific instructions to hook everything up. I wish I practiced a few more times because my basement doesn’t have lights and it would be great to install some myself.
Here’s what I learned
The main wire is called 14/2 and it has 3 little wires inside of it.
- A little white wire (neutral)- connects to the silver screw on the switch.
- A little black wire (hot)- connects to the gold/brass screw *sometimes red wire
- A bare copper wire (ground)- connects to the green screw on the switch. *sometimes green wire
After stripping 6 inches off each end of the wire jacket (rubber part), I curled the wires around the screws on the switch. There is no way I am going to adequately explain how I hooked up the wires but it worked, and then I moved up to doing a 3-way switch.
Hooking up switches wasn’t rocket science. I am not saying to do your own electrical right away, but I do encourage learning about basic wiring because it seems quite logical.
