How Electricity Works

Series Summary

Home owners are often intimidated by home improvement projects which require working with electricity. But do you really want to call an electrician to work on simple wiring you can do yourself? If your DIY project involves replacing an electrical wall outlet or light switch these free instructional videos should help. While this procedure is a fairly simple one, there are a few safety precautions which should be observed any time you’re working with electricity.

In this series of free instructional videos you'll learn how to do basic electrical maintenance and repair on your home. Expert electrician Danny Herb demonstrates in easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions how to replace a light switch and how to replace a wall socket. He begins by showing you how to turn off the circuit breaker, an essential first step to any electrical repair, and offers safety tips and advice for working with electricity. He shows you the tools and equipment you'll need to get the job done, and how to test electrical outlets to be certain they aren't still hot. He then shows you how to remove and replace a light switch and an electrical outlet with ease.

Video Transcript

"I want to talk to you a little bit about electricity. There are two main conductors. There's a neutral and a hot. Green is always ground, green ground, GR GR. The hot is normally always black or if you have a lot more circuits it can sometimes be blue, it can sometimes be red, but always the green is ground always. White is normally always neutral, always. Electricity always tries to find the quickest path to earth. Now, the ground is there because it's faster and electricity would jump to the ground first before it goes through the neutral because the neutral takes a while to get back to the ground, but the ground goes immediately. So just make sure that you don't touch anything that's hot because it'll travel through you to get to the ground."