Turning Off the Power Before Installing a Doorbell

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is Chad Smith and I'm a state certified Journeyman Wireman basically a electrician and I'm representing expertvillage.com. Today we are installing a new doorbell in our house here. The first step that you should take when you are installing anything that has to do with the electricity is shut the power off. Now I'm at the side of the house here at the main panel. Now when you open the main panel you would see basically a bunch of switches that is really all this is. How a circuit breaker works is what is does it say for a example your lamp goes out or something like that or you have some wiring in your house that is short circuit basically what a short circuit is if the hot or the neutral touch each other it is a short circuit. This would sense that and trip out. You would notice there is breaker with numbers on them. You have 15,20,30,50,100 basically what that number stands for is if its a 15 amp breaker that means that its on a like a smaller gage wire. 15 amp circuits are mainly for like you living room outlet and things of that natural. A 20 amp would be more for you one for you kitchen and todays new homes and new panels 20 amps would be for you bathroom and things of that nature. Now a 30 or 50 amp a 30 amp would be mainly for if you have a pool or a range a electric stove the 30 would be for that. That is what the circuit breaker is and if you have a 50 amp 9 times out of 10 that 50 amp is for you ac unit. So we are not going to miss with any of those we are just going to leave those alone and you could go through and research and figure out which circuit would be to shut that off but, just for safety sake what we are going to do today is we are just going to shut the main breaker off. Now when we shut the main breaker off that would shut your whole house off. So what you are going to want to do is shut your computer shut them down, shut your tv down, your video games, anything that is electronic. When you look in here you would see a breaker on most homes now days it is either 60,100, or 200 amp. They would have the number written right on top of the switch. In older homes you are going to find 60 and 100 amp breakers in the newer homes in the newer panels you are going to see a 200 amp breaker. The way that you could tell that that is the main breaker is some where in that panel it should say main service disconnect that would shut the power off to the whole house. If you don't see that basically its the largest number breaker in your panel. So in this panel right here it is a hundred amp, it is label for me, it says main. I'm just going to shut that off now and that way we have all the power off. So I'm going to go ahead and shut that off. Okay you here a click the breaker is off. I'm Chad Smith lets go ahead and get your new door bell installed."