Locate & Turn Off an Electrical Circuit

Series Summary

Home improvement projects can be some of the most rewarding—or most frustrating—tasks homeowners can tackle. Whether it's building a new deck, installing drywall, doing electrical repair, or just fixing the toilet, home repair and maintenance can be done successfully with the proper tools and the right knowledge. The key to making your home improvement project relatively hassle-free is a tactic that has worked for ages: Divide and conquer. With step-by-step instructions and safety procedures in hand, Sunday afternoons walking around the house with a screwdriver and a plan can resume.

In this free DIY project on video, learn how to perform basic home electrical repairs and maintenance. Our expert will take you step-by-step through how to replace an old electrical plug, including rewiring, as well as how to replace a non-working wall switch, two of the most basic issues homeowners have to deal with. You’ll even learn how to make an electrical map of every room in your home. So don’t be restricted by non-working electrical outlets anymore. Watch this series and get them fixed today.

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is John on behalf of Expert Village. In this video clip, I will be taking you through Part 1 of replacing an old electrical outlet. The first thing that you need to do is locate your service entrance. This is where all of your electrical will be run from throughout your house. If you have a newer house, it will have circuit breakers inside. If you have an older house, it may have fuses inside. The next thing that you need to do is locate the correct circuit that the outlet that you are working on is on, and go ahead and turn it off. After that, we are going to test the electric outlet to make sure that there is no electricity going through it. For that I am going to use one of these circuit alert testers. When I squeeze the button here, it will beep, and if I set it next to the outlets and it does not continue to beep, that means there is no electricity going through it. Lastly, I am going to go ahead and remove my outlet cover."