Easy Steps for Wiring Residential Electrical Outlets

Planning the Circuit

• Every circuit in your house is controlled by a circuit breaker in the main panel that trips if the current in the circuit exceeds its rating, which is typically 15 or 20 amps. You can add an outlet to any circuit as long as the appliances you expect to plug into the outlet won't add enough load to trip the breaker. Check the ability of the circuit to accept an additional outlet by adding up the current draw of all devices, including lights and appliances, that the circuit currently powers. Add the load of the appliances on the new outlet to verify that the total current draw falls below the breaker rating.

Drawing Power

• If you have room in your panel for a new circuit breaker, you can always create a new circuit for an outlet, or series of outlets. It is usually preferable, however, to add an outlet to an existing circuit by splicing into an outlet, switch or light fixture. Outlets have an extra pair of terminals for connecting additional devices. Switches don't have these terminals, so the usual procedure is to splice the black hot wire going to the new outlet to the hot wire powering the switch and to add the neutral wire for the outlet to the white pair joined together in the switch box.

Connecting an Outlet

• A standard electrical outlet has five terminal screws. Two brass ones are located on one side of the device, two silver ones on the other side, and there is a green ground screw on the bottom. The incoming hot wire, which is black, can be attached to either brass screw and the incoming white neutral wire to the corresponding silver one. If you want to continue the circuit, connect the outgoing wires to the remaining terminal pair. Maintain the ground connection in the circuit by twisting all the bare circuit wires together and connecting them to the green ground screw.

GFI Outlets

• GFI outlets are almost identical to regular ones, but they have an internal breaker that trips when it detects a current surge. This protects you in the case of a ground fault caused by wet conditions or poor wire insulation. To get this protection, you must wire the incoming wires to the terminal pair that is labeled "Line." The extra terminal pair, labeled "Load," allows you to continue the circuit to other outlets. When wired correctly, the GFI will provide ground fault protection for all devices wired after it in the circuit.