Electrical outlet Advice (Wiring for a newb!)

You have almost everything ass-about as far as I can tell from what you posted, which leads me to believe you have absolutly no clue.

Call an electrician before you kill yourself.

I'm with d'pad. Electricity is nothing to be ******* with. Get yourself a professional before you hurt yourself or burn down your house. I am totally serious.

Re: Electrical outlet Advice (Wiring for a newb!)


This isn't just a matter of both wires in a pair going to the top or bottom together. It is possible that those wires are simply a feed in and a feed out to the next outlet. It is also possible that one of the outlets is switches (i.e. controlled by a light switch) and the other isn't. These could be entirely seperate circuits or they may be tapped into elsewhere in the house. The point there is that there isn't any way of knowing whether it would matter from your description so maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't... You need to figure out which pairs are which and wire them up correctly from there.

Get someone who knows what they are doing to figure it out for you before you burn your house down.




How the box mounts doesn't matter much in the end. The type with the screw in the front and tabs that clamp it into place are just "old work" boxes that allow you to install it without ripping open the wall. When doing "new work" where the wall studs are exposed the screw in type are used.

Some general information on electrical outlets. (This is not an endorsement that you do it yourself.)

As long as you don't connect the hot directly to the common the outlet will work but there is a proper way to do it. While an outlet will work just fine with the poles reversed it isn't safe since most electrical appliances expect it to be wired a certain way. Plugs come with a small and a wide blade for a reason.

Most modern electrical outlets in the US come with silver screws on one side and copper screws on the other side. The black wires are normally connected to the copper screws and the white wires to the silver screws. NEVER connect a white wire to a switch.

The outlet has 2 screws on it and a small tab connecting the 2 screws. If the outlet is feeding from one to another the tab will be unbroken and one wire will go to each screw. 2 black on one side, 2 white on the other. The tab can also be broken off if for some reason the outlet has 2 circuits, for instance if one of the 2 outlets is switched and the other is always on.

My suggestion is to go to a hardware store and ask for a little advice. They can explain it while showing you the device. You might also want to buy a tester to make sure it is wired correctly.

I hope you weren't actually referring to "masking tape" but were just unsure what term to use. You should only use electrical tape of some kind on electrical devices. The other thing to consider is the age of the wiring in your house and whether that needs to be replaced. That isn't an answer you can get over the internet.

Well i ended up doing it myself and The plug works Great.....Its been tested and no breakers tripped and My House isnt on fire.

Ehrm....And i learned you just have to use a saw zaw with a metal Cutting blade to easily get out those old boxes (cause i have another one thats like that too)

I damaged the drywal a slight bit around the plug but i used Some Patching on it and it worked fine.I actually Do have a Good clue as to what im doing but i guess i dont convey it well online and dont know all the Technical electrical terms So i come off as an idiot.....heh.

There's still no proof that you've done it correctly. The danger that parados is referring to comes from the fact that most electrical outlets (I'm assuming they're the same in the US as most everywhere else) have only a "single pole" switch. That means that it only breaks the connection to one of the two wires when it's opened. Now in an AC circuit, if you transpose the active and neutral at the back of your outlet, then your appliance will still work, but when you switch it off, current may stop flowing, but the device is still live. Think about your toaster sitting on your kitchen bench, plugged into the outlet with the switch turned off. If the active and neutral at the back of the outlet have been transposed, then that toaster element is still live and just waiting for an unsuspecting finger to come to visible life.