 Okay, today what I want to talk about, and I've talked about this before. It was a great post, but I think I need to talk about it again and do a little tutorial on how I deal with this. I've seen, and I had mentioned to me, twice this weekend, somebody told me about a fire situation of, guess what, backstabbing a receptacle. And then I kept seeing it pop up on my Facebook meme, so maybe that's somebody trying to tell me something about, maybe I should talk about this. What I mean by backstabbing a receptacle or device is I've got this here. Here's my device. It's a switch. It's a Decora switch. I've got this guy here, and if you look in here, you've got those little circles. Let me just get a screwdriver to point with. You've got these little, let's see here, these little circles that are in there. Let's go up to there and see that circle. What you can do is strip your wire, stick it in there, and it's called a backstab. Very, very quick, which I guess some people like, but the problem is you don't always make a great connection. And what can happen sometimes is it doesn't make a great connection, and then it starts to arc inside the device itself. That arc can cause this heat, that heat causes fire, and that is a very dangerous thing. So backstabbing your devices, I think is a no-no. I understand you guys who are doing condos and you guys that are doing houses and you're just all about getting it done quick. But I think it is worth it to hook these wires and put them on your receptacles. So I'm going to show you quickly how I do that. Now just to show you quick, I'll show you another problem with backstabbing. So I've got this device here. I've got preloaded here, I've got some Lumex, as you Americans like to call it, or Lumex as we Canadians call it, if you notice. I'm going to strip off, I've got my number 14 here, I'm going to strip off my wire. I'm going to stick this in the back here just to show you what I'm talking about. Stick that in the back. Stick that in the back. I'm going to hook my ground wire, I'm going to stick that around, sorry I'm a little out of practice. There we go. Grab my number one, screw it down. So I do that. Okay, I'm not sure if any of you guys are timing that, but we're only at three minutes into the video. There we go. I've got this here. Now let's see where I talk about you sticking it in the holes there. Here's the problem I find with these guys, is when I want to change this out, there's a quick release thing in there, but good luck trying to get anything in there, you see there's that little quick release tab, you've got to have a really skinny screwdriver to stick in there, and even then you're going to bust off the back of this. I don't care who you are, you end up busting this. So in order to get this off so I can change it, I have to take my handy-dandy side cutters and then I end up cutting it off, and I know you guys say, oh no I don't do that. Yeah you do. Let's face facts. So you cut that off and then I take this off, and now I've pretty well got to use this plug because what I have here is dangerous on the back, right? Because I have access to, if I want to use this plug, that's going to be live right there. So that's, and I don't want to have that. So that's why I'm not a fan of backstabbing. Anybody who's been in my class knows that I tell them that that's an option and that your bosses will tell you about it, but if you can get away from it, do not backstab these devices for two reasons, dangerous, and then when you change it out, it completely like this could have been reused, but now I'm going to have to go through and try to carefully pull that out. It's just don't do it. So quickly hook them. Again, not a big deal guys. Let's just take another piece of Lumex that I've got here, sorry Romex for you Americans. I know I've got more Americans and Canadians watching this. I'm going to strip it. So I strip that. I strip my neutral and I leave a little bit of length there. And I'm not sure if you guys tell me how much length you leave. You don't want to leave too much, but you don't want to go too little. I take that little hole in here and I hook it over. So now I've got a full hook and I do the same thing on my neutral and then I do the same thing on my ground. Now the habit I get into is I always want to drown first. So I take my device, I ground it. Now here's the trick with these things. You'll see if I can line this up on the video good enough. But when I hook this, you notice that the hook goes on the direction that the screw is going to go this way. So as I tighten this down, it's going to, it could pull this in and it could take this guy and spin it around there and get it tight. If I go on the wrong way, let's go like this. And this I see a lot and I battle with all my students on it until they get in the habit. It's a bit of a mind job. But if I screw this on here and I'm screwing around, you see how this at the same time could come out. So you want to make sure that the hook goes in the direction that you're going to go to the right basically, righty-tidy, lefty-loosey, am I right? Okay, let's go. So I go like that, tighten it down, right, boom. Then I take this, I've got them all already pre-hooked. I just make sure that again, this is an older one so I've got to loosen this off, loosen that off, loosen that off. And make sure that remember when you're doing your hot, your hot goes to the gold screw, your white or your neutral goes to the silver screw. Remember that. You'll be learning that if you're an apprentice. You should know that if you're a journeyman. And then I want to hook this thing on there. It's not loose enough. So I get on there, hook that on, tighten this on. Again I'm talking and stuff like this. I don't think that this is how long it takes. As you get better and better at it, it goes quicker and quicker. Am I right? Again, I know Evan Hussie is going to get on there. He's going to call me on this and say, nope, you've got a backstab because it's just quicker. You want to make sure you get this on there, again, got it on, oops, coming out. Thanks Keith. Going on like that. Urban, it's good to see you buddy. How's Montana? Go like that, tighten it on there. And again, and what I like about this hook, again, it didn't take me too long, is I got a good solid connection there, right? You don't know what kind of connection. I can see physically that this guy is screwed on there. This guy is screwed on there. It's all good. Thanks, Kevin. I got a great connection. Now here's the things you want to watch for on this one. This neutral here, if I was going to talk to my student about it, I'd probably tell him it's a bit too long, just a hair too long. This hot, I think is pretty good. I like to see this guy come under a little bit more, but the fact of the matter is, guys, I can see the connections. And to me, that is key, because then I can feel safe that I've made that good connection. Honestly, I think the more and more you do these things, the quicker and quicker you start hooking faster and faster, and you probably can come pretty darn close to going as fast as those guys who backstab them. I'm going to say something, I know it's going to piss a few people off. The backstabbing part, I think it's kind of lazy. And I've done it in the past where you just want to get it done. You strip it off, you stab it in, and you go. But you've got to hook that ground anyways. So what are two more hooks and going on there? Just get in the habit of it. It makes you a better, I mean, that's not a better electrician, but it makes you look to me like you take more care of your work. Again, you can see your connections here, that's good, that's good. So you want to make sure you've got those great connections. So that's why I think you should not backstab a receptacle, because you cannot see on the inside. And again, for those of you just joining me now, you see that if I cut that off, basically this device is now useless to me unless I take the time to take it out. And honestly, the amount of time it takes to take those out, I'm going to throw it out anyways. Let's be honest about things for once. Well, not for once. You know what I'm talking about. All right? So that's the way the Electric Academy does their devices. You guys, I've been having so much fun with this stuff. I've been getting actually got a flood of emails in, which I was quite surprising, because I've been running the site now for about three years now, four years. And I haven't been able to get it up and running the way I've kind of wanted it. I've changed the game. I'm talking to you guys all the time, which is so exciting to me. I'm getting into their interactions with you guys, talking on Facebook Messenger, talking through email. So please, if there's anything you want me to discuss, please send me a message. I check them all the time. Send me an email, chat at theelectricacademy.com. And I will make sure I address it. So there's been a few people that I've talked about. Evan, Steve, Irving, I've talked to you guys. I've addressed some of the things you wanted to talk about through Facebook Live. So I do honestly, if you have gotten value from these, please share it. If you want me to keep going on these, please give me likes because it gets more engagement and lets me know that you guys want to see this stuff. And I don't know if you guys want to see more of like little tutorials like this. I've got a pipe bending one coming. It probably will be in probably the end of September. I'm working on that. Just getting that all lined up. But little ones like this or little lessons about like how to deal with a worker you don't like. That's sort of stuff I'm into as well. So anything like that. Actually, Kelly gave me, Kelly Smith gave me a great one about grounding and bonding. So for lightning strikes and that, I'm going to get on that as well. So make sure if you have not liked this page, like this page. If you are looking for like a PDF that shows you a ton of online resources for electricians, make sure you go to the top of this page and hit the learn more button. Just give me your email. I'll blast that to you. It's Wednesday. When I send out the newsletter, I'm going to be sending out my top 10 apps that I think all electricians should be using. If you've been following me, you know that Evernote's going to be one of them. But not always. Hey Scott, Scott's another guy that's been, he's been talking and liking stuff. So I appreciate that Scott. Thank you very much. It's awesome. Have you guys engaged on the posts? Let me know of anything else you want to talk about. So again, this Wednesday, the newsletter that comes out top 10 apps that I think all electricians should have on their phone. Cause our phones, let's face facts. I know a lot of older for me hate them, but phones are part of our tools. Are they not? So if you agree with that, like it. And I, that will be coming out on Wednesday. If you're part of the newsletter, if you want to be part of the newsletter, hit that learn more. Not only do you get that PDF of online resources, you get signed up to the newsletter. I'll send that out. I send that out every Wednesday. If you don't like the newsletter, don't worry. It's not a hard sell. You just have to hit the unsubscribe button and just a little piece of me dies on the inside. That's all. Okay. I got to go because my class starts next Tuesday. So I've got a crapload of prep to do. I'm getting totally excited because it means a new class. I get them for six months and I love my job as some of you can probably tell by now. All right. Thanks for everything guys. Have a great day. I'm at my 12 minute mark, which always seems to be about right for Chad to sign off. So I'll have a great day. Work safe out there. And hey, Brian, and I will talk to you guys probably tomorrow because I've got a week that I'm still not teaching. And then I hate to say, but when I start teaching, I'll probably slow down to maybe two or three of these a week. Okay. Cool. Again, if you need anything talked about, let me know. Chad at theelectricacademy.com, like this page. Like, hit that learn more button and we will chat with you guys tomorrow. Have a great day guys. See you tomorrow.