About Electrical Wiring Tools: If you are an electrician or plan to do regular wiring, you must have wiring tools in your toolbox. These tools make your job easy, safe, and efficient.
Here, we discuss some common yet vital electric wiring tools you need for your home project.
We will also discuss some advanced tools you need as an electrician for your specialized projects and protection.
Pliers
You typically use pliers for cutting, gripping, twisting, straightening, and bending wires and cables. Any professional electrician must have various types of pliers for different jobs. It would be best if you had longnose, diagonal, and reaming pliers, which you use for tightening caps and fittings.
Cutting tools
While you can use pliers to cut wires and cables, you may need to achieve precise cuts without damaging the insulator or wire strands, ensuring reliable and quality connections. An example is the electrician’s utility knife, which you also use to strip insulators and cut electrical tapes.
Screwdrivers
You usually crimp a cable by inserting a connector into the appropriate crimper teeth. Then, you insert the naked wire end into the connector and press tightly.
Crimper
Sometimes, you must install different connectors at the end of the cables to facilitate connections. Then, press the naked wire end into the connector and press tightly.
Several cable crimpers
Tape measure
It’s usually vital to know exactly where to cut to ensure the correct lengths during wire stripping or cutting. As you may expect, you may encounter problems such as inadequate wire if you are to estimate the size.
For this reason, a rudimentary retractable tape measure is necessary, although you can buy other high-end ones.
Electrical Tape
You use electrical tape to insulate exposed wires and other conductor joints. Doing so prevents current exposure, which might lead to electrocution or costly short-circuiting.
Electric tapes come in different qualities, such as plastic, PVC, and fiberglass cloth, depending on your task and preference.
Cable Ties
Sometimes, you may need to connect many wires in the same connector to make a wiring harness. When that time comes, you need cable ties to hold the wires together to ensure proper wire organization and neatness.
Electric Drills
In this electrical job, you cannot avoid fixing new lights and electrical gadgets in various types of walls. Therefore, you will need an electric drill to replace bits when drilling bolt holes.
Although a coded drill works well, I recommend a rechargeable one, especially when disconnecting the power.
Level
Suppose you want to install sockets, fuse boxes, or long lights and don’t want them to appear bent. In such cases, you need a spirit level, or torpedo level, to ensure the correct and precise installation location.
Interestingly, you can use this tool for other home maintenance jobs, such as plumbing and masonry.
A spirit-level image
Wire/Cable Lugs
While your hirer may provide wire lugs, you shouldn’t lack them in your bag, especially for home projects. Lugs are terminals installed at the ends of your wires to connect to other cables, appliances, or devices.
Coaxial Connector
In addition to wire lugs, you need coaxial connectors to connect cables to various devices and prevent shredding. You will find many coaxial connectors, but I advise you to have a variety to avoid getting stuck.
Wire Stripers
Another vital tool is a wire striper for removing the insulation from wires. The tool features several holes for stripping the sheath from wires of different sizes when making connections.
It also comes with a cutting jaw for trimming wire ends after exposing the conductor. In addition, you may get other wire stripers that combine a stripper and a crimper in the same tool.
Fish Tape
You will also need fish tape to help you run wires and cables through conduit piping and other electrical pipes. Fish tape comes in a plastic casing with a retractable coil.
You feed this tape into a conduit pipe and hook your wire when it appears on the opposite side. Then, you retract, and your cable appears on your desired end.
A man using a fish tape
Fishing Rods
Fishing rods are necessary if you intend to install wires through walls, ceilings, under carpets, and other tight spaces. This tool features a fiberglass construction with a hook on one end to ensure seamless cable pulling.
Terminal Blocks
Sometimes, your wiring installation may need grouping many wires, especially during tasks like grounding connections.
In such a case, you must possess terminal blocks, insulated connector modules. You can also use terminal blocks for switch connections and mains-to-outlet wiring.
Electrical Tester
Of all the tools, you should never lack an electrical tester because it helps you know which wire has power. The tool may be a special screwdriver with an electrical indicator light in the middle.
If you touch a naked conductor with its tip, and it lights, that wire has a current and is, hence, dangerous.
Voltage Tester
Your voltage tester works as a tester to know if you have completely switched off the current from the breaker. Testing voltage ensures you have safe wires to work with without the risk of electrocution.
However, unlike the simple electric tester, a voltage tester displays the number of volts in a wire. You may also find non-contact voltage testers that detect current by passing it over the suspect wire.
Multimeter and Clamp Meters
You will also need a multimeter for the same job besides the above current testing tools. However, a multimeter is more advanced since it measures resistance to known circuit continuity.
It also indicates the voltage and amperage and is available in digital and analog types. You may also use a clamp meter, which measures the current without circuit interruption, especially in small spaces.
A digital clamp meter and a multimeter
Reaming Bits
During conduit installation sometimes you need to connect several pipes for a complete routing. Since these pipes are the same size, you need to widen their ends to fit into each other. Here, you attach a reaming bit to a drill and use it to widen these pipe ends.
Flashlights
As you may expect, working in darkness can be very dangerous, as you risk touching live wires. For this reason, you will need a flashlight, especially if you have switched off the power from the circuit breaker. I recommend a light that you can install on your head to free your hands.
Electrical Tools for Ensuring Safety
Apart from the above working tools, you will need these others to protect yourself from hazards:
- Insulated Gloves: These gloves feature various sizes to fit perfectly on your hands and protect you from electrical shocks.
- Fire Resistant Workshirt: since your job can bring dangerous arc flashes or fires, ensure you have this shirt to prevent burns.
- Safety Glasses: You will also require safety glasses to protect your eyes from debris, especially when cutting or inspecting wires.
- Rescu rod/ Hook: If your partner gets electrocuted, you cannot remove them with bare hands because the current may still be live. For this reason, a rescue rod is necessary for such jobs and removing large items from electrical current.
High Tech Electrician Tools
- Circuit Analyzer: This device is a digital tool for instantly inspecting the circuit to know its voltage, polarity, reversal, and more.
- Circuit Breaker Finders: As the name suggests, this device helps you determine which circuit breaker belongs where. It comes with a receiver, which you plug into the outlet. Then, there is a transmitter, which sends a signal to the receiver when placed near the connected circuit breaker.
Conclusion
While there are many electrical wiring tools, the above are the most common in your toolbox.
