{"id":13507,"date":"2012-02-18T13:33:09","date_gmt":"2012-02-18T20:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelswithmiranda.uskeba.ca\/?p=13507"},"modified":"2016-09-17T20:40:37","modified_gmt":"2016-09-17T17:40:37","slug":"adding-a-new-120v-outlet-from-an-existing-outlet-in-my-rv-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/adding-a-new-120v-outlet-from-an-existing-outlet-in-my-rv-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Adding A New 120V Outlet From an Existing Outlet in My RV (Part One)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning, I finally made inroads to adding a new 120V outlet in my study after getting some instructions from Croft<\/a> last night.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am not an electrician. All of this applies to my own rig using advice from a trusted electrician. I am not responsible if you use any information from this post and damage your RV!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yesterday afternoon, I started on the prep. I emptied out a couple of my upper cabinets, then pried up the bottom from inside. This is smart design; instead of running wires inside the walls, a lot of my wiring, both 120V and 12V, is run inside the base of the cabinets.<\/p>\n

As a reminder this is the outlet from which I wanted the new outlet:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As you can probably imagine, I’m tried of having that cord run across the room!<\/p>\n

After prying up the bottom, I was able to access the existing outlet. It had a plastic casing:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are the instructions for opening up the casing:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That says that you have to depress all four buttons. Who designs these things?! I heard a couple of things crack as I pushed each button in and jimmied it so it would stay depressed.<\/p>\n

The wiring was unlike anything I’d seen before:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This stumped me. I had no idea how to add the new wiring to this type of outlet. So I emailed Croft. Thankfully, he was online!<\/p>\n

He explained that it is not possible to add another outlet from this type of outlet.\u00a0 I would therefore have to either put in a new outlet designed to power an extra one or redo the wiring for this one. Here’s a graphic I made explaining that second option to make sure that I understood Croft’s instructions (no laughing!):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Croft said that installing a new outlet was the better choice. Marrettes and electrical tape do hold, but the vibrations in an RV still make this a less stable option. Since outlets and face plates are cheap, I decided to go with the safer option.<\/p>\n

So that’s where I was this morning. I trotted over to the home store to pick up a new outlet and, since I’m gaining more confidence in electrical matters and have other projects planned, a wire stripper and an electrical tester. I was very pleased to win 10% off my purchases when I got to the till.<\/p>\n

The first thing I had to do today was route the new wiring. I decided that I wanted it to drop down alongside the window inside the valance so that the wiring would look neat. I had to try a number of increasingly huge drill bits before I got to one that made a big enough hole!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I plugged the drill into an extension cord running to the other outlet in the room, by the way, and once the holes were drilled, I cut the power.<\/p>\n

Here’s the new wiring coming down from inside the valance (and a peek at the new green!):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I bought a cable raceway that will enclose the wiring and stick to the wall that is paintable. So once the wiring is done, it will be very neat and practically invisible.<\/p>\n

Here’s the horizontal hole I had to drill between the two interior sections:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That done, it was time to strip some wires:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That wasn’t enough exposed wiring and I ended up with this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Adding the wires to the new outlet was easy as everything is clearly labeled:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m not 100% sure about my wiring job, though, because of the distance one of the bare wires had to travel, so I sent a picture off to Croft and will wait for his approval before I close up the project. That said, I did turn the power back on and plug in the tester:<\/p>\n

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It’s upside down, but it’s clear that everything is good since the last two lights are lit up!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Be careful how you grab a hot outlet that isn’t mounted yet. My teeth are still rattling. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

I should have this project wrapped up tomorrow, after which point I will be adding a new 12V outlet! I’m now off to look at RVs with Jody and then tuck into a Gary supper. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning, I finally made inroads to adding a new 120V outlet in my study after getting some instructions from Croft last night. Disclaimer: I am not an electrician. All of this applies to my own rig using advice from a trusted electrician. I am not responsible if you use any information from this post […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1041,632,6,1226,635,5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alberta","category-canada","category-homemaking","category-lethbridge","category-north-america","category-rving","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}