What Outlet Should You Buy For Your Home _ Commercial vs Residential

Hey , what's up ?

You guys ?

It's Scott with everyday home repairs .

And today I want to dive a little bit deeper on a topic of conversation , which was brought up on one of my other videos .

Now I put out a video that was just basics on how to wire an outlet and some of the best practices .

If you haven't seen that video , you can check the link right here , dive into that and then get some of the basics .

Often .

It's just a great refresher uh things you might have already known , but just a refresher before you jump into a project .

But in the comments .

So there's over 1000 comments on that video from a lot of great people , everything from just weekend warriors like myself because I am not a licensed electrician .

So this is just entertainment purposes only .

And anything I say here is really just what I'm learning and my experiences .

It's not telling you exactly what needs to be done in your home .

One big thing is the national electrical code or E C is different for different states and cities , states and cities adopt different versions and that can stretch all the way back to 2008 or 11 , 14 , 17 or even up to date with the 2020 code .

So it's gonna be different for all of us in our areas and you do need to do the research and take that responsibility in your own hands .

I'm just sharing some information with you .

Now , one thing that came up is this outlet and what this outlet is , is just a basic 15 AMP outlet , but it is cheap , right ?

So if you go in the big box stores , you're gonna see this guy for about 50 cents , it's gonna be the biggest box , at least in our area , the biggest box there .

And it's not even what's called tamper resistant , which is , is the code in many areas today .

But a lot of people said I never used those .

This is made by the same brand Leviton , which makes pretty much all of the components you'll see in these stores , but it is residential , super cheap .

And I don't even know how they make any money off something that's 50 cents .

You have alternatives and those alternatives are going up to commercial grade .

So I busted out my hacksaw and I cut into that outlet .

Now , once I cut in , I just wanted to see the internals and what that looked like and here's what you get .

Now , I did the same thing for a commercial grade outlet .

So here's the commercial grade and I really want to see , uh , what am I getting for the difference between the 50 cent outlet and the $2 outlet ?

The guts of it , the thing that are actually going to hold up better over time or fail .

Um , what is that difference ?

And there are some , so let's jump in and take a closer look and I'll let you know in the end , am I upgrading ?

Is there a big enough difference that I'm gonna be spending the dollar 50 additional per outlet ?

Just because I see that difference is that big .

So now looking at the internals on the right hand side , we have the residential and then here on the left hand side , we have the commercial , a few things that stand out that you're not going to see in the video is just the weight .

So this residential is probably about half the weight of this commercial that's mostly due to the thickness of the plates here .

So you can see just the ground plates on the commercial are about 2 to 3 times thicker .

And then the plastic housing , this plastic housing is much thicker or at least denser and just carries a lot more weight structurally .

I have seen failures in the past where the top white housing and black housing separate and break apart .

It kind of makes sense now that the mounting tab runs through and then carries the structure through this plate in the middle that also grounds serves as your ground .

So now you can see if you , if you apply to any sort of torsion or twisting motion to this plate , how that could break apart those two housings .

And it makes sense why I've seen that failure in the past .

Alternatively , the commercial carries the load through outside cradle bracket , which I kind of like , it just seems like it's gonna take more load and then it's definitely not going to apply that motion between the two housings which could separate and cause failure .

Also , I have seen on residentials internal shorts before .

So using this little wire , I'll point out something .

So with the hot side here , your plug is gonna go in between and be sandwiched in this kind of U R V pattern and then that's gonna be hot .

Now , you only have this small piece of black plastic separating the hot from ground .

So if there's any sort of failure in that black plastic , you can cause an internal short and start to get arching internally .

And sometimes you'll see like black or melted plastic , internal and you can see how that is a real possibility and how that can happen with the commercial .

You don't have that .

So one , you have a lot thicker black plastic here and your ground is going through here and back to the external cradle .

So in terms of clearances or separation between hot and either go shorting over to neutral or shorting to ground , you just have much better clearances overall .

And probably the biggest thing and failure that I've seen over time is this U or V pattern as we , as we talked about , let me take this little plug here .

So if you plug something in , right , it applies pressure to that plug and sandwiches , it to hold it into place .

The problem is once those deflect out .

So once you start losing the distance between the top , then your plugs aren't gonna stay in .

So if you ever had an old outlet that the plugs just keep falling out , that means that these are deformed out .

And now the clearance is such where it doesn't hold the plug into place for the commercial , it's a completely different design .

So now you have this external arm that applies the pressure and then that's what's gonna push out when the plugs in and then push back in once it's out , once the plug is pulled out , that is just gonna be a better design and should hold up to many more cycles of taking the plugs in and out and hold your plugs in many more years than a residential would ever hope .

Now , are you using your plugs enough to ever see that that's really up to you .

But those are the big differences overall that I see between .

There's other things like the residential is gonna have these pushpins for 14 gauge wire , those are not recommended for use .

Uh really only want to use these terminals .

Uh It's just a better way and we go over that a little bit more in that the first outlet video that I have and then you're just not gonna have those available on the commercial grid .

All right .

So let's sum it up and will I be switching to the commercial group ?

All right .

So now we've seen the internals and one note Leviton makes a tonn of outlets .

So if you want to see the two that I specifically went over , look down in the description , I'll have links to the two different outlets that we went over too often in different products .

When you go for the upgrade and you pay more , the internals are actually the same between the like low medium and maybe high quality options .

That's not the case .

So you saw there's tangible design differences , the thickness over all the metal , the thickness of the plastic , the clearances , there's , there's really no similarities between the two .

So the two main things that sold me on it are the reduced chance of any internal failures with the commercial .

I think that's awesome .

And then also that plugs will stay in over time and the commercial much better than the residential .

You'll be able to pull plugs in and out without worrying about that U or V shape deforming and then not holding the plugs in with the commercial and having that larger lever arm that presses the plug into place that's just going to make for a better connection over time .

So I'm making the change here in a condo that I'm redoing there's 24 plugs .

So the material cost difference if I wanted to upgrade to a commercial opposed to residential is only $35 .

So really in the grand scheme of things , spending the time , whether you're doing it yourself or you're hiring it out .

Remember if you're hiring out , that's , this is good information to have because you can request these commercial plugs and get that better product installed in your home or condo before you take off .

Don't forget to subscribe to our channel .

We have videos like this coming out on a weekly basis to help you guys around the house with your repairs and improvements and we're gonna catch you on the next one .

Take care .