Episode 1 – Electrical Testers and Multi-meters (Electricians’ Test Equipment)

Electrical testing equipment that ELECTRICIANS use.Welcome friends!  In this episode we talk about the many different types of electrical testing equipment that electricians use daily.  This is a list of the multi-meters and electrical testers that I use, as an electrician, most often.  We cover, plug testers, non contact voltage testers, toners, multi-meters, amp clamp and ammeters, continuity, amperage, voltage, capacitance, and resistance.  If you’re looking to buy a new tester or just don’t know where to begin, this episode is a great place to start. Below is a complete transcript of everything talked about in this video.  Also further down are some links to these products if you’re interested in buying anything you saw me talk about. Complete Video Transcript(00:01)Hello friends, I’m Dustin from Electrician U, and today I want to talk about testers.So there are a lot of different testers that electricians use for various different purposes.  There are some testers that I’m not going to talk about, but for the majority of my work for every single day these are the testers that I’m going to go out to my truck and grab.(00:34)Starting out, this guy is pretty important.  This is a plug tester specifically, so if you wire a house and you want to go and figure out if all of the plugs are working and are wired right – or if you have a dead circuit and you just need a place to start, this thing works great.  It has 3 little lights on it, if any two of them light up a certain way – there’s a little code on the front that describes if your ground and your hot are wired backwards or your hot and neutral are reversed, or everything is just ok, you did it right.  So this guy doing residential work, actually just doing all kinds of work – this guy is a really handy tool to have – go get one.(01:19)Next thing that I’m embarrassed to even be talking about is this guy.  It is a non-contact voltage tester.  I would tell you to break this, throw this mother fucker away and don’t ever use it – but there are some times where it is useful to have.  The reason that I talk badly about it is a lot of apprentices grab these things and stick them in something and think “I know everything that’s going on with the circuit because this little light beeps”  there are so many times where these things will lie to you, for instance if you stick it into a box and the thing starts beeping at you, you have no idea if the ground is what it’s testing that has voltage on it, or if the neutral is testing that it has voltage on it.  Even in the pamphlet that these things come with, there’s a whole list of reasons why this may not work.  One thing it says that if your feet are not solidly grounded, or there isn’t an effective ground fault path for you, that it’s not going to work.  That’s not true at all, I’ve used it.  So there’s a lot of misinformation just in the manuals alone on these things.  I’ve seen more electricians get Want to learn more about becoming an electrician or mastering the craft? Visit ElectricianU.com for courses, resources, and everything you need to succeed!

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