Plastic Sheathing Electrical Wire by HomeAdditionPlus.com

If you recognize this, this is plastic sheathing electrical wire. It is used extensively throughout your home. Hi, I am Mark Donovan from HomeAdditonPlus.com. I am here to talk a little bit about plastic sheathing electrical wire and how to use and actually how to work with it.

Plastic sheathing electrical wiring is also referred to by many as Romex cable or Romex wire. Effectively, it is the same thing. Romex is just a brand name of plastic sheathing electrical wire. In addition, There maybe references to NM sheathing wire. Again, it is the same thing. It is just the NM stands for Non-metallic. The reason there is a reference to non-metallic, is that there is an addition plastic sheathing, metal sheathing electrical wire on the market today. The situation on metal sheathing wire, it is a little bit more difficult to work with, it is heavier, and more difficult to pull through holes.

With plastic sheathing electrical wire, there is either two insulated wires within a bundle in a bare copper or three insulated wires in a bare copper wire inside of the Romex cable. In that type of wire, it has three insulated wires. There is black or red for your hot power and one white for your neutral and there are wires for the ground. Whereas in a two insulated wire bundle, there is actually just black and a white wire.

If you were looking to buy plastic sheathing electrical wire, you will see reference to 14-2 or a 12-2, or 14-3, or 12-3. And the 14 numbers or 12 numbers stands for the gage of the wire in the circuit. A 14-gage wire is meant for a 15 Amp circuit breaker whereas a 12-gage wire is meant for a 20 Amp circuit breaker. The second number, the dash two or dash three again refers to the number of insulated wires within the Romex cable. Again, with the 14-2 or 12-2, you have two insulated wires. Again, black and white with the bare copper and with 14-3 you have three insulated wires. A black and red which are for hot applications and the white which is for neutral, and a ground which is a bare copper.

To remove the sheathing from a Romex cable, we got a little tool here that allows you to just slide over in of the Romex cable. You simply just squeeze on it and then just pull and you can simply remove the sheathing after pulling the tool. And as you can see here, we can expose the insulated wires. We can take the utility knife and cut away the extra sheathing. And with a pair of wire strippers, remove the insulation from the insulated wires. And finally, when buying a Romex cable, make sure you buy the right circuit breaker along with a 14-2 or 14-3 Romex cable. You should be using a 15 Amp circuit breaker. And a 12-2 or 12-3 Romex cable should be using a 20 Amp circuit breaker.

So that is it. If you have any other home improvement questions, visit us at HomeAdditionPlus.com today