Arkansas HVACR NewsMagazine March 2022

HVACR NewsMagazine March 2022

Tech News

Preparing the wires

touch, but they shouldn't be exposed past the wire nut.

Getting the wires all ready for operation will take some practice, but it becomes easier with time. You'll want to make sure that you avoid nicking the conductors and that you have plenty of bare conductor space to work with (but not too much). Stripping back the outer jacket of the thermostat wire is the first step, and it's a deceptively tricky task. You'll need a quality wire stripper for best results. In any case, you start by making a cut at the top and then peeling the jacket back. When you've exposed enough of the wire, you can cut the peeled part of the jacket off. Be sure to cut the tips of the wires as well to get rid of any possible nicks you may have made when cutting into the jacket for the first time. Those nicks can lead to issues in the low-voltage wiring, including shorts and opens. Then, you can remove the outer wire to expose the conductors. Do this carefully, and try to get roughly the same amount of conductor exposed across all the wires. When it's time to put the wire nut on, the bare conductors should all be able to

Likewise, if you're hooking the wires up to the terminal block, you will want the bare conductors to make sufficient contact without being exposed outside the terminal block. When you have too much bare conductor exposed, you risk causing a short circuit by making contact with another wire or metal object.

Short vs. open

"Short" is one of those words that seems to have lost its meaning in recent days. In many cases, people will refer to any type of electrical