Home Electrician Tool Set

If you plan on wiring, installing and connecting outlets yourself, you will need a decent amount of different tools. You will need measuring instruments and some power tools to get the job done faster. What tool an electrician needs for a home craftsman, what it should be like, read on.

Hand Power Tool

It is convenient to keep all hand tools in a suitcase, that is, in a special plastic case with holders. You can use a small suitcase or a bag with many compartments, but they are not as convenient.

Some examples of how an electrician's tool can be stored

There are ready-made kits for an electrician, but a good quality tool is expensive, it is not always possible to pay a fairly large sum right away. Therefore, many people prefer to collect it gradually, buying it separately as needed, choosing "for themselves" the manufacturer and capabilities.

The general requirements for electrical tools are quite extensive. I will not list all of them, here are some of them concerning our instrument:

• The handle of the hammer must be free of knots, smooth and secure. There should be a thickening towards the free end.
• The power tool must be free of damage to the case, cord and plug in good condition. The switch should work well, and during operation the device should not emit noise, knocking or vibration. The plug-in tool - drills, keys, screwdrivers, should not have cracks, dents, burrs.
• Hand tools must be designed to work with voltages up to 1000 V. Be free from damage, cracks, swelling and defects. Screwdriver shafts must be insulated. The insulation should end no more than 10 mm from the tip of the tip. For pliers, side cutters, etc., the insulating handles must have anti-slip stops with a height of at least 10 mm on the right and left sides, and 5 mm on the top and bottom.

There are requirements for all hand tools and measuring instruments. So what should be in the kit.

Gloves

If it is necessary to carry out a number of work under voltage, it is not enough to have a power tool with dielectric handles and you need to wear dielectric gloves. They must be included in the set.

Dielectric Gloves

They can have different voltage tolerances, but we need up to 1000 volts.

Check their suitability before starting work. They should be free of cracks, cuts and punctures. To check, blow air into the glove and clamp the flare, no leakage is allowed.

Screwdriver

A home electrician cannot do without screwdrivers. We need them flat and cruciform, and in different sizes. This can be a set of screwdrivers of different sizes and shapes, or one handle with replaceable pads. But since this is a power tool, the handle must be made of dielectric material with a finger rest.

Screwdrivers for electrical work

Proprietary screwdrivers have an insulated metal core, only a small piece of metal remains open. This reduces the chance of short circuiting and electric shock during operation. These screwdrivers are not cheap, but you can insulate a regular screwdriver with a heat shrink tube. The effect is no worse.

It's good to have a torque screwdriver.The fact is that when connecting the same machines in the dashboard, connecting wires to terminals or connecting household appliances, it is required to tighten the contact with a certain effort. This effort is usually written in instructions and expressed in nanometers. But since this effort cannot be measured with an ordinary screwdriver, they simply try to tighten the contact harder. But in order not to guess and twist at random, you need a torque screwdriver.

Torque screwdriver

They are made mainly for bits, a mechanism is hidden in the handle, which allows you to create exactly a given force. It is set on the scale at the top of the handle. Further, you work with it as usual, but when a force is applied more than a given bit, it slips with a characteristic sound. So it turns out that you tightened the contact with the required effort. What else must be said that in order to tighten under the standard requirement of 2 Nm, it is necessary to strain very decently.

Open keys

If you are going to be an electrician only in an apartment, then the keys may not be needed. But if there is a garage or summer cottage, then there is definitely nothing without them.

A set of open-end wrenches should also be in the electrician's set

You may need a variety of sizes, but mostly small and medium. You will need from 6 mm to 17-19 mm. Since usually this tool is operated with the voltage disconnected, it does not go insulated.

Pliers, pliers, wire cutters

All tools must have insulated handles, and the insulation must withstand voltages up to 1000 V, which must be written on the handles. Sometimes you have to work with these devices without relieving stress, because the requirements for insulation are high. Even if you are a non-professional electrician. Electric shock has the same consequences for everyone. Therefore, it is better not to save money here and buy a tool with high-quality insulation.

What tools are needed? Quite a large list, but you can do without some:

• Pliers. Needed when working with solid conductors. They hold thick and cut wire well.
  

  Power cord pliers

• Pliers or platypuses, sometimes called ducks. More miniature electrician's tool, with thin and long jaws. If the lips are just long and thin - these are pliers, but if they are also flattened on top - like a duck - these are platypuses. The debate about how to call them correctly does not stop. I think these are just varieties of pliers.
  This type is useful for electricians when soldering wires, working with stranded wires, single-core, but small in diameter.
  

  Multi-purpose pliers

• Nippers or side cutters. There are pliers in the pliers, but they are not always convenient to work with - they are located so that it is not always possible to crawl into the right place with them. Cutters with a sharp blade, with their small size, cope even with rather solid wires in diameter.
  

  Pliers and side cutters are more convenient to work

• Round nose pliers. It is rarely used and it is quite possible to do without it, but it is convenient to twist the rings at the ends of the conductors when bolted.
  

  Round nose pliers are not widely used

These are hand tools for the general purpose electrician, but there are also special ones.

Monter's knife

Remove the insulation from the cable or wire - this will require an electrician's knife, which is also called an installation knife. It comes with a removable blade that still extends. This is an improved and more reliable variation of the wallpaper or paper cutter.

Types of monter knives

The second option is with a folding blade. It works on the principle of a penknife, but again it has features, the blade is wider and thicker, there may be a hook at the end, which is convenient for cutting the insulation of cables.

In theory, an electrician knife should also have a handle that can withstand a voltage of at least 1000 V.But they are usually operated with de-energized, so in this case the requirement can be neglected.

Stripper - stripping tool

When installing electrical wiring, connecting household appliances, it is necessary to remove the insulation. If you have a certain skill, you can get by with side cutters or wire cutters, but until you learn how to do this, you will exhaust a lot of wires. In addition, even with solid experience with thin or stranded conductors, it is difficult to work with side cutters - the conductors are often damaged. Therefore, it is advisable to have a stripping tool or stripper in an electrician's suitcase.

Not the most necessary electrician's tool, but it is desirable to have it

They come in a variety of configurations, which have a slightly different mechanism of operation, but they quickly remove insulation and leave the wires intact.

Chisel and hammer

What else you cannot do without when laying the wiring is without a chisel and a hammer. After all, the wiring is laid mostly secretly, and for this it is necessary to do grooves... If the volume of work is small, you can also handle it with a hand tool - a chisel and hammer, but it is better to have at least a perforator at hand.

The grandfather's way, but reliable

Instrumentation

Any trouble with appliances or wiring problems need to be measured. To do this, you must have a multimeter in your kit. For a simple determination of the presence of a phase, an indicator screwdriver is required, and to calculate the cross-section of the conductor, you will need a vernier caliper or micrometer. These are all the necessary measuring instruments that should be in an electrician's kit.

The power tool bag should contain measuring instruments

Multimeter or tester

There are two types of household electrical measuring instruments - testers and multimeters. In testers, the measurement results must be calculated according to the appropriate scale and the deviation of the arrow, taking into account the divisor / multiplier that is set at the time of measurements on the switch. In general, you need to be careful. Therefore, probably, among electricians, multimeters are more common, which immediately give a result on a digital display, and even with units of measurement.

Multimeters are more popular - they are easier to take readings with.

What is important to pay attention to when choosing a multimeter is the accuracy class and measurement limits. The higher the accuracy class, the less error the device has. So, multimeters with an accuracy class of 2.5 give an error of 10%. Even if you need to measure the voltage in the power supply network of 220 V, plus or minus 22 V is a lot. If we talk about more accurate measurements, such deviations are unacceptable. Therefore, the most widely used multimeters with an accuracy class of 3.5, which give an error of about 1%. These are already more reliable results, which are enough for a home craftsman. There are devices with class 5 and higher, but their cost is high.

How to measure with a multimeter readhere.

Indicator screwdriver

The second necessary tool is an indicator screwdriver. This is a small device that costs very little, but is very convenient to work with. The presence of phase voltage on the conductor is checked by simply touching the tip of a screwdriver to a bare conductor, current-carrying part, or into an outlet. The LED built into the handle lights up.

An indicator screwdriver should be in the electrician's kit

This is really a very necessary thing for an electrician, with which you can instantly test the presence of dangerous phase voltage before starting work.

Vernier caliper or micrometer

Oddly enough, but this tool should also be in the household electrician. It comes in handy when buying a cable or wire. The thing is that the real cross-section of the conductors can differ significantly from the parameters declared by the manufacturer.And since the load with which it can work depends on the cross-section of the wire, such a difference can be critical and lead to failure of the wiring and even to a fire.

A caliper or micrometer is required to determine the real cross-section of the wire

Therefore, before buying any cable or wiring, it is worth measuring the diameter of the wire and determining its cross section. And based on these data, make a decision about whether to purchase these products. About,how to determine the cable cross-section by diameter, read here.

Power tool

Screwdriver

The most popular tool among electricians in this category is perhaps the screwdriver. When performing work on fixing cable channels, tightening screws, etc. Usually screwdrivers have their own case, but if there is none, then there are options for which the dimensions are small (screwdriver-screwdriver) and they will easily fit into the set.

Screwdriver-screwdriver in case

The presence of this group of tools is not at all mandatory, but it significantly speeds up the most unpleasant work - the device of the strobe. A variety of tools with saw blades are suitable for this, but two are traditionally used: a perforator with a blade nozzle and a wall chaser. A hammer drill, in general, is a useful and relatively inexpensive thing, because many have it. With its help, you can relatively quickly make grooves in the walls for laying wires - strobes.

Rotary hammer - from the category of tools that make life easier for an electrician

The perforator must have a number of nozzles that facilitate and accelerate the work, such as: crowns for installing sockets and switches, a set of winder drills, drills for drilling walls.

Professionals have a wall chaser in their arsenal. This is a specialized tool with two parallel saw blades that can be set to the desired distance, specifying the width and depth of the groove. These devices are connected to an industrial vacuum cleaner, so that a minimum of dust flies when working. But the price tag for this technique is high and hardly anyone will buy expensive highly specialized equipment for home use.

This is, perhaps, all the tools an electrician needs for home use. Many more tools will be useful, for example, a stapler to quickly fix wires, etc. But we have named the main list.