The number of USB-powered devices around my TV has drastically increased over the last few years. With a Roku, Google Chromecast (requiring external power) and an amazon Echo dot or google home, and even sometimes to charge a phone, I felt like the wires were a mass of black spaghetti in my TV area. To fix this, I decided to replace the power outlet with one that incorporates USB power. I was sure to get one rated for as many amps on the output as possible to future-proof the whole setup and also to quick-charge my phone if I needed to.
The tools used were a small ratchet screwdriver set (not pictured), l, Wire Strippers/cutters (these from HanLong tools are the best I’ve ever used) and a non-contact AC voltage detector. If you can’t find the screwdriver set, just make sure you get a flathead and a phillips head screwdriver.
The first step is to turn power off at the breaker box! To check that you turned off the correct breaker, use the AC voltage detector by simply inserting it into each plug of the receptacle. If it flashed red and blinks repeatedly, then you didn’t turn off the right breaker. This is an important test because many time breaker boxes are labeled correctly, or for some reason the builder wired some lights or sockets to other breakers but never noted it on the breaker box.
Once the power is turned off, remove the front plate of the current outlet with a flat-head screwdriver. Why the hell they chose to make this a flathead screw, which can easily slip and cause you to jam your screwdriver into the outlet alludes me. That’s just bad design! Then you can use the phillips-head screwdriver to remove the outlet by unscrewing the screws at the top and bottom of the outlet.
Pull out the old outlet and I had to cut off the wires. Inside this box should be 3 colors of wire. The bare copper is the ground wire. That safely handles the power in case of a short circuit, shunting it to ground. Then you should have a white wire which is considered “Neutral” and either a Red or Black wire. Sometimes you’ll have both red and black wires. These two are the “Hot” wires. what you may not know is that the white Neutral and ground wires are connected together at the breaker box, but the red and black wires are two phases of 120v each. They use these together in multiple areas of a house such as a ceiling fan where one wall switch controls the light and the other controls the fan, or to wire things like your oven or dryer which needs 220v. The first thing to do is always wire the ground wire up. There’s no hard and fast rule about it, but it’s the order I like to do things. In this case you simply use a straight end of the ground wire and clamp it behind the brass plate where the green screw is on the outlet. The green screw on this kind of stuff is always ground.
Then move on to the actual power wires. In our case, I had what looked like 4 white wires. I pulled them out of the box a bit so I could see what was going on. The painters had been messy and painted the black wires white. I scraped a little paint off and then wired them up. You can follow the instructions on your new outlet for how to do this. In my case, I stripped about 1/2” of the insulation of the solid core wire, pushed it into the appropriate holes (labeled “hot” and “neutral” on the outlet) and screwed in the screws on the sides to clamp these wires in place. If you have both red and black wires in your box, do not wire them both to “hot” like I have. You need to read instructions for your particular outlet to see what to do with those. You may be able to just terminate one of these with a wire twist cap and electrical tape. I’m not sure what the building code says about that.
Once you are done, carefully shove all the wires back into the box and screw the box into place. This outlet is a bit bigger than the original one I had, so I had to fiddle with the ground wire connectors and wires to fit it all in the box. Once the outlet is secure, put the new faceplate on and you
are ready to turn the breaker back on and test it.
You can see the before and the after results of how this can clear up the mess of wires visible in the TV nook. You may also want to use zip ties or better yet, velcro strips to tidy wires p even more so.
Before: After:
