They’re inexpensive and easy to use, and they help keep you safe when doing DIY electrical work. Solution: Test. Use. Verify. First, test the tester by holding it to a known live circuit, like a ...

Use the same techniques to terminate wires to receptacles as you did for switches: Strip off the insulation, make a hook or slide into a clamp, and tighten. The terminations will be different, though.

The apartment I will be moving into on Wednesday has three-prong receptacles in all the rooms. My GFI receptacle tester ($5 from the hardware store) tells me that most of these receptacles have an ...