The necessary set of tools for an electrician to work

If you plan to do the wiring, install and connect the outlets yourself, you will need a decent amount of different tools. Measuring instruments and some power tools will be needed to make the work go faster. What electrician’s tool is needed for a home master, what should it be, read on. 

Hand Power Tool

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

There are ready-made kits for an electrician, but a good quality tool is expensive, it’s not always possible to lay out a fairly large amount at once. Therefore, many people prefer to collect it gradually, buying separately as needed, choosing a manufacturer and capabilities “for themselves”.

The general requirements for electrical installation tools are quite extensive. I will not list all of them, here are some of them related to our tool:

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

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

Gloves

If it is necessary to perform a number of works 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.

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

Before starting work, check their suitability. They should not have cracks, cuts or punctures. To check, blow air into the glove and clamp the bell, no leakage is allowed.

Screwdriver

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

Branded screwdrivers have an insulated metal shaft, leaving only a small piece of metal exposed. This reduces the chance of short circuit and electric shock during operation. Such screwdrivers are not cheap, but you can insulate an ordinary screwdriver with heat shrink tubing. The effect is no better.

Good to have a torque wrench. The fact is that when connecting the same machines in the shield, connecting wires to the terminals or when connecting household appliances, it is required to tighten the contact with a certain force. This force is usually prescribed in the instructions and is expressed in nanometers. But since this force 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.

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

Open keys

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

You may need a variety of sizes, but mostly small and medium. You will need from 6 mm to 17–19 mm. Since this tool is usually operated with the power off, it does not come 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. These devices sometimes have to work without removing the voltage, 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 and buy a tool with high-quality insulation.

What tools are needed? Quite a long list, but some can be dispensed with:

• Pliers. Needed when working with single-core conductors. They hold thick wire well and bite through the wire.
  

  

• Pliers or platypuses, sometimes called ducks. A 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’s – these are platypuses. Disputes about how to properly call them do not stop. I think it’s just a variety of pliers. This type is useful for electricians when soldering wires, working with stranded wires, single-core, but of small diameter.
  

  

• Nippers or side cutters. There are wire cutters in the pliers, but it is not always convenient to work with them – they are located in such a way that it is not always possible to crawl them to the right place. Wire cutters with a sharp blade, with their small size, even cope with fairly solid diameter wires.
  

  

• 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.
  

  

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

Mounter’s knife

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

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 can be a hook at the end, which is convenient to cut the cable insulation.

In theory, a fitter’s knife should also have a handle that can withstand a voltage of at least 1000 V. But they usually work with the voltage removed, 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 by the time 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 cores are often damaged. Therefore, it is desirable to have an electrician’s suitcase with a stripping tool or a stripper.

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

Chisel and hammer

What else you can’t do without when laying wiring is without a chisel and a hammer. After all, the wiring is laid mostly covertly, and for this it is necessary to make strobes. If the amount of work is small, you can handle it with a hand tool – a chisel with a hammer, but it is better to have at least a puncher on hand.

Instrumentation

For any trouble with household appliances or wiring problems, measurements must be taken. To do this, you must have a multimeter in your kit. To simply determine the presence of a phase, you will need an indicator screwdriver, and to calculate the cross section of the conductor, you will need a caliper or micrometer. These are all the necessary measuring instruments that an electrician should have in his kit.

Multimeter or tester

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

What is important to pay attention to when choosing a multimeter is the accuracy class and measurement limits. The higher the accuracy class, the lower the error of the device. So, multimeters with an accuracy class of 2,5 give an error of 10%. Even if you need to measure the voltage in the 220 V power supply, plus or minus 22 V is a lot. If we talk about more accurate measurements, such deviations are unacceptable. Therefore, multimeters with an accuracy class of 3,5 are most widely used, which give an error of about 1%. These are already more reliable results, which are enough for a home master. There are devices with class 5 and above, but their cost is high.

Learn how to measure with a multimeter here.

Indicator screwdriver

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

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

Vernier caliper or micrometer

Oddly enough, but a home electrician should also have this tool. It will come in handy when buying a cable or wire. The thing is that the actual 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 wiring failure and even to a fire.

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

Power tools

Shurupovort

The most popular tool for electricians in this category is perhaps a 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 that are small in size (screwdriver) and they can easily be included in the set.

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

To the puncher, you must have a number of nozzles that facilitate and speed up the work, such as: crowns for installing sockets and switches, a set of drill bits, drills for drilling walls.

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

This is perhaps the entire tool 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.