Electrical Wiring Basics: Hot, Neutral and Grounding Wires

Anyone working with electrical wiring will need to know at least electrical wiring basics before it will be safe for them to work with this wiring on electrical circuits. Basic knowledge of electrical wiring will almost always include information about the 3 basic wires: hot, neutral, and ground.

Safety Precautions

Regardless of the type of wiring you're working with, working with electrical wires can be dangerous, and power to all electrical circuits should be shut off at a the fuse box or circuit breaker cabinet.

Neutral Electrical Wire

Electrical wires whose outer insulation is white are generally the neutral wires that are part of the electrical circuit. In connecting new wiring to old, white (neutral) wires are always connected to other white wires, using terminals or sometimes wire nuts.

Hot Electrical Wire

Just as the neutral wire is coded white, the power (hot) wire in the circuit is coded black. All black (hot) wires are connected to other hot (black) wires, using the same connecting techniques as with white wires.

Ground Wires

Typically, the third wire in an electrical circuit is the ground wire which is usually either bare or color coded yellow. This wire is connected to other ground wires or is connected to the electrical box, if the box is metal.