Stabs & Pigtails

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jmellc

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Durham, NC
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Facility Maintenance Tech. Licensed Electrician
Did some troubleshooting yesterday, had a surprise. Someone pigtailed most of the receptacles in a room but then backstabbed them. He had the thing half right anyway. 1st time I remember seeing this.
 
jmellc said:
Did some troubleshooting yesterday, had a surprise. Someone pigtailed most of the receptacles in a room but then backstabbed them. He had the thing half right anyway. 1st time I remember seeing this.
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Kinda like putting on a suit to haul off the trash:slaphead:
 
jmellc said:
Did some troubleshooting yesterday, had a surprise. Someone pigtailed most of the receptacles in a room but then backstabbed them. He had the thing half right anyway. 1st time I remember seeing this.
Click to expand...

How old was the installation? How long were the conductors stripped? What was plugged into the receptacle?
 
George Stolz said:
How old was the installation? How long were the conductors stripped? What was plugged into the receptacle?
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Installation was about 2 years old, a room added on to a house. Had AFI breaker tripping. I opened all boxes I could find & found stabs in all of them. Radios, clocks & space heaters had been plugged into various receptacles. I redid the stabs and tightened the wire nuts.
 
jumper said:
Works for me. Backstabs are not my preference, but as long as it is listed as legal-so be it.
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Legal does not mean good. I have seen problems with stabs since 1976 on a consistent basis. As I have said many times, this issue and AFI breakers have made me lose a lot of respect for the code. Code authorities have been bought out by the manufacturers on this issue.
 
jmellc said:
Installation was about 2 years old, a room added on to a house. Had AFI breaker tripping. I opened all boxes I could find & found stabs in all of them. Radios, clocks & space heaters had been plugged into various receptacles. I redid the stabs and tightened the wire nuts.
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And this worked with the AFCI?

QUICK...someone link this to the AFCI threads...you are the first to find a series arc being detected by an AFCI in a real world situation. This changes everything we have been thinking about them. Well, maybe.
 
jmellc said:
Installation was about 2 years old, a room added on to a house. Had AFI breaker tripping. I opened all boxes I could find & found stabs in all of them. Radios, clocks & space heaters had been plugged into various receptacles. I redid the stabs and tightened the wire nuts.
Click to expand...

What was plugged into the problem receptacle itself?

Did you happen to notice how long the conductor was that pulled out of the receptacle stab?
 
I don't know what receptacle or light cause it to trip. I had worked on the lights before, while doing another addition, deleted a switch. I redid stabs on switches then. I went through and checked all boxes, Some receps had nothing plugged in, others had clock & radio. A space heater was nearby so I'm sure it was used in various ones. Stabs came out of 2 receps as I pulled them from the boxes. Was Tues, we will see how things go.
 
I worked for a guy that mostly did extremely high end residential, all million dollar electrical numbers and such. Everything we did was extremely meticulous and we would have to go out of our way to make sure everything looked amazing in the ruff, etc.. What I never understood is that he would make us pig tail every single receptacle in the house no matter what and also make us stab them in. When I asked why we have to do that they would say "so if its a bad outlet everything else will still work" but my argument was that if you just land them on the screws you have to same situation because even if the receptacle goes bad the screws will still always be touching. Not to mention it made for so much work when trouble shooting. Just like you said, putting on a suit to take out the trash. /rant.
 
MikeyRob said:
I worked for a guy that mostly did extremely high end residential, all million dollar electrical numbers and such. Everything we did was extremely meticulous and we would have to go out of our way to make sure everything looked amazing in the ruff, etc.. What I never understood is that he would make us pig tail every single receptacle in the house no matter what and also make us stab them in. When I asked why we have to do that they would say "so if its a bad outlet everything else will still work" but my argument was that if you just land them on the screws you have to same situation because even if the receptacle goes bad the screws will still always be touching. Not to mention it made for so much work when trouble shooting. Just like you said, putting on a suit to take out the trash. /rant.
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Yes, screws are superior to stabbing but in & out on screws still uses the receptacle as part of the circuit. I have seen many cases where the yoke burns in two from excessive load. Closely examine the yoke between the screws. It is small and thin. It will not carry load and dissipate heat nearly as well as a #14 or 12 wire. As for trouble shooting, you will have far less of it with everything pig tailed, provided your splices are good.

If you had the scenario of a GFI fi receptacle before a std, you may have a point. the terminals on most of them have a clamp & 2 wire slots. You could stick 2 wires in & tighten the clamp on them both. That would be a direct connection with a clamp sturdier than a yoke.
 
jmellc said:
I have seen many cases where the yoke burns in two from excessive load. Closely examine the yoke between the screws. It is small and thin. It will not carry load and dissipate heat nearly as well as a #14 or 12 wire. As for trouble shooting, you will have far less of it with everything pig tailed, provided your splices are good.
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Good to know, I have never seen this before but I'm still fairly young. As for trouble shooting, I find it easier to ring out wires and such when you don't have to worry about splices and wire nuts.
 
MikeyRob said:
Good to know, I have never seen this before but I'm still fairly young. As for trouble shooting, I find it easier to ring out wires and such when you don't have to worry about splices and wire nuts.
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I have even seen a few commercial installs where someone pulled the entire ckt, leaving loops in boxes, using solid wire. He pulled the loops, skinned & terminated to receptacle. That is as secure as one can get, though not always practical to do. I have done that on a smaller scale, with short runs of Wiremold tray, installing receptacles in it. I heard recently of someone doing it with NM & feeding through boxes, but that would be much too tedious to be thrifty or practical.
 
BACK STABBIN

BACK STABBIN

Ok, I pigtail and back stab.
Engineers with larger degrees than I, say it's ok.
The UL guys and gals say it is ok.
The NEC folks say it is OK.

Q: can you use #14 gauge wire, off of a 20 amp circuit with #12 wire pig tailed, and back stab into a 15 amp receptacle or switch ?

hmmmmm ...:?
 
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