push-in wire connectors (WAGO's)

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AC\DC said:
I make a bunch of 14&12 gauge receptacle with pigtails When I have spare time. Then just take what I need.
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I have done the same with metal 4x4s for ground pigs, It's a good job for the newbie. I never thought of doing the receptacle up like that, think I'll do that too, easy to monitor newbie while they are learning skill needed to do it right, and fast.
 
Aircraft and vehicle background.

any type stab or push will fail if any vibration.
especially dislike those fast-on spade type, cheap and convenient, but have seen too many failures, especially if stacked.

nothing stab in own home except internal to appliances, hard to avoid without rewiring your appliances!
 
James L said:
I'd disagree about backstabbed receps not being reliable. How many fail compared to the number used? 1 fail out of every 2 million or so installed?

That's super reliable
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How soon after installation until the failure needs consideration. I have repaired/replaced many failed ones, but they usually are 30 or 40+ years since installed.

Solved a problem about a week ago that was a wire nut with poor connection, was older wiring but to a device that had been changed within past couple years, possibly I changed it not certain, and I usually pull on conductors when making up such a connection to make sure it is good.

You need to have to come back and fix such failures a few times before you learn to pull the conductors to check. And it still may not set in until you are the owner/manager/etc where it possibly is costing you to have to fix your mistakes.

I have learned and usually do push and pull on the pre-installed push-ins on things like recessed lighting. Only needed one or two of those to fail to learn they aren't always on securely from the factory. I've heard some say push-ins in recessed lights have caused AFCI trips, still kind of wonder if it wasn't actually just poorly installed ones like I have come across that didn't work at all until you pushed the conductor all the way in.
 
James L said:
I'd disagree about backstabbed receps not being reliable. How many fail compared to the number used? 1 fail out of every 2 million or so installed?

That's super reliable
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Something to keep in mind is that we are talking about very reliable systems distributed over a very large scale. Back stab receptacles have a bad reputation for reliability, but that might mean 1 out of 10K fail per year rather than 1 out of 100K.

When you are talking low order risks, it is easy to find apparent patterns in noise, and easy for expectation bias to skew your view of the data. All we really know is that back stab receptacles have a bad reputation, but without hard statistics we don't really know much more.

It is quite possible that the issue is that back stab receptacles are also usually low grade receptacles anyway. It might be that if you had a 'spec grade' back stab that it would be perfectly fine.

I know that I personally like wire-nuts, and like the 'lever lock' Wagos more, and have not wanted to touch the push in connectors...but I am a lab guy not a professional sparkie.

-Jon
 
kwired said:
How soon after installation until the failure needs consideration. I have repaired/replaced many failed ones, but they usually are 30 or 40+ years since installed.
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Exactly. Some people act like the backstab need to last longer anything else in the house, or even longer than the house itself.

But plugs wear out from the front, too.
Sometimes it's just time to do some maintenance on a house
 
AC\DC said:
I make a bunch of 14&12 gauge receptacle with pigtails When I have spare time. Then just take what I need.
Click to expand...
My old boss trained me to do exactly that and it's a great idea IMO. But we would do it on the job.

In respect to when regarding job progress, it's right after the wires are pulled but not spliced.
The first thing we would do is dump out all of the receptacles on a makeshift desk, tighten down one pair of the Hot and Neutral terminals (usually those closet to the grounding terminal on the device to further mitigate a potential hot to ground fault or a improper load side neutral to ground connection... and the ground terminal as well if unneeded).

Then bend 20 ft of black and white to form 6" pigtails, cut them all, strip them all so one end had the 1" insulation cap and ready to terminate to a terminal screw and other end was splice-able. Then attach them all to the receptacles and tape all the receptacles.

Basically have them all ready to go so the only thing needed was to splice branch circuit. Then you just gotta bounce around and drop off a receptacle, two wire nuts, and a cover plate at each location. Then bounce around again doing the terminations. This way you didn't have to carry anything but your hand tools (and a drill if you REALLY wanted to be quick about it).

I've altered it slightly and prefer to install my pigtails to the branch circuit as part of wire pulling. That way all I have to do is loop them around the terminal screws and I'm done.
 
Wow, I guess I have spent too many decades with hospital grade receptacles. I didn't even know they still made receptacles that lacked pressure plate connections.

OR, are you telling me you would rather wrap around the screw head regardless of other wiring options that the device provides? And I'm not talking about stab in connections.
 
James L said:
Exactly. Some people act like the backstab need to last longer anything else in the house, or even longer than the house itself.

But plugs wear out from the front, too.
Sometimes it's just time to do some maintenance on a house
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I have replaced devices that overheated at a screw terminal as well. Those take time to develop and are impossible to make a mock up of if you wanted to do any kind of research or demonstration involving them.
 
AC\DC said:
I make a bunch of 14&12 gauge receptacle with pigtails When I have spare time. Then just take what I need.
Click to expand...
One man show never has spare time and typically has to make them up at the time they are needed.

If you have employees, there might be times they need something to do, especially a green apprentice that is waiting at the shop for whoever he is going to be working with that day to finish whatever they may be doing before they are ready to leave to go to a project or if just tagging along on the way to a project but they first stop at a service call or other small job that maybe doesn't need more than one person to complete.

Guess a real strict boss makes them do something like this while riding to a jobsite? One person drives, everyone else must make up pigtails or other small assemblies during that ride to maximize the labor spent on them??
 
K8MHZ said:
I have found MORE burnt screw terminals than back stabs. All were cheap receptacles. Slater was the brand IIRC.
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I can agree that one seemed to have quite a few failures, but have seen failures of others as well, even an occasional spec grade receptacle that was probably installers fault more so than any quality issues of the device.

I seem to run into a lot of terminations that have conductor insulation under part of the screw terminal and often wonder how they ever lasted as long as they did without turning into a glowing connection. Maybe just lucky they never had the right load applied to help that process along.
 
K8MHZ said:
I have found MORE burnt screw terminals than back stabs. All were cheap receptacles. Slater was the brand IIRC.
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So what we need to do is gather the proper data via a survey of 1000 receptacles in, say, homes that are about to be demolished. Compare the frequency of backstabbing versus screw terminals, and then within each group, the relative frequency of signs of overheating. : - )

Cheers, Wayne
 
wwhitney said:
So what we need to do is gather the proper data via a survey of 1000 receptacles in, say, homes that are about to be demolished. Compare the frequency of backstabbing versus screw terminals, and then within each group, the relative frequency of signs of overheating. : - )

Cheers, Wayne
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I don't think there will be many signs of devices that will be soon failing. I think deterioration is pretty slow but once a connection gets to the point it is going to create an excessive amount of heat that deterioration progresses rather quickly.
 
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