Wire Connectors

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Besoeker said:
I don't see why they would be difficult. Not that we very often use them for permanent connections. Most fittings here, switches, lights etc. have brass terminals with grub screws and capacity to terminate extra switch wires for example.
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Bes, you are an UK EE used to IEC and other standards employing wiring methods commonly used across the pond and elsewhere around the world but under the standard rules regarding NEC installs, wire nuts and similar methods are more efficient and cost effective.

Your comparison does not make sense. Different rules, methods, and materials.
 
lets say you are dealing with a multi switch circuit to multiple fans, in the air, and have a choice between using twist connectors and using wagos... the idiot that pulled the wire has then quit the job and you have a possibility of five black wires for each light position... your helper is new and cannot yet be trusted to do more than fetch things and turn the lights on and off...

Now... do you want to keep twisting the nuts on and off until you get the right wires matched up or use wagos?

Personally, I think wagos look cleaner and take less time, once your wire stripper is set up for them.
 
Adamjamma said:
lets say you are dealing with a multi switch circuit to multiple fans, in the air, and have a choice between using twist connectors and using wagos... the idiot that pulled the wire has then quit the job and you have a possibility of five black wires for each light position... your helper is new and cannot yet be trusted to do more than fetch things and turn the lights on and off...

Now... do you want to keep twisting the nuts on and off until you get the right wires matched up or use wagos?

Personally, I think wagos look cleaner and take less time, once your wire stripper is set up for them.
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Both are acceptable methods of connecting conductors.
 
peter d said:
What is unreliable about twist on connectors then? You do realize you're arguing against countless hundreds of billions of them in use across this continent, right?
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I dont say they are no good..they work. Back stabs work if done right as well. But, from experience and for my own peice of mind, I use the european model now, because it looks better to me and is easier to test if you have problems with faults, especially afci and gfci faults...
 
take for instance a gfci or rcd fault that you are tracking down... you have found the first outlet in a radial, and now need to find where the fault is... if you have twist nuts and have all the outlets spurred, then you have to undo one, hook it up without the outlets further down the radial, test it... if it works, then hook back up the rest of the radial, test it again..it trips, so you move to the next outlet... and do it again...

Wagos allow you to simply trace which cable is feeding the outlet.. pull one ground and neutral out of their wagos, test, plug them back in, test again... about half the time per outlet, each time...

When testing for faults, it takes me less than half the time to test and track down faults with wagos than with the wire nuts when spurs are used... but when simply screwed in series where no wire nuts were used, then no wagos are needed either...so no savings either way.

Now, for the ground connectors, I use the wire nuts. If I am capping a neutral in a switch box..I use a wire nut. Hanging a fan light with those funky twisted strand wires on them, again, wire nut... dont like to but the connection just does not seem the same in the wago...

But most of my Solid work, especially on my outlets where I like to parallel... rather than series... Wagos please...
 
Adamjamma said:
take for instance a gfci or rcd fault that you are tracking down... you have found the first outlet in a radial, and now need to find where the fault is... if you have twist nuts and have all the outlets spurred, then you have to undo one, hook it up without the outlets further down the radial, test it... if it works, then hook back up the rest of the radial, test it again..it trips, so you move to the next outlet... and do it again...

Wagos allow you to simply trace which cable is feeding the outlet.. pull one ground and neutral out of their wagos, test, plug them back in, test again... about half the time per outlet, each time...

When testing for faults, it takes me less than half the time to test and track down faults with wagos than with the wire nuts when spurs are used... but when simply screwed in series where no wire nuts were used, then no wagos are needed either...so no savings either way.

Now, for the ground connectors, I use the wire nuts. If I am capping a neutral in a switch box..I use a wire nut. Hanging a fan light with those funky twisted strand wires on them, again, wire nut... dont like to but the connection just does not seem the same in the wago...

But most of my Solid work, especially on my outlets where I like to parallel... rather than series... Wagos please...
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I have no idea what radials, spurs, and such are.

Receptacles and lights are always wired in parallel to each other and are in series with OCPDs and switchs.
 
by spur or parallel in wiring the outlets I mean the incoming and outgoing cables are matched first then an extra short section of wire is used to get from the wire nut to the outlet...
wiring in 'series' means that I feed the incoming wire to the bottom screws, and the outgoing wire attaches to the upper screws...

Not using the actual electronics definition of series and parallel...

In truth, as you say, all the outlets are wired a specific way... but am just looking at how the outlets connect to cables...

with the newer gfci have seen people doing spurs and not putting anything on the load side of the gfci's ...
 
Adam, what you are calling series is forbidden here. We call the short wire from wire nut to device a “pigtail”. Everything must be pigtailed. The intent being that a device can be replaced without interruption of service to any other device.
 
jumper said:
Bes, you are an UK EE used to IEC and other standards employing wiring methods commonly used across the pond and elsewhere around the world but under the standard rules regarding NEC installs, wire nuts and similar methods are more efficient and cost effective.

Your comparison does not make sense. Different rules, methods, and materials.
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Jumper
There are no rules here that exclude the use of wire nuts.
 
I like Ideal wingnuts for most uses. Grip well, easy to hand tighten, reasonably priced. They do puncture easily at the tip, so I have to watch that. If I need more coverage for "wildcat strands" on stranded wire, I like the 3M yellow skirted reds. They are good in every way but are expensive. They are also good for splices having to be remade, with less than perfect wire.

For years, the standard Buchanan B2 was the best out there but they really got sorry. They began splitting and threads would pull out, etc. I haven't bought them for over 10 years now.
 
Russs57 said:
...We call the short wire from wire nut to device a “pigtail”. Everything must be pigtailed. The intent being that a device can be replaced without interruption of service to any other device.
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Not everything must be pigtailed. Some must be; MWBC devices, for instance.
 
brantmacga said:
Word.

I got a lotta crap on here years ago because I was still soldering up until almost 2010.

I worked under a guy that’s in his 80’s now, and that was really all I knew even for the first few years after I left him. That generation is all gone now from the trade and we’re all out here using blasphemous wire nuts. Heck I even started using push on connectors a couple years ago. The old man would probably shake his head in disappointment at me

What have I done


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I can't say I have soldered any general building wiring connections that I can recall, sometimes tinned some stranded leads here or there before making a connection though. But can't say I have seen a soldered connection fail unless it was poorly made up to begin with.

peter d said:
Yes, I do as a matter of fact. How do you splice 5 or more wires together with those inferior connectors?
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Think someone already answered this - they make jumper bars to convert those into multi-port connectors. I won't say they are better or worse than a twist on - proper installation and attention to details is critical for both though or you will have a poor connection here and there.
 
Russs57 said:
Adam, what you are calling series is forbidden here. We call the short wire from wire nut to device a “pigtail”. Everything must be pigtailed. The intent being that a device can be replaced without interruption of service to any other device.
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Pigtailing to devices is more job spec than NEC code. Pigtailing is only required with grounds* and on multiwire Branch circuits with the grounded conductor... It is code to pigtail the neutral to a receptacle yet use the receptacle as pass through for the hots (eta: with a multiwire branch circuit).

*Sill lights are a curious exception to the code re: removal not breaking the ground connection.
 
jumper said:
Nor are there rules here against using terminal strips here but it is simply not efficient nor cost effective for us to use them in many applications.
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A 12-way strip costs about $0.60 from one of the most expensive component distributors. You can cut it down to however many way you need. So if you need only two ways you are looking at ten cents. In the context of the total installation or repair that is peanuts.
BTW, I don't sell them.........:lol:
 
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