Wire nut fill

Status
Not open for further replies.
P

Patrick Haft

New User
Location
Oregon
Occupation
Electrician
I’m new to a company and j-man running the job tells me no matter the color of wire nut can’t put more than 5 wires, is this true?
 
It depends on the manufacturer specification of the wire nut. Some are rated up to 6 wires for smaller gauges. Whether it's good practice or not is a different story. You should be able to find a table like this for the wire nuts you use:

1639485512481.png
 
Patrick Haft said:
I’m new to a company and j-man running the job tells me no matter the color of wire nut can’t put more than 5 wires, is this true?
Click to expand...
Not necessarily as Dan replied with chart from one mfg. Might be the company policy. Company can impose policy more restrictive that code minimum as long as it doesn't violate code. Also don't confuse company policy with code requirement. Even here we have "that's the way we've always done it", but no code reference requiring such, as long as it doesn't violate it's allowed but not required.
 
Patrick Haft said:
I’m new to a company and j-man running the job tells me no matter the color of wire nut can’t put more than 5 wires, is this true?
Click to expand...
As a practical matter, it might be a good rule of thumb, but as another poster mentioned, it may not be what UL says. But as long as you are within the UL rules for how many wires can be used with a particular wire nut, you will be fine. You are not required to use the maximum number of wires that UL would allow.

It is not unusual for people to come up with these kind of "rules" so they don't have to look it up every time. Wire nuts are cheap. Finding and reading the instructions for the wire nuts takes time and costs money.
 
What's the generally accepted method of addressing the 'too many wires for 1 nut' situation? Connecting neutrals in a 4-gang box, for example.
 
What's the generally accepted method of addressing the 'too many wires for 1 nut' situation? Connecting neutrals in a 4-gang box, for example.
Do it anyway (with a larger wirenut) or two smaller bundles joined with a pigtail.
 
ddecart said:
What's the generally accepted method of addressing the 'too many wires for 1 nut' situation? Connecting neutrals in a 4-gang box, for example.
Click to expand...
Do it anyway (with a larger wirenut) or two smaller bundles joined with a pigtail.

To me, the latter is so dumb that I'll do the former.
 
A Larry said make smaller bundles of splices and run a pigtail between them. I once opened a JB on a job that had about 12 MC cables in it and the splices were made with split bolts (violation).
 
LarryFine said:
Do it anyway (with a larger wirenut) or two smaller bundles joined with a pigtail.

To me, the latter is so dumb that I'll do the former.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I've always done the pigtail approach and thought "that just doesn't look right...but they're connected". It's not like the connection is needed to handle the circuit load, so any connection should work.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top