A wiring problem of a different sort.

[Charlie Bress]

Here's a twist on the usual story.

We had one circuit in the house that was sometimes used for an electric iron. I had noticed that when the iron cycled on and off the lights in an adjacent room would dim an brighten in time with the iron. This is a manufactured home built by a supposedly reputable company in Plant City, Florida.

I had figured that this was caused by some cheesy back stabbed receptacles. I planned to chase the problem down some day. Today, my hand got called. With no particular load on the circuit it died.

I went through the usual. Checked the breakers etc. no problems there. Then I noticed that two receptacles on the string were on but the rest were out. So I started pulling receptacles out trying to find the loose back stabbed unit. The first three were not at fault. Then I went to a fourth one which was in the bedroom. This outlet had a plug strip in it that was lightly loaded with a lamp, a clock and a cordless phone base. The breaker was back on so I could see what was live and what wasn't.

When I went to pull the plug strip out, there was a nice blue flash and a pop and just like magic all of the dead circuit came alive.

Aha, the culprit is found. Power down, remove the cover plate, pull the receptacle. What a botched up job. The back stab wires were all nice and snug. Of course one of the neutral wires had a little more that 1/2 inch of copper showing, but that wasn't causing the problem.

There was one hot wire neatly hooked under a nice brass screw. It looked good except that the screw missed being snugged down by about an eighth of an inch. What a helluva good inspection that job got. But it lasted over six years before it finally failed.

Any way, I ran up to good old HD and got a 10 pack of the better outlets. When I get those all installed, I will get another bunch and keep myself busy. And they won't be back stabbed.

Just thought you might be interested that it is not always the cheap outlet with the chintzy back stab that gets you, but piss poor workmanship.

Charlie

[William Deans]

Greetings,

The inspector could have been first rate, but just didn't look at the problem outlet in his random selection.

Hope this helps,

William

PS: I generally agree with the posting.

receptacles.

[HaHaHa]

[Charlie Bress]

True, but it took at least two to screw up. The person who did the work and maybe there was an inspector along the way.

BTW as I went through that one string replacing all the cheap recepticals there was also one box that was in a hole that was in a hole in the sheet rock that was too big so the top of the box was pushe inside the hole. The company's ads include the lne "more house for the money. That's pure BS. You get less house for less money.

[Stormin Mormon]

Yep, got back stabbers in every trade.

[gary]

I was doing a reno in a house a few years back where a wall was coming out to make 2 bedrooms into one. I started ripping at the drywall and knocking out the 2x4s with a sledge, I came to a certain point I heard a loud pop and the lights went out. Pulling some more drywall off I found an outlet box that had the wires stripped and wound up in the box that was drywalled over by the original waller. The hot had touched the grounded box in my demolition work. Funny thing is this was 25 years after the original owners had moved in and the lady said it would have been really hand to have an outlet there all those years because it was between a doorway and a closet.