My neighbor called me yesterday and said that their trailer house had been without power in half the house since a lightning storm about 4 days ago. He said he flipped all the breakers, and used a neon tester to check for voltage at each breaker.
I checked and found each breaker also working, but over half the lights and outlets not working. That's when I discovered the nightmare. They use some special outlets and switches that I have never seen. They use no box. The wires come from the wall and right into the outlet or switch itself. But the rear of the outlet is covered with a plastic cover, so it sort of is it's own box. Pulling it apart, (and gettting off those plastic snap in covers is a major pain in itself), I found that the wires are not even stripped, just pushed into metal snaps. Some of the wires were loose, and worse yet, when I tried tu take the wires out of these snaps, several of the outlets or switches just fell apart. In other words, there is no way to really trace anything without a huge hassle.
I have never seen these devices before, and hope to never see them again. I was in the electrical business for several years but worked on only a few trailer houses, older ones, and those had standard outlets in shallow boxes. At least that was pretty normal despite the lack of box space. But these new contraptions are total garbage.
Normally to trace a problem like this I just remove cover plates and test from outlet to outlet, but not on this job. And each outlet seems to have 3 or more cables, and all crammed into those snaps, where many are not even pushed in far enough due to too many wires.
After 5 hours of screwing around, I finally got the idea to shut off the breakers to the two lines that were not working and back feed from a working outlet to the bad ones, using a long extension cord. That way I found that there was power at each fixture, but nothing back to the breakers. Of course, with no wiring diagram, it's like finding a needle in a haystack. Also, when I applied this backfeed power, we heard pops and cracks in two switches. I opened both of them, and found loosely clamped wires, but that did not solve the problem.
I finally told the guy there might be a few sparks. I placed a direct short across one of the outlets, and backfed my power. There was a large surge, but the breaker did not trip. Note: I had a jumper wire directly across the hot and neutral.
OK now for the totally rediculous. I was hoping that direct short would blow a few sparks and indicate the problem device, before tripping the breaker. Instead it fixed the problem...... (your guess is as good as mine). All I can figure is that it "welded" whatever wire was loose back to the clip. Everything is working again, except for two lights and one outlet bacause the clips broke, and I just wirenutted the wires together temporarily, eliminating the outlet and
2 switches.However, I did warn the owner that this problem is not only going to reoccur, but I feel they got a fire hazzard, and told them I really think every outlet and switch on both of those circuits should be replaced, and told them to not connect any heavy appliances to any of those outlets. They already agreed to have me replace all of them. (That will be a pain too, because all the cable ends are very short, and the wall cutouts are all too small for boxes).
I am posting this to ask if anyone else has ever run across these totally junk outlets and switches? What are they even called? Are they something made just for trailer houses, because I have never seen them anywhere else? Do they make any sort of boxless replacements that use actual screws to attach the wires? There are 16 outlets and 8 switches on these two lines, and with those short cable ends, I'd like to do this as easily as possible and still be safe. Even if I could get replacements of the same type, I would not use them.
Mark