Do electricians have special powers?

[Martin Bonner]

^ This ^

Yes, I calculated I*R (volts), rather than I*I*R (watts).

[Bill Wright]

Part of professionalism is pragmatism...

Well yes, that would be pushing it a bit. I sympathise with your aesthetic distaste for the practice, but under certain circumstances, and as long as you know what you're doing...

Bill

[Bill Wright]

In the backbox? Sounds a bit difficult to do.

Bill

[John Rumm]

Personally I would just crimp the wire ends together, and run a new flylead to the socket - its going to be quicker and easier than fighting wires that don't want to go in the terminal.

[John Rumm]

Not really - I have done it many times where the original wires were too short to mate with the terminal positions on a new socket face plate for example.

Choose a insulated crimp butt connector that has adequate terminal capacity for the wires already there, plus one extra 2.5mm^2 CSA, then join them and some short flyleads for connection to the socket in the crimp, and connect the fly leads to the socket. (technically speaking making the socket a very very short unfused spur)

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , John Rumm writes

I've done something similar. Needed to replace a socket that had 3 short wires going into the back, but the terminals on the replacement were in different positions and it was impossible to get the thing back together. There wasn't enough room to crimp additional lengths onto the existing wires.

In the end, I used a choc block to connect the wires together in the existing back box and fitted a blanking plate, then ran a short spur (meaning 4 wires in the choc block) off to a new socket fitted alongside the existing. When the blanking plate was painted over it effectively disappeared.

The wall was plasterboard with a cavity behind which made this a lot easier, I used a plasterboard back box.

Probably not according to regs (2 spurs), but it was the only way I could find to do it neatly.

[MattyF]

I am surprised that nobody has suggested a wire squasher. This is like pliers but has three jaws that squash the wires together to fit a circular hole. I can't see that anybody has invented this yet, so I suppose I am the first inventor.

[Chris J Dixon]

We eagerly await progress photos as you hew your prototype out of steel ingots.

Chris

[John Rumm]

Kind of like those Hellerman fanny stretchers but in reverse?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

They certainly manage to prick my fingers. ;-)

[MattyF]

Yes exactly like that. I only know about fanny stretchers because my father had a collection of surgical tools that he got from a deceased estate. However I don't really need a wire squasher. The wiring that I do carries hundreds of amps, and the holes are quite big enough.

[John Rumm]

The Hellerman variety is not actually intended as a medical instrument, but used in industry for stretching rubber sleeves over wire joints:

They acquired their nickname as as result of their appearance however:

[Dave W]

How about putting the wires into a drill chuck done up tight?