Four socket in old house not powering devices

OT would help...considering this is mindless blogging!

Technician error? WTF is B-N, B-G, etc? B? There are hot, neutral and ground. Never seen a tester with B on it.

B = black N = neutral G = Gnd

Mine does. In black Sharpie.

Then why isn't it Black, White, Green?

Guess: Backstabs were used

Orange is 10 ga

General lighting receptacles in dwellings are usually 15a. You have

BTW if he backstabbed 10 ga wire (orange romex) into a receptacle he probably needed to drill out the hole. They are designed to only take

Being one of Story's friends more likelu back-clamp outlets and they didn't take the insulation off the wires.

And 15 amp circuits for 15 amp outlets are still VERY common.

Not always. There is still no mandated standard for cable sheath colours.

Most of the breakers here are 15A, maybe 20% are 20A.

Whereas here, everything except the two lighting circuits are 20A. That was true in the upper midwest when I worked for a electrical supply wholesaler in the 70's as well.

Cause that's not what I was thinking at that moment.

I have seen lots of romex and I have never seen orange that was anything but 10 gauge. There is white, blue and black romex out there over the years that can be any size. When Southwire came out with yellow and orange, it became the defacto industry standard.

That sounds like poor design. Using 20a circuits does allow the installer to use fewer circuits to achieve the 3va per sq/ft but fewer is not better when the breaker trips. There is no requirement that fixed lighting and receptacles be on separate circuits and a single 20 might cover one whole end of a house if the installer was being stingy. (800 square feet) The only time I ever saw that was when the AFCIs first started showing up (2002 cycle) and installers tried to put everything in all of the bedrooms on one AFCI. We couldn't tag it but if the guy was cutting corners this badly, there was always something else wrong. It just made us look harder.

Bubba hung his new 65 inch TeeVee on the wall using 16 penny nails and hit a wire?

Sounds like the wiring in a duplex apartment I was renting. It was built just before WW2. In each side was a fuse box with 2 20 amp fuses. That was for the lights and recepticals. There was a living room, 2 bed rooms, kitchen and bath. There was a seperate fuse pair for the stove and water heater.

Why not Black, White, Green or Copper

My color vision is very poor. More likely yellow, and reasonably sure it's 14 ga.

Look at the writing on it.