push in connection on electrical devices
Another electrical service call today was a search for the “push in” connection that loosened and killed the garage circuit. The culprit was in a retro storage closet outlet that the owners didn’t even know was there. We re-worked all the outlets (pigtailed out to the screws).
Several of the other “push in” connections were loose – my guess is the littl “flipper” lost its temper.
Am I seeing these “push in” connections from a wrong perspective? Limited bad experience? I have seen loose screws as well, but these seem to be trouble by design – correct me if I’m wrong….
Replies
I know an electrician who started out his career doing re-work on back-wired fixtures. He find a customer with bad connections and work hia way through the entire development with a "refer me to your neighbor" routine. They all had problems.
It was low overhead, low materials-cost work. might have worn out a screwdriver though. Not challenging, but it got him through a recession.
Why are back-wired devices allowed? I reckon because they are cheap, lower labor costs during the install, don't cause fires when they fail and keep newbie electricians busy on the rework. It's the perfect priduct ;-)
"I know an electrician who started out his career doing re-work on back-wired fixtures. He find a customer with bad connections and work hia way through the entire development with a "refer me to your neighbor" routine. They all had problems.It was low overhead, low materials-cost work. might have worn out a screwdriver though. Not challenging, but it got him through a recession.Why are back-wired devices allowed? I reckon because they are cheap, lower labor costs during the install, don't cause fires when they fail and keep newbie electricians busy on the rework. It's the perfect priduct ;-)"WE JUST WENT OVER THIS IN THE LAST TWO DAYS.THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BACK-WIRNG RECEPTACLES. I WILL REPEAT IT THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BACK -WIRING RECEPTACLES.Back-wiring using a pressure PLATE that controlled by the side screw. It is a high quality connection and is similar to what is used on circuit breakers and industrial connectors.You are mixing it up with BACK STABE connections where the wire (limited to #14 solid) is poked into a hole and a finger spring holds in place and makes contact.
Bill:How do you feel about the (relatively) new Ideal "In-Sure" push in connectors? My supplier is selling them by the bucketload. They appear to make a secure connection and provide arc-proof insulation. You see any problems?-SB
I have not seem them. And I am not a pro that gets to see that many different things and over a long period of time.That said if you do an advanaced search they have been discussed seraval times including in the last month or so.I *think* that the general feeling was that they where handy for some places if the wire where short to start with and for lighting fixtures, but people weren't ready to use them as first choice.
When I was learning what little I know about electrical work the general stand by electricians I looked up to was that back wiring, stab connections, was a method that only hacks used. In a small way we liked, but would never use, such a method. It did mean a lot of small, simple and profitable jobs.
Recently my consideration has shifted a bit. I have worked with greedy builders, mostly land speculators, and non-union electricians on McMansions.
These projects have a different atmosphere from what I had previously done. Partly this is a top-down imprint. The speculator has bought out farmland with the express purpose of dividing it as finely as possible and stobbing in houses that will get the most profit while being built as cheaply as possible. Typically huge or semi-huge houses lacking art, craftsmanship and detail.
These houses are bid with an extremely tight fist. I have seen the electrical job go to a well known hack because his bid was $10 lower. Took his crew five reinspections to pass but the delay and trouble only hurt the other sub-contractors but saved the builder $10.
I talked to a electrical contractor I highly respect. He lamented that he was loosing jobs to hacks willing to use any method or shortcut that will marginally pass.
He was considering the possibility of opening a separate business, to at least partially protect his reputation, and to bid jobs as dirty as he could. Essentially a wrecking crew who specialize in slapping together McMansions for rich fools and greedy builders. No legal shortcut would be overlooked. The absolute legal minimum would be the standard. Niceties and extras would be dispensed with.
Nothing that could be wired in #14 would be wired in #12. The absolute legal minimum of receptacles would be installed and then only the cheapest available. Everything that can be stab wired would be.
Legally I told him I think he would be covered. He offered a standard 90 day guarantee. Quick and dirty would get him past that 90 days. After that the HO has to prove faulty installation. Stab wiring is an approved method using listed parts from major manufacturers. pretty good coverage.
I sympathised. What happens when the customer, a greedy builder, is unwilling to pay for quality. The builders have, IMHO, deconstructed licensing so hacks, willing and often untrained in any other method, have multiplied. There is no shortage of untrained and semitrained people willing to sling wire. You can build with care, craftsmanship and to a high standard in these sub-divisions and for these builders but other than a warm feeling of a job well done no one will notice the difference. Been there. Done that.
Many home buyers have been deceived as to what quality is. Square footage sells. Real quality and attention to detail gets overlooked. Only after they have lived in the house for a time do the many inadequacies come to light.
From this conversation, and several others, I have noticed that some electricians who would never previously consider stab connection are reconsidering their position. If it saves thirty seconds a receptacle That is something like a savings of half an hour or fourty-five minutes per house. Possibly more. If the builder doesn't care and the HO don't know the difference, until things start going south in a year or two, exactly what is gained by standing on principle.
One otherwise quality minded electrician told me something along the lines of: 'What the hell. Slap it together. Pigs want to live in slop sell them slop. Save the quality and care for people who care enough to pay for it.'
I don't know. So far I have resisted. But my view of the subject has changed. Used to be I thought little of any electrician who would stoop to using stab connections. I still do if it what they do as a matter of choice and without regret. But in a capitalist society it is all about money and giving the customer the cheapest product for the highest cost to make the highest profits. Until homebuyers get educated and can tell the difference or the homebuilders lobby can be brought to heel and allow reestablishment of professional standards little can be done.
Mostly I do service work. Poorly done electrical work, stab connections being part a good part of it, are a good portion of what I deal with.
So that's what is has come to then. Amazing what the rush to the lowest common denominator will do. If homeowners were educated about quality, maybe the trend could be reversed.
Or maybe not, since the craft-type tradespeople are set to retire 'en masse' soon. Nobody left to teach by example....new tradespeople doing their apprenticeship with hacks....
couple of thoughtsif you are buying an already built house or one in a devlopment before built, you are buying to the builders specs. otherwise you would be looking to build custom.if you are buyng existing house, what's there is there. Do Home Inspectors go thru the house looking into the electrical boxes? most homebuyers don't know all the aspects of building quilaity to know what to look for in ALL the aspects.suspect that most people believe that if it passes inspection then it is built suffinently. quality is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.when is something overbuilt rather than quality?so this all begs the questions, how long should something last to be quality, how good should it be built to be quality, how good should it look to be quality?so for this particular thread, how long should a receptical be in constant use before you can expect a failure?
bobl Volo, non valeo
Baloney detecter
25 years
Great post.
You are ABSOLUTELY right. Here is a list of some of the "quality" features that the average HO around here (Central NJ) looks for in a $400k to $800K new "HIGH-END home.
Large closets (not much cost here-no elec, plumbing, one $9 light fixture),
$299 whirlpool tubs, $69 throne w/ a $7 seat, dual $39.00 sinks w/ $19 faucets and a big $49 mirror flanked by $14 sconces, in a large bathroom.
Painted $39 Six panel doors w/ $7 locksets
Acres of formica top on junk cabinets w/ a 22 gauge sink w/ a $49 faucet.
3 car garage for her Mercedes, his BMW, and the weekend Hummer.
and lastly..........2 or 3 trees on their 1/4 acre lot that are about 1" dia and 4 feet tall because all the large exist trees were cleared out before const started.
Lots of millionaire "builders and developers" around here.
Here is a list of some of the "quality" features that the average HO around here (Central NJ) looks for in a $400k to $800K new "HIGH-END home.
Large closets (not much cost here-no elec, plumbing, one $9 light fixture),
$299 whirlpool tubs, $69 throne w/ a $7 seat, dual $39.00 sinks w/ $19 faucets and a big $49 mirror flanked by $14 sconces, in a large bathroom...................Pickings,
I haven't been able to get your email off my mind. That's just so poetically true.
Glad you enjoyed it. Sickens me how much they sell houses with this junk in them for.
Oh....You're talking about the Pulte or Toll Bros specials. The "McCastles". A dime a dozen here in the busy NE metro areas where it's the geography of nowhere and people think they have finally arrived as they plunk down their sweat stained $750,000. Those poor overworked, overschedualed, over paid, over entitled homeowners deserve all the $3.00 toilet seats they can stuff into those monstrosities on their little 1/4 acre has been tomato field plots.
You are right. In this life, you mostly get what you:
A. Deserve
B. Ask for, or
C. or Demand
in that order!
Amazing how people will spend hours and hours researching a new car, stereo, TV, or hot tub. But take the biggest investment of their lives, their new home, and they will spend more time worrying about the paint colors, appliance package, or landscaping. Never mind the quality, or lack thereof, of all the various items built into this 1/5 mil investment.
Amen, brother.
Even beyond the question of craftsmanship in installation, there's the issue of design. That is, when to exceed the Code requirements (which are intended to be solely safety-based).
I had a client with a relatively new 4000 SF house (about 5 years old), that had a circuit breaker trip just about every morning, killing power to the receptacles in the bathrooms. Turned out that the receptacles in all four bathrooms were on the same 20A circuit. Code-legal? Sure! Adequate design? Absolutely not!
When his wife and two daughters fired up the hair dryers in the morning, pop! breaker tripped.
The panel was maxed out; every breaker was a twin or pancake, and every branch circuit was a multiwire. I installed a subpanel, and ran three new circuits to the bathrooms. Lots of fun, two-story house with panel at the opposite end from the master bath. Day and a half of work, final bill about $2k. Homeowner was very happy to pay me.
Who's to blame for such an obviously deficient design? Typically the architect does not provide details for the electrical system design; the electrical sub does that when he bids on the work. And it's all about minimizing the cost of the hidden stuff like the electrical. So I suppose it's the consumer who's to blame.
Another example, new construction, 5000 SF Mc Mansion, owner-builder insisted on installing 39 cent receptacles. But, they installed Italian marble floor tiles in the entry foyer, at something like $100/SF.
I consider this the "Walmart" syndrome. Gimme more & at lower cost; quality doesn't matter. Maybe the National Electrical Contractors Assn ought to carry out a public education campaign aimed at homebuyers, to educate them on the advantages of having the house electrical system exceed bare minimum requirements.
Cliff
Wouldn't be a BT thread without someone mentioning Walmart.
"Maybe the National Electrical Contractors Assn ought to carry out a public education campaign aimed at homebuyers, to educate them on the advantages of having the house electrical system exceed bare minimum requirements."
That is right on the money. People care about things they understand. Unfortunately, in the case of HO's, that usually only means things they can see. Just because HO's are not knowledgable about what's behind the walls doesn't make them idiots. They just need to be educated. Then they can make an informed decision about whether the value for higher quality work is worth the price.
Amen to you and 4lorn. There's nothing else that needs to be added to eihter one.
Shout out to Andy C. Namaste my friend.
http://www.hay98.com/
Well done ! I was involved in this conversation along with others the past few days, in another thread. You have hit the nail on the head though, Backwiring by using the STAB technique has been frowned upon shortly after it became an "approved" method. The problems started croppin up back in the 70's
During the copper "shortage" at that time, aluminum building wire became the wire of choice. Then some genius somewhere developed "backwiring" using stabs, .... just skin the wire and shove it in. Now we could trim out in seconds what used to take minutes. The real problems came about from apparently everybodys' ignorance of what happens to aluminum when you strip it . No one took the time to prep the wire, I for example, just squirted some Penetrox on the wire, ....sometimes
It begins to oxidize almost immediately, which also happens to copper . Aluminum just oxidized and became a poor conductor, and an excellent heater. But who knew? This ,coupled with stab wiring started to give some Fire Departments more fire fighting experience. I would go into some homes on a service call and see the scorched paint jobs made by this practice and would have to re-wire the whole thing. Ironically, some shops tore out their own work ! for a fee. Builders have always tried to save a buck , back then, they would pour foundations on Mon. and start decking on Thurs. Things are being done so fast now , I done with the job before I even get there. I can't wait for microwave technology to creep into housing, just pop in a skid full of material set the oven on "house" ,and 8 hrs later out pops a starter castle," your house is done when there is there are 2-3 seconds between pops"I apologize for the rant , your post was much more articulate maddog
Your responses are perfectly good. Despite my tendency to get carried away and become long winded this forum isn't an MIT lecture series populated by straight pinky fingered, tea sipping fops. Yours, and others, are blessedly and delightfully direct and to the point. I wish I had the knack of combining clarity and brevity.Re: "This ,coupled with stab wiring started to give some Fire Departments more fire fighting experience."As I understand it the excessive excitability of the aluminum wiring, from the beginning a poor engineering call made worse by the stab-in option, combined with the tenderlike flammability of manufactured housing, what they at the time called mobile homes, made for a considerable amount of overtime for firefighting professionals, and not coincidentally the occasional financial windfall for the morticians.Some time in the mid 70s, as I remember it the worse of it was during the winter when portable heaters exacerbated the problem, some fire departments determined that purchasing and destroying mobile homes wired in aluminum was cheaper than putting them out and removing the corpses. I remember a news report featuring a crew remodeling a mobile home with a front-end loader.
"Re-modleing ......with a front -end loader," .....it's funny now !
one other quirk with that junk was its' ability to break off while you made up a splice, if you weren' t careful enough NOT to nick the conductor.
A friend of mine, looking to build a house, referred to it as "remodel with extreme prejudice" referring to some CIA comment.
Actually, there was a "theory" that the stab connection was a better choice for Al, since it maintained a "knife point" connection that supposedly excluded oxygen. This theory works in electronics devices, where knife-edge connections are often used, but not so well in power wiring, where conditions are poorly controlled and thermal cycling is more of an issue.Probably had the stab connectors been better designed (multiple contacts, more consistent spring pressure, built-in grease, etc) neither the back stab connections nor Al wiring would have been as much of a problem as they turned out to be.
should be an easy fix... a mexican helper at $8 and hour use'n the side screws...oh yeah and wal-mart fixtures & outlets...
I always have a problem with some on this board slam'n builders & buyers of homes they want to build & buy... one man quality is anothers junk...
it's ok for you not to walk up and pay list/sticker price for a new truck... but you slam anyone else who goes for a better price... you can't have it both ways... go pay tripple retail for every tool... material... labor you buy... never shop/question price... or quit slam'n anyone who does shop...
those people who shop at wal-mart (like me) have the extra income to pay people like you... 90% of people in this country spend everything they have either way... the other 10% you slam because "they have all that money and won't spend it"
oh... in 30yrs of building i've never seen a bad stab lock... ever... i have seen good electricians leave screws not tight on breakers way too many times...
pony
Ok,I'll bite, What is " triple retail ? "
If I was going to buy something at list/sticker, I wouldn't want it made with parts from the bargain bin. I don't want my Caddy built with leftovers from Yugo!
Nothin wrong with shopping around to save a few bucks, but, Those stab-locks, after seeing/repairing the consequnces of using an "approved " material, installed in an "approved " method, then inspected and "approved " it was not.....the best alternative idea.
But it was profitable for some !
I used to be amazed that the guy whose house cost him big bucks in the high priced towns enjoyed the same "quality" of construction that the guy over in one of the less desirable towns was getting in his starter home
Re: "oh... in 30yrs of building i've never seen a bad stab lock... ever..."Likely because:
1) Your a builder and the stabs last long enough for the check to clear and the house to no longer fall under warrantee.2) You weren't looking or looking in an electrically meaningful manner.3) Selective, but likely happy and optimistic, memory.I started in service work. On the first day, and regularly thereafter, I ran into issues with stab type connections on switches and receptacles. Intermittent connections, overheated connections with the insulation melted off for some distance from the connection, cooked receptacles and, occasionally, a box with all the wires shorted and burnt.I can't say I have seen any fires beyond burnt box interiors, flash and smoke marks on the wall or surrounding surfaces and the occasional melted plastic or overheated steel box that got hot enough to scorch materials around them. Near misses by my calculation. This too may be a matter of selective exposure. I am often called to repair damaged or defective circuits. Even after the stab connections were relegated to 15A circuits still a considerable number of service calls center on deteriorated stab connections. Of course I don't often see them when things go too far wrong. The firemen are more likely to get that call. Assuming the entire house is not razed, but often due to the destructive enthusiasm of the firemen, it is difficult or impossible track the cause back to anything but the general category of: unknown electrical fault. Hard to say if a stab connection was the origin once the firemen get done with their axes and hooks.Most local inspectors I have spoken to on the subject consider stab connections to be inferior by design. As opposed to a wrapped or clamped screw connection which gets insufficiently tightened which is only inferior because of human fallibility.
That was my point. at the time housing needed a replacement for copper due to a "shortage" ......
for whatever reason, Aluminum was the replacement. The older electricians looked down their noses at this stuff, but a green kid ,like me could carry armloads of it all day long. and it was cheap!
So what if you had to use the next larger size, (#14 alu was not available ) to carry the same load. ---15amp circuit- use #12
So what if ,sometimes an accidental contact with an energized circuit vaporized the aluminum.
So what if the connection you made before dinner was loose afterwards, you just threw another turn on it.
The only instructions were.. be careful and don't nick the wire, no mention of cleaning or sanding or using a wire brush.
I 'm not positive but I think that most hardware, recep's, switches, wirenuts, etc. were not even suitable to be used with this junk.
Yes you are right , if things had been designed better, but that happened later, the damage was already being done.
It seems to me that when the education began in earnest the shine was off of Alu and the "shortage "of Cu was over, It was several more years before Alu stopped being used altogther around here, its' use was mainly for feeders though. maddog
I am not sure from you message if you think that back-stab connections started with the 70's or that the problem only started show up in the 70's with AL wire.But I worked on a home built in the 50's that use GE back-stab receptacles. Un grounded and no screw terminals.And they took #12 wire.AFAIK now of them where "bad", but most of them I worked on they where no used enough to know before I replaced them.But some of them I could not get to release. Seemed to be welded in place.
my experinces with this stuff started in the '70 I was an apprentice. I was taught to feed thru with copper, yes I know what I've said before, and they were pressure connections like you mentioned in the past. splicing was kept to a minimum,(no grounds ) things were routed to have only two pipes at a box . And then Alu came along. The combination of stabbing and Alu was just to good to be true for some contractors though, cheap devices,cheaper wire, faster ,faster, more$$$$. Also during this time frame, crimp-on connectors and couplings for EMT were introduced, even more time saved and boy what a crappy ground path eh! maddog
I've seen receptacles with formed brackets under the side screws that let you "stab" in a wire and clamp it under screw pressure without forming a loop. These are almost as easy as the stab wire holes on the back.
Ahhhh, the pleasure of building my own home.
Not sure why, but the electrical inspector told me that parallel 'pigtails' are not required. This astonishes me. With a push-in conncection, this means that all the current drawn on that circuit is passing through the very small contact area between the #14 wire and the spring-loaded tab in the recepticle. When I asked him why, he said because wiring the pigtail simply takes too long.
Hmmmmm.
Makes one wonder what other kinds of skullduggary flim-flam is going on underneath the visible surface!
BruceM
Should have used 12-2 anyhow.
This is purely a case of alien identity