I saw a pair of duplex receptacles today that were wired as shown in the attachment. Is this OK? (I’m not an electrician, but I’ve done a fair bit of wiring and I’ve never wired this way.) Seems to me that the hot side is wired OK, and the ground is OK, but the neutrals should also be tied together so that each receptacle is directly connected to the incoming neutral. Otherwise, if receptacle #2 fails, or the jumper fails for any reason, #1 will lose its neutral too. (All the tabs are in place between the individual receptacles and the wires are screwed properly, not backstabbed. This box is being fed from a correctly-wired GFCI). It checks out ok with a plug-in outlet tester, but it doesn’t look quite right. I’d like to get an opinion from someone who knows more…
Replies
the NEC states that devices shall not interrupt power when they are removed... but this is a quad in one box
...personally I would have pigtailed the H and N like the ground, since I am not a big fan of "feed thru" like your drawing shows
Re:"the NEC states that devices shall not interrupt power when they are removed... but this is a quad in one box "True enough. Can you find the reference in the NEC and put it in the larger context of what it means and why it is important where they specify? Specifically when the statement is applicable and when it is not. This and a dozen other questions have been flogged to death. Pretty much every few months it comes up and the same people chime in with the same flawed and out of context answers. It's like "Groundhog Day" and the myth of Sisyphus combined. Nothing learned. Nothing changing. Same rock being pushed endlessly up the same hill.
NEC 300-13 b
~Peter
Kind of figured you would get it. You usually do. I also think you know the ins and out of applying this article of the Code. Also showing far more intestinal fortitude and interest than I can muster toward casting the pearls.Kind of wish someone knowledgeable in the area could talk Taunton into setting up a FAQ section organized by trade and subdivided by task. It would help with the endless series of variations on the same questions. Not that anyone ever reads FAQs. Maybe next lifetime for both sides of that.Part of the reason I don't spend as much time answering questions lately is the repetition. Another part is that few questions are coming from people who, IMHO, have enough training and related skills to be doing electrical work. Particularly for others and often not even for themselves. More than half the time I want to tell them to put down the tools, pick up the phone book and call in an electrician. It is rude to say but I have done it more than once on this forum. If I don't have anything nice to say...IMHO the forum is intended primarily for people who work the job professionally or dedicated DIY types willing to do the research and book work necessary to learn the skill sets. If it was an electrician who is a little hazy or rust on the code. Or an electrical helper who was learning I would be more than happily walk them through it but mostly it is cheap HOs and carpenters who have always 'picked up skills OJT' and figure they can do the same with the electrical side of the job.Hand holding a HO too cheap to call in a contractor. One trying to set up a new service or sub panel when they don't know the difference between a neutral and a ground gives me the willies. Too many things can get missed, overlooked. I do the jobs a lot and take for granted many steps. Forget to mention some step and things can go south. It isn't rocket science but it isn't bean bag either. Call me egotistical and holding my trade in to high esteem but IMHO electrical work isn't like most other skills. Screw up a shingle job and the roof leaks. Screw up the framing and things sag and wobble. They might actually fall apart in time but you usually have time and warning. You really have to do a profoundly bad job to cause a major risk to life or limb in residential framing or roofing.Electrical work isn't like that. It will often work and look fine right up until the moment someone gets seriously hurt or there is a fire. Details count. To do the job a tradesman has to have practical hands on skills, theoretical knowledge and a functional understanding of the Code. All these have to come together.Leave any out and you get empty recitation of paraphrased Code sections without context or understanding.Oh well I'm going through one of those moods. Give it time and I will be back to my old happy self. Just not feeling it right now.
You ought to work for an electric utility company.
Everyone here is an electrician. <G>
In 20+ years I have seen as much haywired stuff in our facilities as I have in the residental arena.
Dave
"It would help with the endless series of variations on the same questions. Not that anyone ever reads FAQs."
Have you ever thought about setting up dedicated threads and referring people to them?
Like the threads I've set up on Floor Vibration and Truss uplift.
Once they're there, you can just paste a link to them and not spend a lot of time posting the same stuff over and over.
An erection doesn't count as personal growth.
what's the problem? the article concerns itself with Multiwire circuits.........
as far as my feeble mind recalls as this is NOT a three wire circuit it doesn't mean anything...
..I just mentioned it as a general statement !!
Edited 2/22/2006 8:18 am by maddog3
I really hadn't meant to focus on you in particular. You are, by far, not the worse offender. Re: ..."this is NOT a three wire circuit it doesn't mean anything...
..I just mentioned it as a general statement !!"Exactly. So why bring the whole 'circuit can't be broken if the device is removed' argument up? It simply doesn't apply. It is a pseudo argument. A phrase that can be tossed into a discussion. A phrase which sounds good but illuminates little. It sounds authoritative but means very little. It only serves to distract from more important issues.I hadn't meant to focus on you or your post but it will serve as illustration now that you bring it up.
excuse me 4Lorn, but my post are usually the soul of brevity, whereas yours ...with few exceptions ......could be published as pocket trilogies......
and I mean no offense either......there have been posts, that for no apparent reason turn into marathons in spite of the fact that a solution was posted early on. and it truly amazes me .............but, after thinking about this reply...I am going back to my ten words or less posts !
To get back to the original question, yes, this is a legit way to do it, and has a lot to recommend it. The two outlets can be wired together first, screwed to the cover plate (if this is a handibox installation), then the hot and neutral attached, so the connections are easy and clean.
If you try to do it with incoming hot and neutral on the same outlet then you have access problems putting everything together.
happy?
Thanks Dan, and all who responded. 4Lorn1 - sorry to catch you on a bad day. When I posted I was actually hoping for a response from you. My reason for posting was not to say "here's my amateur handiwork - is it ok", but to get some input as to whether an existing installation was safe/recommended.You said that in your opinion "the forum is intended primarily for people who work the job professionally or dedicated DIY types willing to do the research and book work necessary to learn the skill sets." I don't have any quarrel with that. None of the electrical books I have show the wiring method I posted, so my question was simply if this is an acceptable way to wire. There is usually more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak... BTW, I'm not employed in the trades, but I am a homeowner who enjoys and takes pride in maintaining my house myself, where possible.I fully agree that electrical work isn't something to fool around with (hence my inquiry if this is acceptable or if I need to redo it.)On a slightly different tack - the code addresses the issue of interrupting service downstream, but what about interrupting service upstream? If we consider each of the receptacles as a separate appliance, then if we remove the downstream receptacle (#2), we also lose the upstream receptacle because the neutral is disconnected. Does code address this?TIA
When they're in the same box there's no "upstream" or "downstream".
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
Ok, that's what I thought, but another poster made reference to the code section relating to interrupting service downstream, so I thought maybe my understanding was incorrect. Thanks for the clarification!
Lets be specific.The code has only one requirement in this area and it is very limited.IF you have multi-wire circuits then it can not be wired so that removing the device disrupts the neutral. That means that the neutral in and out have to be pigtailed to the receptacle rather than attaching each neutral wire to one terminal on the receptacle.A multi-wire circuit is one that has two hot from each leg of the 240 and a neutral. It can supply 240 v loads and/or 120 volt loads. The neutral only carries the difference between the currents from the two hots. If you have 120 volt loads on a multi-wire circuit and the neutral is removed then you have two different 120 volt loads connected in series to 240 volts. If the loads are different then you will have much higher voltage on one side and much lower on the other. This can cause things like burnt out motors and exploding lights bulbs.If it is not a multi-wire circuit there is no restrictions on how the neutral or hot is wired.
You may have started something of a firestorm, but I'm not sure if anyone actually answered your question or not.
I would suggest independent pigtails from each receptacle. Simpler overall, and you can't go wrong with a little overkill.
Look at it this way; if you were to pretend the 2 receptacles are 10 feet apart, pigtails would be the way to go, so they are the safe way to go here.