You recently started your own electrical services firm and one of your goals is to get good referrals to help you land bigger jobs. Right now, you have just one full-time hire, Lucy. She’s a journeyman electrician.
A developer in the area bought a 30-unit apartment complex a few weeks ago. The previous owner contracted with a handyman to be the maintenance man. Old trouble tickets show what to the developer seems like a high incidence of complaints about electrical problems. He’s compiled a list of things, and the top three are loose outlets that move when you unplug them, a sizzling sound when a switch is flipped, and plugged-in devices apparently losing power intermittently.
The bigger problem is the same problems are recurring in the same units. It turns out the maintenance man keeps “fixing” this problem by replacing the receptacles and switches. He says they just go bad due to tenant abuse.
The developer wants you to figure out a permanent solution to these problems. Where would you start?
Wiring errors
Let’s address the sizzling first, noting these apartments must have been built before arc-fault circuit interrupters (AFCIs) were required, else there would be no sizzling and no power, at least in the bedrooms.
The traditional flat pliers-type of wire stripper can’t strip the sheathing on nonmetallic sheathed cable, which is typically used in residential applications. A common solution is to use a Buck knife or other pocket knife to make some cuts in the sheathing and pull it off. This can easily cut the insulation beneath it, so great care is required. With knife in hand, why not just repeat this process on the individual conductors? So that is also done. This results in a jagged insulation edge, uneven insulation removal, and nicked wires. So far, so good (not really).
The next time-saving work method is to jam those wires into the stab ports on the back of the device. These hold the wire via spring pressure. On cheaper models, you can pull the wire right back out with a sharp tug. This method is further compromised if the wire is nicked because the clamping area is reduced; you’d have to insert the wire exactly under the clamping face so as to avoid trying to clamp on the nick.
If the installing electrician uses the universal-type of wire stripper (you can recognize it by its clamping jaws), it is very easy to strip the sheathing without damaging anything. It also will allow you to quickly strip individual conductors. In fact, it works on any size wire, until you get into things such as feeder cables.
Instead of using the backstabs, use needle-nose pliers to make a proper curl at the end of the conductor and wrap it around the appropriate screw (neutral to silver screw, hot to bronze screw) so that tightening the screw tightens the loop. This will not come off even with a strong tug. And you have more contact area engaged.
Incorrect stripping length is a common problem; here is how you avoid it. If you look on the back of a typical receptacle, you will see a wire stripping gauge. That shows you how much insulation to remove. Set your fancy strippers to remove that much, and you will not get insulation under the screw or have excess bare wire jutting away from the terminal. After you do this a few times, you can probably eyeball it going forward.
Even if the installing electrician followed the correct stripping and connecting methods, there’s another common mistake that results in loose connections behind the wall. That is the mistake of putting more than one conductor under a terminal in a residential switch or receptacle. This not only violates multiple provisions of 110.14, it guarantees you will have a loose connection.
A typical receptacle will allow you to attach the supply wiring to one set of screws and “downstream” wiring to the other side; this makes the receptacle essentially a wiring splicer in the circuit. It works, it’s code-compliant, and it’s safe. However, it also means the neutral (return) of that circuit depends on the device. Switches don’t have this feature, so you can’t wire them this way. Yet, people try.
If you make a practice of pigtailing at least the neutral to every receptacle, you have a safer installation—unless it’s a ground-fault circuit interrupter, in which case you never pigtail the hot or neutral. New types of solderless connection devices conserve space and save time, so see what’s out there. Where you have a switch, always pigtail rather than run more than one wire to a screw.
If the handyman merely replaced receptacles and switches without correcting the wiring errors that were the actual source of the arcing, the arcing would temporarily stop because all the connections are new, even if incorrectly made. Because the sizzling stops and then comes back after time, the incorrect (and eventually loose) connections are the cause. They are also the cause of the intermittent power losses.
Repairs with no drywall work
Lucy needs to grab each of those tickets and repair the wiring work at the affected receptacle(s). There should be enough spare wire in each box to allow this. If not, one solution is to install another box and receptacle between the existing one and the supply. Make that receptacle an AFCI. You can then run a length of new cable between the boxes to give you enough conductor length in the box. As a bonus, the room has an extra receptacle, and that is never a bad thing.
Ah, but the drywall work! Not really. This often can be accomplished without creating a drywall project by removing the bottom wall trim board, carefully cutting the exposed drywall below the top of where the trim board goes, and boring stud holes for the cable above where the trim board goes (so you don’t drive screws or nails into the conductor).
When it’s all done, you fasten the drywall piece onto the studs and nail the trim back in place (you may have to push the old nails out from behind or bend them over). You will save the owner a big repair bill and a big mess, so document how you did this and give a dollar figure for what you saved. Then use that dollar figure to show how exactly you made the AFCI so affordable to add.
The same sloppiness that led to these two problems has led to the loose receptacle problem. This often happens when the box is set back too far. The receptacle is left loose so it will stick out far enough. A box extender can fix this problem. It may also be possible to remove the existing box through the existing hole in the drywall and remount it in the correct position.
Sometimes, a quick fix of using a receptacle spacer is a good choice. Or, in this case, it could be the maintenance man didn’t tighten the receptacle screws because leaving them loose made it easier for him to make the receptacle look straight behind the receptacle cover.
This job should get you a good recommendation. But even better is to have “before” and “after” photos and videos to show the difference between “good enough” and your high standards.
