Electrical question

[Keith Le]

I came home today to find tank completley powered down along with half of my kitchen. I checked the breaker box and nothing was tripped but I switched all of the breakers on and off anyway.
Half of the plugs on the affected breaker work fine and the other half don't. I opened up one of the outlets and found a couple of very burned up wires. My question is... Are power outlets wired in series? Like A, B, C, D and if C goes out so will D but A and B will still work? I want to know because I don't want to have to drain my sump and remove my plumbing to have the other outlet repaired. Thanks
-K

 

[TimTen]

I believe most of the time they are wired in series. I would examine every outlet in that loop. Something is loose, or your breaker is bad. Could you post a picture of what you found in the burnt outlet. I would also leave that breaker off till you find the root of your problem.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Plugs are wired in parallel, or at least should be if it was a DIY job by the home owner... then who knows, but if you remove one plug the others should work fine.

 

[sulcata1619]

Unless your house is only a couple years old, every thing is in series. It just became code in 2002 and some inspectors still don't catch. the wires should be pigtailed and then taken to the receptacle. I have had to fix the circuits in every house I have onwed. When they are daisy chaised, you rely on the integrity of each stab in connection at the back of the receptacle. We run quite a load 24/7, not a good idea to trust the stab ins in the back. I've seen those poor connections burn up and melt receptacles all the time.


Looked at a guy's kitchen, same thing. He had the mirco, the fridge, toaster, and fridge all on one side of his kitchen. Melted the receptacle and started to head up the inside of the wall.


In conclusion, I would leave the breaker off open up every plug on that circuit and pigtail. Then do it to every other circuit in the house. well worth it. And it makes it a good time to change to white receptacles or Decora.

 

[Keith Le]

Thanks for the info.
I have the breaker off and an electrician is coming out tomorrow. I might try to fix it myself but I'm renting and its not going to cost me anything. I'm hoping I can just have the single outlet repaired and be done with it. I'm moving in 6mos anyway.
-K

 

[sfsuphysics]

sulcata: that's interesting that it just recently became code to have them wired in parallel. Who knows maybe because I don't have that many plugs off each breaker that mine were wired different I have had one plug removed and all the others have worked fine.. of course I have old knob & tube wiring, so there's a freeway of wires running all over the place (not exactly code if done today)

 

[sulcata1619]

sfsu did you remove the plug or somebody else?

 

[sfsuphysics]

I removed the plug, did it when I needed a 3 pronged plug and the house was full of nothing but 2 pronged ones.... and yeah I did it the dumb and dangerous way with the power still on.

 

[sulcata1619]

Thats all good, that's how us pros do it. Just make sure "your new kitten" isn't around to jump in the way. Sounds like with the knob and tube everything was already pigtailed. They used to take pride in their work back then. Now in residential if your not running, your not making the big guy any money. Luckily I am in commercial.

 

[Sparkss]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10256160#post10256160 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sulcata1619
Thats all good, that's how us pros do it. Just make sure "your new kitten" isn't around to jump in the way. Sounds like with the knob and tube everything was already pigtailed. They used to take pride in their work back then. Now in residential if your not running, your not making the big guy any money. Luckily I am in commercial.

I agree and I am glad that they finally changed it to where the plugs were not all in series. We replaced all of our plugs and rewired the vast majority of our outlets to put them in parallel versus the old way of being in series. It sucks that the first outlet in a string will carry the load for the entire circuit, which as has been posted, can lead to problems.

I worked commercial when I was an electrician.. residential is all turn and burn, no quality or pride in their work

 

[magma01]

what does "pigtailed" mean when you are looking at the wires at the receptacle?

 

[sfsuphysics]

see post below

 

[sfsuphysics]

Ok found a picture showing what it means

 

[triggerjay]

sorry, but I had to jump in on this one due to the terminology... Firstly, If in fact, houses were wired in series, you would have to have a load plugged into each recepticle, to complete the circut and actually power any one of the loads... It would be something like this:
HOT --- [ ] ---- [ ] ---- [ ] --- Neutral
[ ] = recepticle
Now that would be a true series setup. Your outlets in your house are wired in parallel.. ALL of them have both a hot, and a neutral, and have a ground depending on when your house was built. Now, with that being said, The recepticles in your house are used to "tie" the circut together. The recepticles are used as a connection point to run wire to the next parallel wired recepticle, or fixture. Here is how houses are wired:
Hot & Neutral ====[ ]====[ ]=====[ ]

The recepticles are NOT wired in series. Just because the wire goes from recepticle to recepticle, does NOT mean they are series, Just used as a connection point to continue on to the next recepticle. What more than likley happened, is you lost a connection point when the recepticle burned. The burnt recepticle could have been caused by a few different things.... Under-rated breaker, under-rated wire, and a combination of too great of a load... Or a loose connection... Either of these would more than likley be your problem. If the wire is 14awg, the breaker or fuse should be 15 amp. If the wire is 12awg, you can run a 20a breaker and protect the wire. In NEWER romex applications, 14awg (15A) is white, while 12awg (20A) will be yellow. But until recently, all sizes of romex were white.

Jason

 

[CitS]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10267205#post10267205 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sfsuphysics
Ok found a picture showing what it means

So, by using this pigtail, the theory is that
if the recepticle burns out, it doesn't take out the rest of the chain?

 

[sfsuphysics]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10267406#post10267406 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by CitS
So, by using this pigtail, the theory is that
if the recepticle burns out, it doesn't take out the rest of the chain?

Honestly, and I'm not the professional electrician, I can't imagine why a house would have plugs wired in series, maybe it's the physics side of me that says ***? to imagine Hot to hot to hot to hot on 4 plugs then neutral to neutral to neutral to neutral on the same 4 plugs, just makes me go waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah? Only way I can think of why this was ever done was that a bunch of DIY electricians/day laborers that didn't know ANYTHING about wiring (I should know.. I had an Italian grandpa that thought wire was wire ) were hired to do a bunch of houses. I mean what do you save in cost? A wire nut and 30 seconds per plug? But anyways I'm starting to rant

Plugs should be wired in parallel period, If you have conduit running through the walls (and I do believe that is code now ) each plug should be tapping directly into a hot and a neutral, it should NOT be part of a chain in the wire. Now to check if your house is wired retardo-fashion, simply remove one of the plugs on a particular breaker if the other plugs work then you're fine no need to do squat.

If all the plugs do go out, it is fixable, fairly easily, however I wouldn't advise anyone do it unless they know what they're doing, because all you need is to get a wirenut and grab a hot & neutral and twist together.. well you'll know you got the wrong wires long before you get the wire nut on there

Find the hot coming in, and the hot going out, get 3rd piece of wire, wire-nut them together and the 3rd wire goes right into your plug, ditto with the neutrals, now that plug is in parallel with the rest of the plugs in series, continue on if you want the others to be in parallel.

 

[triggerjay]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10267945#post10267945 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sfsuphysics
Find the hot coming in, and the hot going out, get 3rd piece of wire, wire-nut them together and the 3rd wire goes right into your plug, ditto with the neutrals, now that plug is in parallel with the rest of the plugs in series, continue on if you want the others to be in parallel.

They were in parallel to begin with, in this fashion,.... you are just moving the connection point off of the recepticle,.. This way if you burn up a recepticle (which should never happen if it is protected properly) you dont loose the whole circut. But it would be a temporary fix.. there is a reason the recepticle fried to begin with, and for saftey reasons, this should be addressed FIRST! If you just replace the recepticle, or pigtail it, and go on with life, the next time, it may burn up more than just a recepticle. BTW, by pigtailing it, you are adding connections..... which means you are adding more risk.. In NEC 2005 code book, you will not find pigtail wiring as a set standard just for this reason. I would be curious to see actual copies of an apprentice card, journeyman card, or a masters licence from anyone giving you advice here. Call a licenced electrician to handle your problem. Dont rely on what people tell you on the web. I am not saying this to put anyone down, and myself, I am only a two year apprentice electrician in residential. I work mainly the industrial side of things... and have for years,... but we do things at the plant you would never do in your house... But sometimes you have to do what you have to do to send the product out the door.... But a house is a different story... call a licenced electrician, and dont let them get by with replacing a 50 cent recepticle, and telling you there you go.... have them find the real problem....

Jason

 

[sfsuphysics]

Jason: Yeah sorry, don't know where my mind was wandering when I said that, I was explaining an already parallel circuit. The only thing that should be in a series connection is a switch.

If you're unsure of what you're doing, don't do it yourself.

Although there are some interesting "codes" out there that make me wonder if they're codes for actual safety reasons, or if they're codes so that the DIY has to call a union guy.

 

[triggerjay]

your right about it working. It would work fine as long as the joints are made up properly on the pigtail. I just feel that the fewer connections, the less risk for problems. I still think there is another problem at hand that needs to be addressed.. It should have tripped a breaker at the very least.... But if done properly, your theory would work fine... but the original problem still needs to be addressed.... could be something as someone up-sizing the breaker to prevent a nucance tripping problem...

Jason

 

[pv1191]

This is why I put in dedicated power for my system. Two 20 amp breakers that feed two GFI quad outlets. PLEANTY of power and no tripped breakers. This is for a 90g total system, 700+ watts of lighting, skimmer, heaters, powerheads and more.