The house is from 1928 but the wiring seems to have been redone in the 90’s. (It certainly isn’t knob and whatchamacallit!)
And get a new boyfriend. This one could well be fatal.
tube
you are in good shape with new wiring.
My electric dryer cord was damaged by loose contacts in an outlet. It had been plugged in for 15 years. The receptacle was at least 30 years old. I guess old age got it.
Funny story. I called an appliance service guy for the dryer. He quickly figured out it was the cord. Replaced the cord and plugged it in. Sparks flew! Very Quickly unplugged it and told me to call an electrician. Wires were badly burned and there wasn’t any slack to cut off and reattach. They had to run a new wire.
You might think about checking the rest of the outlets in your home also. Loose outlets arc, as mentioned. If you’ve never checked the outlet under your sink which powers the dishwasher and garbage disposal, it’s a good idea to do so. Motors usually have a relatively hefty current draw (compared to a lightbulb, for instance), and you want a tight connection for them.
Small embarassing anecdote: when the dishwasher in our old home stopped working, I invoked the Sears warranty and the guy came, tore the thing apart, couldn’t find anything wrong, plugged it back in and it worked. A few days later, it quit again. Frustrated, I got down on hands and knees under the sink and pulled out the plug. I’m kneeling there with the plug in my hand and peering around under the sink, when my wife says “how come the plug thingy is all black?” Turns out the problem was a loose outlet, and the plug was burned so badly it wasn’t making proper contact. The embarassing part: I was an electrician for 20 years.
Check them as in check for wiggle?
using a high quality receptacle for locations that you plug and unplug frequently is good because it will last longer between replacement.
it is also good to check receptacles that are left plugged in for long periods for wiggle of the plug and blackness on the prongs. if you see blackness you should clean the prongs to shining metal with sand paper and the receptacle may need replacement. if the plug wiggles then you might bend the prongs slightly in or out and the receptacle may need replacement. either blackness or wiggle are signs of a worn receptacle which is or would become a fire hazard.
in receptacles that remain with a plug in, especially high current draws (freezer, refrigerator, air conditioner, sump pump), it also makes sense to use a quality receptacle. in a quality receptacle the contacts are higher quality and will make and pass the higher current better. it is good to check these receptacles once a year for tightness and if the prongs are not blackened.
Outlets past their prime will be very loose. In some cases, the plug may even fall out by itself. A wiggle test is good, but pull the plug out of the receptacle and check for scorch marks that may indicate arcing, particularly for high-amperage outlets.
Oops, scooped by johnpost.
The wires wouldn’t be badly burned from those sparks if you very quickly unplugged it – that was scorching/overheating over several years. So replacing the wire was the right thing to do. Given at least 30 years, you got your money’s worth out of the old wire.
We have an ‘all-in-one’ copier/printer/fax/whatever which has no on/off switch. Plugging/unplugging the line cord is your power on/off.
For some reason this thread reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut’s “The Sirens of Titan” (I think it was) where human expatriates on Mars(?) are sent in fleets of flying saucers to invade the Earth. The flying saucers have just 2 controls ; an On switch and an Off switch. The On switch initiates a preprogrammed flight to Earth. The Off switch doesn’t do anything, but was put there by Martian mental health experts who knew that humans are only happy with machines they think they can shut off.
Okay, I successfully replaced the outlet. (It wasn’t a bigger box, and it was getting dark so I said to hell with it and still only have one.) My question is, why did the instructions specify to do the ground wire with a connecting wire wire-nutted onto the ground that came out of the wall? The old one was like that too, which confused the hell out of me. What’s the advantage there?
You mean that the receptacle had a green terminal screw, with a segment of wire attached, which in turn was nutted to a wire in the box–part of the house wiring?
There’s no advantage to that, unless the house wire is so short that it’s hard to get it on the terminal screw.
A few devices don’t have the terminal screw, but simply a green wire.
There is an assumption with outlets you will be doing them in series. There are 2 lugs for the neutral and the hot but only one for the ground. So in order to put use an outlet in series you would have to wire nut the ground. ie they say that so idiots don’t try and put two wires under the one ground lug.
The instructions told me to use a piece of wire specifically and connect it - I had the one that had been attached to the previous box.
ETA - these were the instructions for an outlet not in a series - they were separate instructions.
Good doing.
you would use a wire nut (USA brand/term of wire connector) because of multiple wires. You might have the GFCI feeding other receptacles needing another wire, it also common to have a wire fasten to the box itself (if metal), other situations could add another ground wire.
Unless it’s half-switched, I always pigtail hot in/hot out and neutral in/neutral out together anyway–that’s safer than using the terminal screws. And for the ground, that kind of pigtailing is required by code no matter what the device or circuit configuration.
But wait, this is a GFI we’re talking about? Zsofia, are you sure your wires are on the “line” side terminals?
There’s only one outlet in the bathroom. It’s fault protecting itself. Just one cord coming into the box. Nothing coming out. Three wires.
you would have the grounding wire on the incoming cable, a wire to the grounding screw on the box (if metal), a wire to the GFCI, three wires connected with a wire nut.
if you had a plastic box then the grounding wire on the incoming cable could go right to the GFCI.
Am I the only one that expected this thread to be about Mexican food?