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Posted by Chris Lewis on May 26, 2006, 11:56 pm
> In my case, i think the problem is that the neutral wire is shared
> between the two alternating circuits. So if the continuity of the
> neutral circuit is interrupted because of a bad outlet or something,
> pigtailing will avoid that problem. Anyway, that's my take. Both my
> Black & Decker DIY books show pigtailing and thats the recommendation I
> see in these groups so that's with I'M gonna do. :-)
It's code requirement here for shared neutrals.
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.
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Posted by ameijers on May 27, 2006, 6:58 am
> In my case, i think the problem is that the neutral wire is shared
> between the two alternating circuits. So if the continuity of the
> neutral circuit is interrupted because of a bad outlet or something,
> pigtailing will avoid that problem. Anyway, that's my take. Both my
> Black & Decker DIY books show pigtailing and thats the recommendation I
> see in these groups so that's with I'M gonna do. :-)
>
I like pigtailing daisy-chained devices, mainly to avoid the wrestling
getting the device into or flush with the box. 4 or 5 short stiff 12-gauge
wires can be quite uncooperative to fold up and tuck into a small space. And
on some lamp bases I recently hung in the basement, the screw tabs for the
wires were flimsy enough that they wanted to bend with 4 wires attached. I
did the pigtails, folded the feedwires and nuts up tight into the box, and
only had to deal with 2 wires when pushing everything up into place. Much
easier.
aem sends...
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Posted by Chris Lewis on May 27, 2006, 12:02 am
> > By pigtailing you avoid the chance that a loose connection on any one
> outlet
> > would affect the downstream outlets. It is especially important when
> using
> > 12-3 to pigtail the neutrals. This way if you have to replace an outlet,
> > you don't "open" your neutral circuit to the downstream outlets.
> If you had to replace an outlet, you'd have the breaker off at the panel,
> wouldn't you? Why would you care what happened downstream on a dead circuit
> branch?
It's not uncommon to see shared neutral circuits to not be tiebarred
together in the panel. Someone naively turning off one breaker, and
pulling out the outlet breaking the neutral (he doesn't get zapped
unless something is live and pulling power on the other leg) can
result in rather nasty things happening. Especially if the first
breaker is turned back on. That downstream may not really be dead
in a shared neutral.
It happened often enough for our code to require neutral pigtails
at least on shared neutral circuits. As yours does.
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.
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Posted by Jim Nugent on May 19, 2006, 10:30 am
> What do you mean when you say: "Be sure to pigtail out when you
> land the outlets." ?
>
> I'm looking at a wiring diagram in my DIY book and I think I see what
> you're talking about. But, what's the purpose of the pigtails? They
> don't look like they perform any function..
Instead of "daisy chaining" the outlet with the supply going to one screw
and the downstream loand going to the other, you connect the supply, load,
and a small "pigtail" wire together with a wirenut and then wire the pigtail
to a screw on the outlet.
This is especially important for the neutral on a 3 wire "Edison" type
circuit where you have 2 hots and a netrual e.g., 12-3, in the box. In this
case you really have 2 circuits (opposite phases, usually black and red
sharing the same white netural wire. The reason this works is because the
worst case is one circuit (say, the red wire) is fully loaded and the other
one (back wire) is unused. Then you have the same current in the white wire
as the red one which is OK. As you begin to add load to the black wire, the
opposing phase current in the white wire actually cancels out the other and
you have less current in the neutral (white) wire. If both hot wires carried
exactly the same load, there would be NO current in the neutral.
If one of the outlets is removed or fails or a connection comes loose, and
the neutral is not pigtailed, the downstream outlets will suddenly have 240v
across them and be wired in series. Light bulbs turn blue and go pop; other
devices fail in more spectacular ways.
Originally, our house not only had several of these circuits with no
pigtails, but the neutral wires were backstabbed into the outlets. My skin
crawls just thinking about it. It's all been converted now.
--
Jim
"Remember, an amateur built the Ark; professionals built the Titanic."
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Posted by blah@blah.com on May 20, 2006, 5:53 pm
Yes...I'll definitely be pigtailing!!
Thanks for the feedback!
Kevin
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