A problem in almost every other service call when an outlet isnt working… 🤓 hope this helps #femaleelectrician #lextheelectrician #electrician #bluecollarbabe
Backstabbed receptacles are notorious for burning up. 9 out of 10 times that's what I find. Loose connections cause heat, which in turn causes melting, and can cause a fire. As homowners...please either have an electrician check and/or replace all outlets and switches when you buy a house. Make sure connections are not being relied upon as pressure fit. Twist them, use wire nuts and pigtail! Agreed Lexi!
Depends on the quality of the plug and who installed it. Most of my outlets were backstabbed for 30 years and not one of them had a problem. I changed all of them in my house because I hated them.
@@HairyBottomThat's how it is done in the UK. Just make sure the receptacle is of a good brand and the connections are tight, there should not be any issue.
Last winter, a friend's of a friend had one of those WiFi smart receptacles installed. The whole point of the rig was that it allowed her to use an app to turn on a space heater while she wasn't home, pretty much pre-heat her bedroom. My friend eventually called and asked me if I could swing by and check out why the plug stopped working. Long story short, wires were arcing and had melted so she lost power. A blessing in disguise when you keep in mind that the circuit was overloaded and she would have the heater running while she isn't home.
Here's a weird one for you. A friend called me and said his daughter's phone charger shorted out, 3 bedrooms had no power, he reset the breaker and checked all outlets with his voltage sensor and all showed power. I stopped by, and his daughter showed me the phone charger and extension cord she had it plugged into. Both were blackened, where she plugged it in. She showed me a burned spot on her bed where the charger was and said, "You should see my bracelet." I pulled all 3 outlets in the room, expecting a bad connection, but they all looked good. I traced the wire from the breaker, and it connected (back stabbed) into the outlet she was using. I pulled out all the wires and noticed a little groove in the neutral. Then I thought about what I noticed with the charger. Both prongs had grooves in them as though something metal had been across them. I hadn't seen anything metal, so I disregarded it. I asked her to show me the bracelet. It was thin and had a really thin, short chain that you used to hold it together. She said it used to be a lot longer. I asked her to tell me what exactly happened. She had the charger plugged into the extension cord, but it wasn't charging. She started to push the charger into the outlet but felt a tingling and let go. There was a big spark, and the power went out. Obviously, the little chain dangling from her bracelet fell onto the prongs of the charger. And because the stab connections don't have much contact area, a small groove burned in the neutral, and it lost contact. I never liked the stab connections, and this confirmed what I thought. Also, beware of dangling metal when plugging something in. Lol.
The previous owner of my last house added outlets with lamp cord in the wall. One was an outlet in the garage. I plugged a garage fridge into that outlet. Several years later, i pulled the source outlet for the garage outlet. I knew 18 gauge wire was not the right kind for a refrigerator. When pulling that wire to replace it with proper wire, i found that the insulation had charred so much that it was falling off the wire just from the stress of removing it from the wall. Friends don't let friends use lamp cord on 15A circuits.
My neighbor called me on vacation asking if I can help with his failed breaker when I get home. I swapped the breaker and it tripped immediately. I asked "you sure the AC isn't plugged in?" We went to check. He then said, well I usually have to have something plugged in over here for that outlet over there to work. 😮😮😮😮. Hot and neutral were almost bare 😢.
LOVE THIS - thanks to your channel and others, I've learned so much about electricity and how to be safe that I never knew before. Like this stuff is so important it ought to be taught in High School
I had this happen a few days ago: one full room was out of power. I went through every single outlet and they were all good. So the electrician came out. He found the ONE outlet that I missed, fixed a slightly loose wire, charged me $175 and was on his way. Sigh.
The best one I had was aluminum romex burn up mid wall. Insulation was burn and everything. Luckily the circuit tripped and fire didn’t spread. This happened in the middle of the night while people were sleeping. They woke up in the morning and smelled it.
I had an outlet in my living room that stopped working but then when I went to check on it and use it again it seemed fine. I took a voltage reading and it was 90V. WTF? I get 120V to my outlets. There are 3 nearby switches, by the front door, where I tried turning off all the lights - now the outlet had 12V going to it. When I turned them on (the dimmer one) all the way, it was up to about 108V. It was a choose your voltage outlet - due to the line going through the load side of the dang dimmer for the lights. This wasn't noticed for a long time because the previous dimmer was not an LED dimmer so it didn't do weird things to it and probably seemed to work fine. Key is - don't trust previous installs! Also, one more fun fact, that outlet + 1 outlet in each of the 3 upstairs bedrooms + all the LIGHTS, + both bathroom outlets are all on the same 15 amp circuit. Just great.
A Lexi PSA!!! Good stuff. You (almost) “released” the pressure - letting us to begin to feel less guilty - when you pointed out that fortunately our use of AC units on non-dedicated circuits was reduced as we rolled out of summer… But then you reapplied the pressure when you brought up the fact that now, as we rolled into winter, we would be using heaters…. “Which are even worse!” (Your words!! LOL)
We get those kinds of calls during the winter. Same situation. Space heater and everything else plugged into a single circuit. You can almost fine it just by the smell.
You would be surprised what I find that people plug into outlets at campgrounds I do service calls to. It's amazing that there isn't more electrical fires because if this.
I refinish hardwood floors and my equipment pulls a lot of amps. I have tripped breakers. but what scares me is when I'm in an old home built in the 50's with an electrical system that has never been updated and I turn on a machine and the lights dim to the point they almost shut off. the whole upstairs, plug and lights, are on the same circuit and I can't have my sander and my vac running at the same time.
Code indicates that the device shouldn't control the flow of the circuit. Everything is supposed to be stung down to one. Residential electricians are half assers.
I have a couple of outlets in my living room that are randomly ungrounded, despite the rest of the outlets and the panel being grounded, I have been meaning to investigate...
If your house is old, they may have just left the old ungrounded wiring in some spots and installed a 3 prong outlet. Only correct solutions for that is either rerun a cable, install a GFCI, or install a 2 prong outlet.
idk what a backstabbed outlet is, but every problem I've had like this in australia whenever the temperature drops below 10C or 50F has been fucking $12 kmart heaters.. Cold in your house with zero insulation?? Get on down to kmart, buy 8x 2400W plug in resistance heaters, plug em all in and crank them up to the max until something blows/trips then call up the real estate agent and whinge about your family dying of hypothermia
Backstab = push in connector where the wire is held in with a small, internal spring clip. Same concept as the Wago PUSHWIRE but usually lower quality as they're only found on the cheapest grade of 15A receptacles and switches.
I needed a panel change in my house, so it made it easy. Got the interlock kit and installed the power inlet on the outside of my house. Was pretty easy, although I am an electrician.
A few other causes I'd like to contribute are aluminum romex in manufactured homes from the 60s and 70s , rodents in walls chewing up romex, backstabbing devices .
Weird situation in my house. I replaced the gas range and electric range hood with a new gas range and an over-the-range microwave oven. I had to build an outlet box as the old range vent was simply powered by a piece of Romex coming through a hole in the wall. This is an exterior wall on the east side of the house, directly above the main panel. Now, on the opposite side of the house is the former den. A secondary fridge and a chest freezer are plugged in there. During winter, I run a couple of electric space heaters for the pets. Everything works fine ... until I try to use the microwave in winter. Eventually it trips the breaker FOR THE DEN! And that breaker is in the sub-panel in the garage on the west side of the house. How in hell did the lead for the range hood end up getting fed all the way from the den?! I have to reset the breaker, turn off the space heaters, finish cooking the food, then turn the heaters back on. I'll eventually have to get an electrician (too bad Lexi isn't nearby) and have them re-source the lead for the microwave to maybe the kitchen circuit, which has a dedicated breaker in the main panel less than two feet from the lead.
Microwaves and space heaters should be on their own dedicated circuits. My bathroom had incandescent bulbs over the mirrors, and my wife tried to use a space heater, which tripped a 20A breaker. Replacing the incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs fixed the problem. Space heaters cause more house fires than you can imagine. If you move the microwave to the kitchen outlet, it may trip the breaker if the refrigerator tries to start while the microwave is on. And certainly don't try to run the disposal and microwave at once, they are likely on the same circuit.
@@johnhaller5851 This is why I need to get an electrician here, to either create a dedicated circuit or transfer the microwave to a more appropriate existing one. The microwave oven is rarely run for more than three minutes at a time, and almost never at full power.
It could be for a switched receptacle. With the switch in the off position using a lamp, go to each receptacle in the room. Plug the lamp into each receptacle, top and bottom. If the lamp does not light try the switch, if it lights you have found the switched half of the receptacle. There may be more than one in a room ie: a living room or family room.
I'm not an expert but if everything is fine at the panel, then something happened down the line. Could be a bad receptacle or poorly wired receptacle. Could be a bad connection in a jbox or something on the way to the receptacle.
@@user-xd8dc1eo5s I won’t say where I live, but I recently had an electrician come out to do some work on my house when I remodeled half my house. I had to go behind him and redo all his work.
As an electrical engineer, I disagree with avoiding putting line and load on different screws. The UL rating requires that the internals of the 15 amp receptacle are rated for 20 amps, just the socket itself is 15 amps. You can do a pigtail if you want but using both screws and the preinstalled jumper between them is safe.
@chrisallen6259 yeah I've had issues with wire nuts sometimes, particularly if you try to cram 4 wires into one nut. If they're not all aligned, one of them may not get crimped. Sometimes you have to use them but if you don't have more than 2 cables coming into the box, why purposely make another connection point that can fail? J hooks into the screws are easy and safe.
I just rewired some receptacles that were likely original to my 1960s house - those metal boxes are so small I added the direct ground wire and kept the wires to both screws. Easier changeover and safer IMO, due to the tiny metal box constraint. Modern code has larger boxes (and usually plastic too at that). I also put a piece of tape wrapped around incase something hits the cover hard and it shifts at some point.
@whattheschmidt yeah, I tried to fit a wifi light switch in one of those and it was very tight. Eventually I just ended up replacing most of my metal boxes with plastic because there were too many open grounds, mismatching gauges, and splices so I reran a lot of new cable. I cut the nails in the metal box out with an oscillating tool to get it out then cut a rectangular piece out of the side where the stud is so i can screw in a B118B new work box. Drywall patch over that tab then it's like new. Just time consuming. I don't like old work boxes unless there's no other choice.
I'm going to disagree with you here on the not doing "line and load on the same receptacle." I ALWAYS do a pass thru using the receptacle. Why? 2 reasons.. first it's less wire nuts in the box, so a lower box fill, but the main reason is because if it goes out, then it takes everything downstream with it, and then you/they HAVE to deal with it instead of just putting tape over it and forgetting it. I find that it's best to be forced to fix something because... "people".
I have a huge gripe with the channel.....we non electricians do not speak in code word (abbreviations) there is a Mexican guy on U-Tube that does , gas plumbing, regular plumbing, electrical work and welding....a true jack of all trades and does not speak in code. I want to support my electrician sister but if I'm yelling at my TV because I don't understand the codes she's throwing at me...then how am I supposed to support the channel or how that's helping me
