On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:59:05 -0700, N8N wrote:

On Aug 22, 12:54 am, albee wrote:
On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:29:44 GMT, (Doug Miller)
wrote:





In article , albee wrote:

OMG. Simple enough. Indeed, they were backstabbed, and after getting
done with re-wiring them (BTW: coincidence or not, turns out the best
thing to use to disengage those suckers is the prong of a cord! Tried
about 10 things before I came up with that). Anyway, got done with
it... and nothing. Nothing. So, I decide to test other outlets in the
room, stick my multimeter in another one, and as soon as I do, all
lights and power come on throughout the room?! Including to the one I
just re-wired. Yet, this was an outlet that was behind a dresser and
hadn't been used in eons. What happened? I decided not to take it
apart to check it, since we're not using it and it's working now.

Bad idea.

You KNOW there's a problem there. You know, too, that the problem is a loose
connection. What you may not know is that loose connections can start fires.

Fix it.

BEFORE you go to sleep tonight.

Thanks for all the replies (and Rich, no, they're not aluminum). Can
anyone explain what happened after I re-wired the one outlet, and
suddenly I wasn't getting any power to it, and then tested the other
outlet, that hadn't been touched in years, and all of a sudden it
appears to have a loose wire? Did the wire come loose from turning the
breaker on and off?

No, more likely something was mechanically weak internally in the
other outlet and the simple act of plugging in a tester broke it.
That means it's time to replace it.
Probably just beating a dead horse here, but just to clarify and try
to understand it, if there was something mechanically weak or wrong
prior to testing it, why was it not causing a problem the day before
when the other was acting up? This new, previously "unused" outlet was
upline from the one I was working on, but not causing a problem until
after I had worked on the downline one. Anyway, not important, but
just trying to see if there's something else to learn from this
situation.

Guess I'll go in and replace it/both with new
outlets, but then shouldn't I be doing that throughout the house, if
these are all original, and all backstabbed, and two in one room have
gotten loose at the same time? Jeez, sounds like a fun week ahead!
Thanks again for all the help!

Yup, replace 'em all. Just do it. You'll sleep better. at a
minimum, test every outlet in the house and replace all that have
problems, but I'd just do all of them while you're in the groove.

nate

(total hypocrite, since I still have to do about half of the ones in
my house.)
Thanks; I'm thinking of maybe doing one room per day. But also, doing
a whole house, even at only a couple dollars per outlet/switch, will
be over a hundred dollars. I'm guessing close to 50 combined? At that
volume, we'll have to see how "high quality" I want to go! Or would
simply re-wiring all of them be enough. It's not like we're
continually plugging and unplugging things into these outlets. Anyway,
thanks again.