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RicodJour RicodJour is offline
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Default Back and side wired receptacles?

On Mar 2, 2:35 pm, snowburnt wrote:
I was replacing some receptacles in my kitchen (20 Amp circuit). I
pulled out the existing receptacles and found that they had 7 wires
going into them, 3 white 3 black and 1 ground. the receptacle had 2
screw terminals per side, and the extra 2 wires were in the back,
pushed in.

I was going to try to duplicate this but the new receptacles only
accept 14 gauge in the back and the old ones accept 12 or 14...the
wires seem to be 12. so I can't duplicate with these decor plugs.

should I try to find receptacles with the 12 cu wires or could I put
two wires per screw, or connect two of them with a connector?


It sounds like you have more than one receptacle with this condition.
They may have broken off the side connector tabs and put each
individual receptacle onto its own circuit. The stab connections can
be problematic. The spring connections have a tendency to loosen due
to heat from a higher load - like a load that would require 12 ga
wire. The standard solution is to wire nut the wires together and run
a pigtail to the receptacle. You may have an issue with exceeding the
maximum box fill depending on what sort of box is there now - wire
nuts and pigtails will only make it worse, as do GFIs' greater volume.

R