"Nate Nagel" wrote in message
...
was cleaning up today and decided to replace some receptacles upstairs
since 'rents are coming to visit soon, and these were ugly, painted over,
plates didn't match each other, etc...

now I knew that some of the work was less than optimal, and that things
weren't properly grounded, but the wall I was working on was added after
the house was built and was wired with romex with a ground conductor, so I
assumed that at least that run was done right...

1) at each receptacle, the ground was connected as follows - one conductor
was under one cable clamp, a pigtail was connected to the actual ground
screw to the box, and then the pigtail and the other ground conductor were
both under the screw of the device. How much would a wire nut and another
pigtail have cost to do things right and have all the grounds securely
spliced and only one conductor under the screw terminal?

2) all receps were backstab only. Several of these were ones I didn't use
because I'd identified them as loose. Dunno if there's a connection there
or not...

3) I ASSumed that since these were wired with grounded romex that they
were actually grounded. Guess what? Not so much. I found one recep with
a bootleg from neutral to ground; when I put everything back together
wired correctly, now they test as ungrounded. Guess I have some poking
around in ceiling boxes to do to find where the new wiring begins and the
old wiring ends, and provide a ground at that location. No big deal...

4) here's the one that really gets me. One box was loose and flopping
around. Rather than ripping it out and putting in an old work box,
someone had gobbed a mess of caulking behind the plate in an attempt to
hold it in place. Of course I knocked it out and put an old work box in
instead, and spent a little quality time with a razor blade getting all
the nastiness off the wall. (have had to do this in three different
locations now in this house...) In this same box I found a 20A spec grade
receptacle, even though this is a 15A circuit. I also repulled a
horizontal run through the wall to the next box, because it was easy to do
with one box out, because...

5) all conductors were trimmed so there was maybe 1.5" of wire past the
wall, if you pulled the wires straight out from their clamps. Made wiring
up the receps a royal PITA, I tell you. Repulling this one run made sense
because the old work box didn't have a side entry knockout which meant
that reusing the old cable was going to be very difficult without any
slack.

I'm not really looking for advice, because I can handle this, I just
needed to vent. I suspect that this work was done not by the previous
owners of the house but one back from that, who was supposedly a
contractor.

I should be really glad that he didn't do more work than he did. My next
project is to replace a couple ceiling boxes on the second floor, which
should tie in nicely to the work that I've discovered that I need to do to
provide grounds, because they too are loose and floppy and hanging down
below the plaster. (I'll replace them with fan rated boxes, because I
think the girl wants to put ceiling fans in the bedroom, and at the same
time repull the switch legs with 14/3WG in preparation.) I just can't
believe that someone supposedly professional could do work that even I can
recognize as really shoddy.

One question after that whole rant, though - does anyone make fan rated
octagon extension rings? I suspect that at least one of those ceiling
boxes must be pretty chock full of wire.



*I have seen jobs like what you have described. I believe most of them were
done by handymen or contractors with no electrical experience or
qualifications.

I have never seen fan rated extension boxes, but there are deeper fan foxes
(2 1/8").