On Sat, 5 Mar 2016 13:29:07 -0800 (PST), TimR
wrote:

On Saturday, March 5, 2016 at 2:10:45 PM UTC-5, Oren wrote:

(snip)

The contacts? You mean the screws that hold the wires to the outlet?

I have never ever seen this done, and can't picture a way to do it other than wrapping tape round and round the whole outlet, which would look incredibly sloppy.

Unless I'm picturing this wrong?

Wrapped on the side, not around.

Pic:

https://tinyurl.com/hp42mqd

Thanks for the pic. I had not heard of anybody doing this, and if I'd ever run into it without this discussion, I would have assumed somebody didn't know what they were doing, and I'd have checked the rest of their work twice as carefully.


First I saw it done was after I pulled an outlet out one time. The
pic seems to show a metal box. I haven't seen electricians do it,
maybe a DYI thing? I see nothing wrong with the idea.

I have seen wire nuts taped, and I have a friend who was taught that way in his factory's safety classes. The theory was that the nut might someday vibrate loose. I don't like wire nuts myself, prefer the chocolate block type solution whenever possible, but 7 cents versus 3 dollars does make a lot of difference on a big job.

IMO, wire nuts should not be used a second time after the first and
also use the correct size. Just sayin.