On Tue, 21 Feb 2017 14:38:25 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/21/2017 08:49 AM, Ralph Mowery wrote:
In article , says...



I cannot picture a situation where I'd ever have two different gauges of
wire but after that one let loose on me I've always pre-twisted
first...then after the wire nut is on, tug on it to be sure all is
secure,,,then as a final precaution, tape it all up

Just about all the lights in a house has 2 sizes of wire. Usually a 14
feeding the light and one much smaller that comes with the light.




Just realized . To me, using two different gauges is not a good idea.

If you use 12 and 14 the circuit breaker could not exceed 15 amps due to
the #14 wire. Since the breaker cannot exceed 15 amps then there is no
need to use #12 wire.


Additionally , somewhere down the road another owned of the house while
working in the breaker box might see the #12 wire on a 15 amp breaker
and put it on a 20 amp.

Maybe another knowledgeable person here could comment.


(Buford, Col Burke and Muggles are filter out of my feed due to never
once coming up with a useful solution)
How about when wire-nutting a flourescent ballast (#18?) to the #14
house wiring?? VERY common situation. There are quite a few others.
One of the tricky ones is using the approved ACS marrette to pigtail a
awg14c wire to an awg12a.. The inspector will fail the joint if it is
pretwisted before installing the ACS - and the 14 copper and the 12
aluminum actually DO twist together rather well with the nut. - at
least with the second gen aluminum.