On Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 3:38:31 PM UTC-5, 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)

Ralph already did. He pointed out that almost all the common light
fixtures in use in a house have wire that is smaller than the 14 gauge
that comes into it. Wire nuts are used to join the two. Also things
like light dimmers have wires that are smaller than the 14 gauge
circuit conductors.

If you look at a bag of wire nuts, they will have the combinations of
numbers of wires of different gauges that it's listed to be used with.
You'll see listed combinations like one #14 with two #18 for example.