"Bob Smif" wrote in message
...

All of this is interesting to me. It makes one
wonder just how good
wire nuts are. YES, I use them. But where old boxes,
or small boxes
are in place, I still prefer to solder and tape.
Soldered connections
take up less room, and still can come apart nicely when
necessary.
I have had occasion to take some of my 30-year old
soldered
connections apart, and they are just like new. I have
also had
occasion to take some wire nut connections apart, and
sometimes they
can be quite hard to remove.
Again, just my opinion. I don't do wiring for
pay, --Phil

--
Phil Munro Dept of Electrical &
Computer Engin
Youngstown
State University

Youngstown, Ohio 44555

I used to joke that I had to promise the university I
wouldn't even touch an
electrical extension cord before they'd let me graduate as
a structural
engineer (BS and MS; and PE). Now I kinda regret that
joke. Now I own an
older home that I want to modernize with 200+ amp service,
recessed dimmable
lighting, and all the fancy stuff that I see in the new
homes that cost less
than mine did but are 15 miles outside of town (Houston) I
find this
residential electrical wiring and planning very
fascinating. It's more
interesting than my job of designing pressure vessels to
the ASME Code.
Wonder if it's too late to change jobs?



LOL, I'd keep your day job, but hey,for extra money ... g

Wire nuts, properly used, are actually pretty reliable in
the overall, or there would be a world of code and insurance
rehashing going on. It's when an inexperienced person gets
hold of them and figures it's just "twisting is all" or
someone gets very lazy, tired, or cheap. A correctly
fashioned connection will hold together AND not come apart
on its own, even if the wire nut falls off! The wire nut is
really only intended to insure the integrity of the
connection against movement, age, and expansion/contraction
of the materials over time. In essence, they "guarantee"
that the wires wil always be tightly held against each
other.

I remember one guy who INSISTED that he'd been taught the
right way to apply a wire nut was to NOT twist one wire, but
to twist the other wire/s around one wire. Then you twisted
them counterclockwise, so that when the nut went on, it
tried to untwist the wires, forcing the nut to bite into the
wiring all that much harder.
He was dead serious, and after awhile, I came to believe
that he had indeed been taught SOMETHING similar to that,
but whatever it was, I never figured out!

As for soldering, I did that in our home in Chgo. I lucked
out and got to hit the dumpsters at a furniture factory that
was being torn down. It wasn't until after I got home I
discovered it was ALL stranded wire!! I ended up using it,
and redid my whole house with it . I soldered as much as
possible, then used wirenuts and taped. For fixtures, I
just twisted the strands, tinned them, and shaped and
applied them to the screws. It was actually a lot easier
than working with solid wire, expecially the soldering
experience.
I have to disagree with easy to get apart though. I
always had to fight that danged tape when I had to go back a
few years later to do some upgrading and tapped into some of
those lines. YUK! I can imagine what it would have been
like to get that tape off the splices themselves!
O yueah, inspection went off without a hitch, too.

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