Had a “so called” electrician call me up today to tell me that he was inspecting a panel I checked the other day. I called out the double tap that you obviously can see below. The “so called” electrician was arguing with me that this is standard practice and that I should find another career!!! Needless to say I started to talk a little more up to their level to feel out what type of person I was dealing with, they were lost and had no clue about anything with an electrical system. I continued on to tell them that they should contact the owner and tell them that they need to find another electrician to fix the problem, as this is obvisouly to difficult of a repair for the “electrician” that I was on the phone with to fix (Maybe I will call :-k ). I guess that I just had to share how some people can be so obsured and claim to be someone they are not, because this person obviously was not the “electrician” that they were claiming to be, probably just another real estate agent or owner tring to pull a fast one.
I am curious if anyone else has had this experience and how you handled it?
Yeah, but the CH’s have sort of an oval where the wires enter, so it’s hard to tell without up-close pics of the actual termination whether one is on each side of the screw or not. I think it probably is terminated correctly, however, because it’s pretty hard to get it wrong on a CH. The way that oval window is, if you have one conductor on the bottom already, it’s downright hard to get another in there.
As long as they don’t start out with a manifesto, I’m game. You know I’m “nice” 99% of the time, but I reserve that 1% for special occasions. This was the right time for that. The OP started out bashing this EC, so he opened that Pandora’s Box and I obliged. Matter of fact, I should quote his OP for posterity, since this is the sort of stuff that gets edited when the OP returns:
Certainly, for a nominal fee. Would you like my PayPal address?
The one in the pic in this post absolutely does. Square D QO and Cutler Hammer CH are the two popular one’s, in 15 and 20 amp. There’s a couple others, but they escape me at the moment. It is notated on the breaker, however.
Marc, is there a date change on those CH panels? I just checked mine. I have one from about 1977, nothing in the panel or on any of the 13 single pole breakers states OK for two wires. I checked each side of each breaker and the two interior labels. Zip. Although I see the oval access hole does appear to have room for two conductors.
I think Carlingswitch was one. There’s a couple others, but they’re pretty obscure. A guy is likely to run into QO’s and CH’s pretty regularly, so I was surprised to see this post about CH’s. I thought the word would be pretty much out by now on those after all these years. That said, I still make pretty good scratch correcting double taps that don’t need corrected since some HI’s call all of them out as a matter of course. Doesn’t make a bit of difference to me, in the end. I “fix” even the one’s that would be okay if left alone.
No, I don’t feel that way at all, therefore the rest of your statement is invalid. I think they should examine this stuff, but they need to know what it is they’re looking at. Not such a big feat, in reality. The OP here [vioce=Maxwell Smart]Missed it by that much![/voice] Since anyone can hang out their shingle tomorrow as an HI for the most part, some proof of education is in order. NACHI has a pretty good model, but this guy slipped through the cracks somehow.
