Half-Baked Electric Outlet

[mk378]

It would be completely safe to draw 15 amps from an outlet on a 20 amp circuit, thus having 5 left over for other stuff. There are outlets marked with a 20 amp rating just to be safe in the pass-through capacity.

No single appliance with a 5-15 plug is supposed to draw more than 15 amps. If you have one that does, it's an issue of having the wrong plug, not the wrong outlet.

 

[sleddriver]

Hey, you guys are hijacking my thread and leaving me out! Geeze Louise.....

Back on topic....

A new Mstr Bdrm ckt breaker was called for. Fortunately a box store had one for $4. Couldn't believe they were that cheap...and GE too. All lights and outlets are operational once again.

I removed the "remote switch red wire" option, left the bridge in place and will leave the red wire on the outlet end, disconnected. Doesn't make sense to add complexity and more connections than necessary.

Q: Why in the world are the outlet screws so dang hard to screw in?? Talk about a tight fit. Installation was very awkward due to location, having to learn over, etc. Couldn't get a drill/driver in there: not deep enough. Nearly stripped the head out. There must be a special sized bit only sparky's know about......

The living room is still a mess, I didn't cook anything, and this project was an awkward black-hole. Couldn't have come at a worse time. I replaced with a quality Leviton 20A outlet with a steel reinforcing plate, quality contacts and a nylon face.

/Rant
Time to finally eat...........

 

[sleddriver]

Originally Posted By: mk378
Push-in outlets make a poor connection automatically. This one does not look that completely burnt up. The break is probably somewhere earlier in the circuit.
Upgrading all indoor outlets sounds like a good idea. I've already done this with the outdoor & garage outlets. I used spec grade with nylon faces that really hold onto the leaf blower plug.

I'm still puzzled at the very low resistance I measured. Doesn't make sense. Any thoughts?

 

[sleddriver]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
only if there's a 20 amp breaker, which OP *should* have.
I'm good there. All breakers are a min. of 20A. They're cheap to: $4/ea at HD. GE brand. At that cost and given 90% of them are now 35yrs old, and the outside box faces South....in Tex....I'm thinking about "re-breakering" the whole box. They've lived a long, hard life in those conditions.

 

[sciphi]

I was updating more outlets and switches today. Found another broken outlet that was waiting to fail. And some switches that were missing grounding wires. All the old stuff was builder-grade Leviton. The new decorator outlets/switches got side-wired and tightened down.

 

[George7941]

I don't think missing ground wires on switches are a big deal at all. The switch gets grounded when it is screwed on to the metal box with metal screws. Once the plastic wall plate is installed no metal is exposed in any way (except for screw heads) and it is not possible to come into contact with metal except for the small screw heads.

With metal wall plates the ground wire becomes more important but even there everything gets grounded to the metal box with screws.