How To Fix Short Wires In An Electrical Box

so you're jumping into what should be a quick little electrical update project you just want to swap out this outlet confirming you don't have any power now you take off your two mounting screws but when you go to pull the outlet out man you notice that it is not coming out very far and it's pretty tight so further investigation taking off your three screw terminals this is what we find and that is we have extremely short wires coming into this box and they do not meet code now this is an older home it's been updated numerous times over the years so this is not uncommon and the question is what do we do so let me show you a few different options that will get you out of this situation safely and also will touch on the electrical code that you should be meeting in your area so speaking of code what would you actually want to see and i'll mock up a piece of romex here which will give a better example to meet code what you'd want to see is your non-metallic sheathing from romex extending at least a quarter of an inch through then you want to see from the end of the sheathing to the end of your wire that being at least six inches with at least three inches extending past the box itself so that would be the code that you're looking for now for us our wires one are kind of missing that sheathing and also not extending more than an inch past our box surface so the question is what options do you have i'll walk you through three different options the first two will be focused on trying to get more wire into the box so we can meet code and have plenty to work with to safely mount that outlet and then the last one is the one i'm gonna have to go with where we're gonna use connectors not wire nuts different connectors to extend out those wires to give you enough to work with to get that outlet securely installed now hopefully step one here works for you because it's by far the easiest and really that's just checking to see if we have a service loop or some extra romex back behind this box so you want to pull on your wires but to do this without causing damage to your two conductors like your hot and your neutral here i'll take my hybrid wire strippers here or some needle nose pliers i will firmly grasp on to the bare copper and then i'll kind of use the bottom here for some leverage pulling up on the wires to see if i can pull any more slack into the box sometimes that works and then that will get you to meeting code where you have that six inches past the non-metallic sheathing and three extra inches past the surface of the box but if that doesn't work let's go on to step two so step two or more appropriately called option two is if you actually have access to the romex or old wire that's feeding this box so maybe it's going through a wall cavity down to your basement or crawl space or maybe it's going up to your attic and going to a junction box or maybe you're close to your actual panel and then that will be pulling a new piece of romex through that section and let me give you a few tips i'll give you an example so here i'm pulling a new piece of 14.3 romex and i've already stripped off all the conductors and using one conductor to connect to the old wire that's in the box so i want to twist everything on both sides tight and what you're trying to reduce is any wires hanging out and make the overall package as small as possible so it doesn't snag on anything as you're pulling it through it's very important to wrap several times with electrical tape making that as smooth as possible as you prepare to pull the old wire which will then pull the new romex up through here crawling into the attic space grabbing on the wire and then i'd pull that new wire up through the wall cavity now the challenge with option two is you literally can hit a snag and that most commonly is when that old piece of wire going up through your wall cavity was actually secured with staples onto the studs within the wall so that would obviously make it much harder to pull that into your attic or down into your basement or crawl space so it might not be an option for you but might be worth a try now moving on if option one you didn't have any slack you could not pull any additional wire into the box option two you don't have access to the romax or maybe it's secured in the wall cavity doesn't work let's go into option three which is what i'm going to use for this one so wouldn't it be uncommon for somebody to use a small wing nut or wire nut like this introduce an extension of wire and then twist those together letting the wire nut do the work or to pre-twist those before putting the wire nut on now for most di wires they don't have a ton of experience with wire nuts and kind of struggle with them so if the wires are short that's even more of a problem so for this instance i really prefer the wago 2 2 1 especially the small 2 wire which is very compact and really ideal for these type of scenarios so unfortunately i am going to have to trim these up a bit because i would like to have a little less exposed copper on my new two conductors so i'll trim those up a bit and i'll show you how easy these wagos are to install so once i have my existing wires where i want them now i'll just take the way go and i'll pre-install my extension here making sure that it's fully seated and it goes all the way to the edge of the housing so it's fully seated on the bus bar then i'll just open up the other lever again confirming that the wire is going all the way to the end and then close the lever and that's it now you have the hot extended and we'll do that for the neutral and the ground so now with the extensions or most people call these pigtails in place i'm going to make a j hook for the ground and we'll place that clockwise around the green screw first tightening that up and this is a commercial grade legrand 20 amp outlet so i'm going to use what's called back wiring and that's where you can just pass the straight section of wire in and then when you tighten up the screw terminal actually pulls a plate internally and that's what secures the wire into each of those terminals that would be as opposed to making j hooks on these then going clockwise around each of the terminals for the hot in neutral so once everything's secured then you'll want to fold the wires back into the box not just cramming them back so kind of make it where when you press the outlet back in and you're securing it with the mounting screws the wires want to fold into place where you want them and not just kind of push all over the box then with the ecx screwdriver we'll go ahead and secure the two mounting screws trying to get it as flush as possible with the ship lap on the wall tightening that up basically finish line here and we'll just put the wall plate in place and we're done so although i prefer option one or option two sometimes like this case you have to go with option three and splice in that extra wire length so let me know what you guys think was there another option i missed that's helped you in the past but i think for the wego 221 this is a perfect example of where it makes the job much easier opposed to having very short wires and trying to get a tight hole with the wire nut now if you want a refresher or just want to go over the basics of an outlet check out this video right here and i'll walk you start to finish to give you that knowledge so you get more comfortable and you can do electrical work around your house safely so thanks for joining me on this video and we'll catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 4,139,360

Keywords: wires too short outlet box, not enough wire for outlet, electrical diy projects, everyday home repairs, diy projects

Id: Ru4Y3W103as

Length: 8min 35sec (515 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 17 2022