ECN Forum Forums Photo Discussion Forums Photos for General Discussion More sheet rocker woes . . .

Those boxes are great provided you don't want the device securely attached.

I agree with Electricmanscott,they are great during trimout but, after that they are a disservice to the customer/user.

Something that we do to avoid the "buried box" problem is to put a paint mark on the floor under each box. We go back to the site after the rock is up & do a quick walk-thru. Any buried, we cut them out.

Now, if I can stop the spacklers from filling the boxes....hmm. And yes, we splice thru all our boxes at rough...and energize all the circuits. If anything gets cut, we can find it, fix it before any finish work is done.

John

I always pig-tailed my hots and nuetrals at the rough stage, which made it very difficult to know if a box was buried. I started getting in the habit of taking the plans with me when I did a walk through before inspection and make sure everything that was supposed to be there was indeed there.

Excellent point :andy:/sparked. I can't think of a reason in the world to strip the wires in advance. It only increases the risk of something goofy like this happening, not to mention the possibility of a fire.

The screw push-in feature of the Slater boxes is a nice feature, but otherwise I think their devices are crap. Every switch and outlet in the house is a Slater and I am replacing them all one room at a time with Leviton's. Many of the outlets have separated from the mounting ears and are just dangling in the boxes after 16 years. My mother's house still has functional Leviton devices from 1916 including a few pushbutton switches for those of you old enough to remember those!

I'm not sure if I'm thinking the same thing, but I had one customer with these boxes where many devices were loose because there was nothing there to screw into. The plastic had broken off as far back as the bare ground in the bottom of this picture. I did devise a way to get the devices secure again, but it took awhile.

I much prefer the Blue Carlon boxes, it seems like the plastic in these boxes breaks too easy.

Bill

sparked:

That K&T was at a neighbor's house, and fortunately, is long gone. The whole house was rewired. I was fascinated by the discovery of the previous rennovations once the walls were opened up.

By the way, Mean Gene, have you checked the rest of the wiring there?

Bill:

The next time I remove one of these Slater outlets that have come apart I will take a close-up picture of it and send it to you or post it here.

ThinkGood:


I'm re-doing each room in the house, one room at a time, and only about 1/3 of the way through. So far everything is in pretty good order electric wise. I've found a couple of back-stabbed switches (no outlets), several outlets that have come apart (previous owner abuse maybe?!?) and a couple of devices without grounds attached. I've been in the service panel several times and have noticed that several neutral bar screws have two wires under them, but I don't believe that was against code back in 1986.

Hotline,

Perhaps you should try some of these to stop from getting spackle in your boxes. They look like they would protect the wires from the mad rotozip.
www.rndprducts.com

You know, those "stab the wire into the hole" outlets and switches don't offer much more contact than what those wires had in that hidden box.....