ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Back Stabbing...

Please do not propose to do away with back stabs, they provide us with a pretty good amount of service work, they are usually found in production wired homes, where installation costs are number one, not good craftsman level work.

Food for thought from UL White Book" to those of us who do backstab:

"Single and duplex receptacles rated 15 & 20 amp that are provided with more than one set of terminals for line & neutral connections may be used to feed a single set of branch circuit conductors connected to other receptacles on a multi-outlet circuit.
These devices have not been tested for tapping off more than one circuit from the receptacle by utilizing both the side wiring and back wiring terminals on an outlet."

Of course our voltage is 230V, but still our receptacles are rated 16A, so what's the difference? Several cord connected appliances like washing machines and dishwashers do go up to the 16A limit and are nowadays solely connected to backstabbed receptacles! The resistance of the connection is a little less important at higher voltage, but that's all.

Several possibilities (more food for thought than reasoned scientific theories )

1. From personal observation, European 'backstab' type connections (I have personally only used Wagos, but I assume these are very similar?) seem to be 'tighter' than the North American equivalent.

Specifically, the Wagos I've played with seem to have much more resistance to 'conductor rotation' than the backstab outlets in the States I also played with.

2. Redsy has a point I was previously unaware of but seems to make a lot of sense, that they're rated for 'terminating' only, not feed-thru, which seems to be where a lot of the problems lie.

3. Due to construction differences, NEMA style outlets seem to get a lot warmer at rated load than European ones, this could possibly affect the spring in a negative way.

4. Often the failure in North American devices happens over a long period of time, rather than being seen instantly. The electrical contractor who goes to investigate has only the owner's word that the outlet hasn't been overloaded by the addition of multitaps, etc. (And that owner may not know what a previous owner has done, and so forth)

Interesting discussion looking at this from a point where the train for a "screw driver free" switch panel is just passing the point of no return. As far as I can see our future here in Europe, screw terminals really will be completely "out", as forces applied on the wire are not physically "defined" but depending on the feeling of the guy who wires. And a 90° turn and click will not only be safer but also cheaper even for 63A busbars as we all cost too much.

As a matter of fact a receptacle with screws usually is just cheap rubbish today, a certain sign of minor quality. The main idea is that copper is "flowing off" so the screw might get loose with the time and get warm thereafter, whereas a quality spring will always keep its forces.

Chipmunk,

My take on UL is that you can feed through either from the screws or the push-in, but only one or the other, not both.

European back-stabs have two holes per terminal and are commonly used for feeding through. I have wired 5-gang Schukos feeding even more receptacles on the same circuit...

Ranger, that sounds similar to the Korean receptacles.

Two little holes plus a button for release for each pole.

OK, I think I have answered this one at least 3-4 times in the last 10 years but here is my 2 cents again. Backstabbing IMHO is UL listed and labeled for #14 wire and it was UL listed for #12 years ago. When you are out there in the real world and you have to compete with others in order to get jobs and make money, you will backstab. It was and is listed and labeled so why not. Now if the GC wants to pay top dollar and is willing to go for the good stuff, then we would not backstab anything. The old proverb was,"You get what you pay for.) As for those "new type" of wirenuts that use backstabbing, I am not sure if I like them either. They will accept either solid or stranded wire. ( I believe) I found that when you use to backstab your devices, you should also give them a "tug" to make sure that they were really in there tight. I never had call backs on the devices we used, but on the othere hand, we did have to go back and fix some of the old pinback receptacles that were around.