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that is ugly there and btw i look at the last two photos there and what kind of clamp to hold that romax wire?? that is really goofy one i ever see and the last photo i can see other romax wire look like both red wire and ground wire is allready cutted off. and i am not too crazy with wago connectors there at all .

in third photo look little burry to me but looks like too much wire for that size of junction box there

in fourth photo i can see really clear with bent emt conduct there .

btw what else in that place have open junctions box and code voliations there ??

merci, marc

Marc,
The loads I found that were running on the 14/2 Romex were mind boggling! 10A Soda Machine, 12A Microwave, a commercial coffee machine I couldnt find a rating on (probably between 12-15A, 14AWG power cord), 5 offices each with a full-on computer set up, one of the offices had a portable space heater & a small Mr. Coffee... I havent found the breaker that fed all of this, as when I came across all this, I immediately showed the manager that called in the work order. I saftied off the romex crap at a box & left it dead until they decide who's eating the repair bill. The company management had no clue all this was up there & stated it must've been left over from the last tenant.. & they're holding the landlord responsible for the repair. (BTW, the company there now had an "electrician" add a few outlets in the offices. The "electrician" mentioned nothing about the romex being there.. He must've seen it, because his outlets connected into the jbox with the failed Wago connectors, being fed via the romex. The MC cable minus the ground seemed to be made this way!, I've never come across it this way, but that part of the circuit had devices on it which appeared to be from sometime in the late 60's or into the 70's... Was this ever ok?
I found weirdness all over this place.. panels doublelugged to feed other panels, burned breakers still being used, open breaker spaces, ¾ of the boxes in that place were uncovered. Some hacked up ways of attaining 220V by pulling a phase from 2 different boxes into another... The 3rd pic was taken from a distance, sorry about the quality, but its severly overcrowded & was also missing a cover... The 1st pic is about 20+ feet of EMT running to the roof, just resting on the A/C ducting.
I'll get more pics once they sign for the repairs.

-Randy

I never did like the Wago-style connectors.
This is just what I thought they'd do.
It looks a lot like a "backstabber plug failure", doesn't it?


It still is OK. It's type AC cable. You can see the paper filler (not mylar) sticking out of the connector, and the tiny ground wire (correctly) wound back up the outside of the armor.
This is newer than you think.
We didn't have Speedlok connectors or Wagos back then. (We had lots of "Whackos", though)



[This message has been edited by electure (edited 05-17-2004).]

Alright....before anyone asks, the fact that there was a Budweiser can at the crime scene is not evidence that I did this install!!!

LMAO Ryan.... I know you did'nt do it... You prefer Miller, right? Besides, this place is in Electure's neck of the woods

-Randy

I didn't do it!! Honest!!
For me, it's coffee, tea, or soda.
(Henry Weinhard's brewery does make some fantastic Orange Creme soda, though).
If I had a Budweiser, my work would probably not be much better than this....S

Weird how similar things are on both sides of the big pond... here it is the proverbial Ottakringer bottle, or in recent days the Schwechater/Gösser/Budweiser can (BTW, Budweis is the German name of the czech town Ceske Budejovice, pretty close to Austria, and that's where Budweiser originally came from).
I sometimes have the feeling construction workers live off beer and fast food. A mason we had a few years ago managed to be drunk as #@?*# at 7:30 in the morning and stay that way all day long.
Now it really gets OT, but he was one of the few guys who didn't use the temp power trick i described in a thread in the Non-US section but actually asked us whether he could plug his extension cord into one of our receptacles. Oh well, it was wintertime, and a few days later I caught him heating the unfinished basement with a 2000W blow heater and leaving it on all night long... that was when I pulled the plug...
Oh yeah, and he managed to get us a dead hot-to ground short when plastering the bathroom that blew the 16A breaker, the 30mA GFI _and_ the 20A main fuse.

Give me flashbacks to a panelchange I did in Walnut... Split level house with a pretty good size basement/crawlspace... I went under there to bond the rebar & water system, There had to be about 80-100 beer cans under there! This was obviously the spot to "disappear" when these houses were being built!
Electure's right about the Weinhards orange, Good Stuff!
Speaking on the topic of temp power... I've come across so many different contraptions that other trades have made to get power from one place to another, not necessarily the safest way, I can't begin to describe.. I've made some of the worst ones "disappear" mysteriously.. One guy had a twistlock L5-20 cord car with 2 power strips wired into it,.. All the other trades helped load em up to the point that you could smell the hot plastic & rubber if you walked past the spider box...

BTW Electure... My "old company" had some yellow twistlock cords that needed some serious help... I hope they're out of service by now! Not to mention some pretty thrashed spider boxes!

-Randy

I disagree that this is evidence that Wago-style connectors are not any good.

Judging by some of the other things done in this office, I wouldn't be surprised to find attempts to take short-cuts by sharing neutrals. I have found neutrals combined in the j-boxes- which can easily lead to the neutrals overliading (especially when there are differing ampacity circuits involved!)

As far as this instance.. I'll agree with John as it being unfair to down the Wago connectors based on the BBQ'd neutral here... A 14 AWG wire with the amount of load that had been placed on it in this instance had to of gotten to some pretty lofty temperatures! Not to mention ambient temperature where this was, was well into the 100's F on a daily basis due to the machinery run here.. This actually says something for it's endurance, since it lasted at least 3 years.. (When the other "electrician" added load to the box in question, whether the Wago's were there before that, of he installed them, I couldn't say)...
As I said earlier, I never did locate the overcurrent protection governing the wiring in the burnt neutral pic... I just snipped it at another box to make sure no load would be put on the burnt connection... For all I know so far, this could be on a 100A breaker! & with the load it was carrying, finding it ending up at a 30 or 40 amp breaker wouldn't suprise me, or even finding 2 circuits/same phase bundled together someplace!
While troubleshooting I pretty much ruled out the "overlaid phasing" on the connection in question.. Disconnecting the 14/2 romex eliminated power to all the problem areas I spoke of earier...

-Randy

PS... Does this mean I think Wago's make a better connecton than a properly made up wirenut? Nope!, But Wago's seriously come in handy when I need to remake up a box that someone has left 2" of wire to work with in! Getting a wago on properly can be done... A wirenut? Hmmmmm.....