Happy New Year to All
That said, I want to junction off of existing cable to install a new outlet. Thought I could just cut the cable to junction off of, but there is no slack in the cable. Can I cut the cable and replace with new which will require two junctions (see below)?
———existing———————JB____NEW___________JB—–Existing——————
Thanks
Dan
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Replies
I'm no electrician but I see no problem with your solution.
Just make sure you don't "bury" those junction boxes <g>
Jon Blakemore
Couldn't you go like this:
---existing Recep----old wire---NEW Recep----new wire---Existing Recep---
At last, someone has managed to type a clear, understandable electrical diagram.
Agreed: Horrors should you dare to bury a junction box.
The technical problem would be you that you would fail the dreaded code test [i.e. minimum of 6" and 3" outside the box]. But theoretically you could do it. Use a 4" square box and a bunch of pigtails. Even better would be to use a four gang box. This would give you about 4" of wire on each side to work with.
A more orthodox approach would be to just run a new piece of cable from the nearest J box.
Have you heard of cable stretching? What you do is remove the existing cable [estimated to be about 21 spaces long according to your diagram]. Then you use it to attach a trailer to your white pickup truck and tow it down the highway a bit and back. By the time you return, it sould have stretched an additional few inches. This will give you enough slack.
Note: the sheath will still say -- in elongated form -- #12 AWG even though it is now equivalent to #14 or even #16. But electrons can't read.
~Peter
"They are investigating illegal diversion of funds. They are being paid by diverted funds." -- Michael Aguirre, new San Diego City Attorney
This is why they make blank plates. Sometimes you can gain a little wire if the last staple was driven home with a rigging axe but that never works out in a real world applications so you are probably going to have a couple of boxes, good luck.
No, no, no never, ever, use a blank plate. The horror. The horror. The house beutiful, Martha Stewart police will have you tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail for using a blank plate. Blank plates - The last unforgivable sin.Women will cross the street to stay away from you. Men will ignore you. Children will laugh and make fun of you as you walk down the street.
Worked with a builder who couldn't cut an outlet in a piece of sheetrock on a bet...always having to make a run for oversized plates for a couple of devices. Always stuck out like, well you got an imagination. The problem is most the time nobody notices a device unless it's behind something, the builder changed the door swing,or your blasted helper got'em mounted at all kinds of different heights. even a quarter inch will pull the eyeball right in. But if you really want to notice'em put a great big oversize stinkin' plate on there. Oneday mr. builder[small letters] really outdoes himself on a switch so I tell him no problem I'll bring a plate tommorrow. I go home, paint a 4x8 sheet of cdx ivory, cut a little bitty switch hole in it and take it to him with the phonebook taped open to electrical contractors.
Edited 12/31/2004 1:21 am ET by pye
Re: "I go home, paint a 4x8 sheet of cdx ivory, cut a little bitty switch hole in it and take it to him with the phonebook taped open to electrical contractors."LOL.I may have worked on a couple of those jobs. Had one where the HO drywalled the place. Junction boxes either covered completely, more than once completely filled with mud, or the hole looked like it had been cut with an axe by a blind man. Gaps around the box big enough to lose your screwdriver in. A lot of the job, often in the most obvious spots, done with cut off scraps. Odd triangular and semi-rectangular pieces cobbled together, often in slightly different planes. The cracks and spaces stuffed with mud that looked to have been applied with a shovel. Perhaps from across the room. Gaps between the drywall and studs, up to a full inch in several spots, common. Lean on the wall and a dozen nails would pop out.My blank plate commentary was a spoof related to the 'buried junction box thread'. Good-natured ribbing going both ways.
Yeah, I know...I've been lurking around here long enough to know that at least bimonthly comes the thread "can I bury my junction boxes?". It's really cuz I hate sniffing those suckers out that I respond at all, usually a couple of you head them of at the pass before I give my two bits, if it wasn't for the fact that sooner or later one of us gets to fix them I wouldn't care if they buried their service panel and disguised their meter base as a bulldog statue and tapdanced on the utility companies fargos.
You are right. No blank cover plates.The correct Martha Stewart way to handle this would be to install series of sq boxes around the room. And mount them diagonally.They handcraft ceramic cover plates that match the decor of the room.And for bonus points you make a series of these, one for each season of the year.
LOL
I've used a couple of old TV twin lead cover plates on junction boxes for economy's sake. Simply tell everybody that the cable guys could not pull a cable there <G>
That is better than the plastic coffee can lid that I saw on one octagon box.
This weekend I finally got around to taking the plate off a painted-over octagon box. Inside was a single BX cable, hot wired to neutral. I'm scratching my head and figuring that as far as Mr Utility is concerned, this is a device that's always on....
I am guessing that there used to be a switch in that area.Or the circuit is dead and was hot to neutral at the other end also.
Mr Tester says the circuit's still live.There's been some peachy wiring in this old house... My favorite is the open 4-way splice of BX cables in the attic, traced one wire to the loose end of a dead cable, another to a switch buried in a door header, another fed power to a bedroom with not-so-grounded receptacles.... Then there's the light switch in the kitchen: BX armor extending a good 2 to 3" into the box (they had to break the clamp to get it in), but it's okay that one has the bushing, none of the other cables do....
Since it is NYD, I'll assume you are in a no permit required area. <G>? There are a few left aren't there?
Anyway, strip the outer covering off for about 6 inches, strip 1" of the black and 1" of the white at opposite ends of the 6" stretch. Strip enough off of 4-5for " long pigtails of the black and white and ground 4 tight wraps around the corresponding conductors and solder with 50/50 or 63/47. Tape up well with rubber tape followed by friction tape (PVC OK now?) This was once per code prior to grounds being required (lost my old NEC book from back then <G>. )
Don't tell anybody you did it like this, although it is perfectly safe and proper, you gotta have enough smartz to not burn thru the white next to the black wire when soldering, so NEC decided years ago the average union shop dummy could not handle a job of this complexity (like said, it's NYD for grins) .