all right should you be using wire nuts or wagos out in the field
what's up everyone i am dustin stelzer with electricianu this question has been asked
me so many times over the years for years i just have not answered it because it's
a silly thing to worry about it's like saying should you eat oranges or should you eat apples
both like they're both okay they both do you know the food thing they both go inside your
body nourishment so let's get into it a little bit all right what is a wago
for those of you that have no idea what we're talking about a wago is a type of stab in splicing
device basically if you have two wires that you need to strip out and put them together one way
of going about this is using a thing called a wago and it's basically got uh holes that you
can stab in and internally inside of the wago there's metal that's all connected together
so it's essentially the same thing as a wire nut except you don't have to twist your connections
together um like you do in a wire nut now there's even the debate out there of whether or not you
need to be twisting things together in a wire nut that to me is a little bit more uh a little bit
more solid of an argument you know like if you don't twist your wire nuts together you don't
have a solid connection you go to untwist the wire nuts and everything just falls apart on you
so i am more of the school of thought that i always pre-twist all of my joints that's
just a personal thing nothing says that you have to the insides of a lot of these wire nuts are
specifically put to kind of twist things together for me i always want to make solid joints right i
always want my wires even if wire nut comes off i want that joint to stay i want the continuity
of the circuit to still exist so i am on the pre-twist side however i still do use wago's
because not all of the time do i want to sit there and twist thousands of these things if i have a
splicing device if i have some kind of uh termination that i ca it allows me to take
one conductor out while all of the other ones remain intact so that's my logic with it right
with a wire nut if you pre-twist everything kind of the downside is that you have to sit
and untwist all of that stuff if you just want to get one wire out so you're already gonna
have to kind of like undo the circuit and then like retwisting and untwisting and doing all of
that to take a joint apart a lot of people think like that's just stupid it's a waste of time and
it's more of a pain in the butt so using wagos that allows you to just put all of these things
uh pressure terminations into a junction box fold everything in the back and go about your way
the national electrical code does not require that things be listed but it does require that
if things are listed that they be installed with that listings instructions so you have to install
things to the manufacturer's instructions and if something is listed you have to install it how it
was listed to be used so let's look in 110 and that my code ref my dudes that are all looking
like at me like i'm crazy right now is 110.3b installation and use equipment that is listed
labeled or both shall be installed and used in accordance with any instructions included in the
listing or labeling it does not say equipment shall be listed all things must be listed
but there are certain places certain pieces of equipment certain things like that where they do
call out a listing anything used in this kind of situation must be listed for the use
so there are times where that is the case but in general when they talk about listing
they're saying that anything that has a listing must be installed to the listing well all wire
nuts out there and let's be uh correct with our turmage uh term-ege i like that word turmidge
uh anytime you have something that is uh a wire connector wire fastener wire splicing device
um any any of these terms they mean wire nut the problem is is that ideal has
a patent or a trademark on the term wire nut so that's why you see wire connectors wire you know
all these different terms out there instead of using wire nut but we all say in the field wire
not it's just that they were smart enough to go buy that damn turn so we're talking about wire
nuts but more specifically there's different types of ways that you can connect conductors together
and those are not the only two so in 110 we're talking about just all electrical installations
kind of in general so we're going to find general information about all of this stuff 110.14 says
electrical connections because of different characteristics of dissimilar metals devices such
as pressure terminals which is what a wego would be or pressure splicing connectors and soldering
lugs shall be identified for the material of the conductor and shall be properly installed and used
because if you put two dissimilar metals together they can actually kind of rust so to speak they
can galvanize through galvanic action and they can actually kind of eat away at each other
conductors of dissimilar metal shall not be intermixed in terminal or splicing connector
where physical contact occurs between the similar conductors such as copper and aluminum or aluminum
and copper clad aluminum unless the device is identified for the purposes and conditions of use
so a wire nut would essentially take two conductors touch them together
and then you put those together and if they are dissimilar metals they're going to corrode each
other whereas a wago might not do that the way go depending on what the pieces of metal
on the inside of the wago are you will have copper touching that metal and you will have
aluminum touching that metal but the copper and the aluminum will not be touching each other so
depending on the wagos that are being used it's a possibility to adhere to that whereas using wire
nuts you're always going to be mixing the wires together now there are specific wire nuts that
are listed that have that antiox basically an anti-oxidizing paste or something on the inside
of it that will minimize the effects of those things oxidizing each other over time so they
still address that with the wire nuts it also says materials such as solder fluxes inhibitors
and compounds where employed shall be suitable for use and shall be of a type that will not
adversely affect the conductor's insulation or equipment under terminals okay this is
another one connection of conductors to terminal parts shall ensure a thoroughly good connection
thoroughly good i like that instead of like a great connection an outstanding connection not
just thoroughly good a thoroughly good connection without damaging the conductors and shall be made
by means of pressure connectors uh including screw set type pressure connectors so again wago
are approved solder lugs or splices to flexible leads connection by means of wire bending screws
or studs and nuts that have upturned lugs or the equivalent shall be permitted for 10
awg or smaller connectors so i don't know if a lot of you knew that but like 10 and under if you're
going to be bending a hook and putting it around like a receptacle screw or something like that
you can't do that for anything higher than number 10. terminals for more than one conductor and
terminals used to connect aluminum shell be so identified and then we have splices so in b
conductor shall be spliced or joined with splicing devices identified for the use or by brazing
welding or soldering with a fusible metal or alloy soldered splices shall first be spliced or joined
so as to be mechanically and electrically secure without solder and then be soldered so in the case
of soldering you still need to pre-twist your joints then you solder so the idea is keeping
the continuity of the circuit right all splicing and joints and the free ends of conductors shall
be covered with an insulation equivalent to that of the conductors or with the identified
insulating device wire connectors or splicing means i installed on conductors for direct burial
she'll be listed for the use so that's pretty much it that's all it really talks about in code
about this whole using uh pressure connectors or splicing devices but both of them are fine it's
like whatever one you want to use i use both it's just i tend to use wire nuts when i'm in
a residence when i'm talking about receptacles or switches that's the preferred method that i have
and my only reason for doing that is because when i'm doing a brand new install i'm not
doing things in a way that like service calls that are going to continually happen where these things
are going to be continually taken apart over and over and changed constantly that's not likely to
happen when you have a new house yes you might have somebody go change a dimmer out once after
you've lived there for five years or something and then you're probably not going to have it changed
out again unless thing goes bad another five years right so you're we're not talking about
repetitive having to take things apart over and over and over and over so wire nuts to me are the
most solid things that when i put something in smash in the back of the box put devices in and
everything i know for a fact that those things are not going to fail those wire nuts are going to be
solid they're going to stay in there unless i did something wrong you know and i didn't put on right
or i messed my joint up or something then it could you know the hot the cold the temperature changes
moisture things like that could affect whether or not that joint stays together but in my experience
using wire nuts is a very solid thing to do within a dwelling of building a structure for things that
don't need to be messed with later when i have things that need to be messed with later this is
things like uh changing out ballasts and lamps you know like i've gone in home depots and walmarts
and target michaels and hobby lobby and all those kinds of places they have rows of hundreds of
fluorescent uh lights you know like four lamp uh lights like eight foot t12s they've got t
fives they've got t eights um so over and over these rows and rows they're constantly going
out and re-lamping and putting new ballasts and a lot of them haven't converted to leds
they're just sticking with what they've got so we'll be going through and changing ballasts like
every month we'd go out there and i would say all right the manager says there's like 17 of these
that are out so let's go grab a whole bunch of ballasts and a whole bunch of lamps from the back
of the store push them around on a little shopping cart and then we'll figure out which ones we think
are actually bad lamps and which one we think are bad ballasts so what i would do is i would sit all
of my ballasts up and rather than sitting here and trying to do all this crazy stuff up above
me and twisting joints and everything up on a you know 14-foot a-frame ladder in the top of a store
i'm going to do all the work down below and so the best way to do that is in my opinion to take
wagos and put wagos on the ends of every single one of the wires that way you get up you fasten
this thing up in place you stab every one of your wires there's probably going to be six to eight of
them kind of depending on what kind of ballasts you're working on if it's a two lamp or a three
lamp four lamp whatever but it's the quickest method to get a lot of these done way up on top
of this ladder when there's customers in a store and everything you don't really want to be doing
too much up there so in my opinion you save time you actually do more work and it takes less effort
if you put all of those wagos on and you do all of that work on the ground so once you get up there
you're literally just slapping something in place boom boom boom put it all back together and go
so i will use wagos in those instances i also use quick connects on that hot in the neutral
that come in and connect to the ballasts so there's just different preferences different
times where i would use them or where i wouldn't use them sometimes you have space limitations
sometimes you have certain kinds of conductors using wagos a lot of times does not account for
having stranded conductors so you can't really stab a stranded conductor it just gets all like
gnarled up in there so it's really when you're using solid conductors but wago does have some
things that allow you to put some really finely stranded stuff with really solid stranded stuff
so there's a whole bunch of different like models and things that people don't really realize are
out there until you go to a manufacturer's website and be like holy crap they make this like thing
to solve this exact problem so y'all should go to wagoswebsite and check out what they've got
anyways enough talking about all this stuff i love you crazy people thank you so much for
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