double tapping a terminal screw

13 years ago

The sixty year old house I recently bought has 14-2 Romex WO/G run to most of the outlets. While upgrading it I found a couple instances where a light switch shared a box with unswitched outlets, so a hot wire needed to be run to both. To make the tap a section of insulation was removed from the wire then it was wrapped around the switch screw and pinched together until the in and out sections of wire nearly touched. The 2" tail of insulated wire goes to the outlet. This way of making the tap afforded nearly full contact under the screw head without doubling up the wire under it.

If you are dealing with a single binding screw only terminal this seems like a good way to make a tap without adding the congestion of nutting three wires together, especially with the uninsulated ground. I know double tapping a single screw is verboten but this looks very safe to me, but maybe I'm missing something. So I'm running it up the pole for comments.
Thanks for your input, Jim

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Comments (5)

Ron Natalie
13 years ago
Looping the wire under the screw isn't forbidden. It's a pain in the butt for the next guy who comes along sometimes.
mm11
13 years ago
I disagree with the first response; NEC 300.14 states that there shall be at least 6" pulled into the box, with at least 3" extending out of the box, so unless the device was installed with the necessary amount of conductor before the wire was stripped, the install is not code compliant. With that being said, probably not an unsafe termination, but I would pigtail out to any new devices installed. There was a discussion on this forum in regards to this issue, if you want some other opinions.

Mike

Here is a link that might be useful: Help with wire 'looping' inside a box
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Ron Natalie
13 years ago
Ah, that is a different issue than the "looping" one. There IS nothing wrong with the looping. If there really is only 2" of wire free inside the box, you've got problems on the other front.

The other thread doesn't provide any compelling evidence that looping is not permitted by the code.
mm11
13 years ago
That code reference was the best I could come up with as far as a violation, b/c when I've come across this, the wire is invariably too short; I wind up having to tape the stripped part with some Super 33 and pigtail out. I agree with manhattan42- devices shall be installed per the manufacturer's instructions, and the termination points are exactly that- the wire terminates at that point. Just my interpretation. Also, when devices need to be changed or replaced, the task tends to be more involved, whereas with pigtailling, much easier. However, I do go through lug terminations on tasks such as landing a grounding electrode conductor or equipment grounding conductor, but that's not quite the same thing.

Cheers, Mike
uniflow
Original Author
13 years ago
Thank you all for taking the time to comment on my post.
Jim