For those in the Electrical trade
Customer reporting pool pump not working. Only getting 1.6V at the receptacle, all others showing 120V. One wire in it, so obviously last one on the circuit. Went to the one before it, found this. All of them backstabbed. Reterminated them all before I left
I'm not an electrician, but I always found the backstab a terrible idea, compared to the screw connectors..
On receptacles it generally is a bad idea. Things being plugged & unplugged all the time makes for little micro movements of the device that will wear at the thin connection and over time cause a problem. It’s not as big of a problem for switches, not as much movement and beating around
It’s nutty to me to even manufacture these with backstab holes.
I get it’s technically allowed.
Coming from some background in HV battery work, the whole way we wire residential sketches me out to no end to be honest.
Refrigeration tech here, why is using the back stab holes a bad thing?
Backstab holes create a pretty poor connection with very little surface area and light pressure compared to the screw terminals. It may make a half-decent connection at first, but over time as the contacts oxidize/corrode they become a high resistance point and heat up a lot. Terrible design.
They always fail spectacularly. I've seen countless melted receptacles, usually due to a backstab connection and a high power load plugged in downstream. Since I'm in Canada, space heaters are one of the worst culprits.
backstab is terrible, but its there and people use it. I always purchase commercial spec grade, they have no backstabs so after i leave i feel confident no ass will add a cct to the backstabs. If we want to rid the world of it we need to start a petition
The only time I used backstab was when working for a boss who timed me.
"If you're taking longer than a minute a plug, you're not going to last!"