The customer wants to install antique tin ceiling panels right where the electrician wants to put a cover over the junction box. A home run would involve a couple of days of extra work removing and replacing drywall from ceilings and walls. Let’s say there’s an existing junction box where an original unfinished-basement light once was. The debate I was really looking for is to what a journeyman electrician might do if the inspector wasn’t watching – or maybe what an inspector might be inclined to turn a blind eye to. He will also tell you that electrical current over time will have less degrading effects on the microstructure of the silver-tin-copper alloy in the splice than on the copper itself. A metallurgist will tell you that two 14 gauge copper wires hard twisted and silver soldered together has more than twice the mechanical strength than a single continuous 14 gauge copper wire. But one wire in/one wire out situations are not hard to troubleshoot, and never will be unless the splice fails, which goes back to the first point. Some advise the solder will degrade over time, so the splice will eventually fail, and some say that hidden junction boxes make circuits very hard to troubleshoot. ![]() There is overwhelming sentiment that no junction box should be hidden under any circumstance, this one included. They must be tied into corridor lighting as a day to day check that the circuit breaker hasn't tripped and, if there is more than one smoke detector installed (as must be the case in a multiple floor situation) then they must be connected together in a network so that if one sounds the others will too. On smoke detectors: There is no restriction from having receptacles in the same circuit as AC smoke detectors. A silver solder joint is incredibly strong. I never once observed a tooth that had come off because the solder let go. They operated at high rpm and high loads and generated a lot of heat when the teeth started to dull down, hot enough to burn the logs being sawed and certainly a lot hotter than temperatures you'd want being generated in an electrical circuit. They were fitted with carbide teeth silver soldered in place. On solder: In a past incarnation I used very large circular saws to process logs - these saws were probably 4 feet in diameter. So a servicable octal electrical junction box is a must and I have a number of those in two of the ceilings of my house covered by a white round decorative flat covers. ![]() With solid wire, wire nuts are the only way to get a permenant hermetically sealed connection and with stranded wire, a crimped connector is the only choice.Įven crimped connectors on bare stranded wire will degrade with time as many crimped connectors in my 15 year old clothes dryer have failed and needed to be replaced. ![]() I learned from that experience that tinning stranded or solid wire where many amperes of current are going to be flowing is not a wise decision. ![]() Once the connection had heated up, not only did the insulation near the solder burn, but the relay contacts would also get damaged. I spent a lifetime soldering all kinds of wires within electronic circuits carrying no more than 5 amperes.īut when I tinned the 12 guage stranded wires in my electric furnace where they were connected to solderless screws on the switching relays, I noticed that the solder over time would heat up and migrate within the copper strands thus relieving the pressure created by the compression screws.
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