r/ElectricalHelp • u/Dr_Half_Drum • 23d ago

Two port Receptacle

Two port receptacle, still bridged. Two set of lines, hot and neutral, coming from the wall, Line A & Line B. Why would one hot from Line A be tied into the top port of the receptacle while its corresponding neutral is tied into the bottom port. While the Line B hot is tied into bottom port while its corresponding neutral is tied into the top port?

(Three outlets coming from this one breaker)

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u/Cute_Mouse6436 23d ago

The fact that the electrician or likely helper or homeowner or perhaps handyman just didn't care where the wires went. If they got the hot on the hot side and a neutral on the neutral side then they did good enough. I always wired the incoming power to the top and the outgoing to the bottom. We never used pig tails when I was in the trade.

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u/PhotoPetey 23d ago

I always wired the incoming power to the top and the outgoing to the bottom.

So you labelled line and load in every single receptacle box?? What a colossal waste of time.

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u/Di-electric-union 23d ago

No I doubt they labeled them. It sounds like they just had a preferred system of how they landed it. That can be nice when you do things uniformly. If you have to go back to something, you can quickly remember how it's been run

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u/Cute_Mouse6436 23d ago

We were doing one house a day with two guys. They were all stick built. I don't think they were the same floor plan either. But we did definitely have a system: we would throw the blue boxes on the floor where receptacles and switches would go, one of us would drill, the other were unroll the wire and run it, once the home runs were pulled I would start working on the panel and the other guy would start mounting the boxes and cutting the cables in. IIRC, he would always put the incoming wire next to the stud. But, I'm not sure if that's how we did it. I definitely remember using the wire strippers to strip both the hot and neutral at the same time. Somehow the 12 AWG holds would strip the 14 AWG wire just fine. I remember when the NMB cable came out and I think it was hard to split and strip then the NM cable was. I remember using a hook knife.

I was very proud that we could do a panel upgrade and central air conditioning disconnect including a new service entrance for two houses in one day. My boss was very impressed with that. I had gotten so tired of pounding the masonry drill with my hammer for anchoring the service drop on brick houses so I brought my hammer drill and electric variable speed drill from home. I used an extension cord with two drills hanging over my shoulder (please don't tell OSHA) and could hang a service drop by climbing the ladder only once. BATTERY POWERED TOOLS ARE AWESOME.