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Whats the best practice on replacing an electrical outlet with a red wire? Can I wire nut all of the red and black wire together? Do I need to pull the metal tab off? I read that allows you to control one the receptacle using a light switch which I am not interested in.

Thank you

enter image description here

https://imgur.com/a/pZjnOPh

Harper - Reinstate Monica
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jtd92
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    Do you have a switch controlling half the outlet now? When you turned off power at the panel, was it two breakers tied together? – Aloysius Defenestrate Feb 19 '24 at 19:15
  • Picture is too dark for me to see if the connecting tab is intact between the red and black wires. Is it? Sometimes red and black wires can be connected, but other times NOT. Sometomes the red and the black have 240 V across them and there would be a direct short if you would connect them and turn on the breaker. Do yo have a voltmeter? Usually (but not always) you are safe if you connect the wires the same way they were, but it is better to check with a meter. – Jim Stewart Feb 19 '24 at 19:18
  • Nope its a single breaker. @AloysiusDefenestrate – jtd92 Feb 19 '24 at 19:43
  • OK we can see the tab is in place. Is this pic the new receptacle which you reconnected in a way you think is the same as the old one, but you are not sure? And you have not yet turned on the breaker? Do you know i the tab was broken in the original receptacle? Do NOT flip the breaker on to see what will happen unless you know that the red and black are on the same leg, that is, have 0 V across them. – Jim Stewart Feb 19 '24 at 19:51
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    You have flipped off one breaker and did you test both the red and the black wires for power? Do you have any tet equipment? What is it? – Jim Stewart Feb 19 '24 at 19:55
  • I replaced the outlet a year ago so a threw away the old receptacle but don't know if the tab was broken. I wanted to come back to this outlet because I didn't have an extra wire to pigtail back then and had two black wire shepherd hooked to a screw. (I know bad practice). I used the voltage tester pen and only one of the black wire was live. – jtd92 Feb 19 '24 at 20:43
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    So for a year you have been using this receptacle connected as it is shown with no problems, right? If so, the black and the red are on the same leg. Presumably with the one breaker OFF you found the power interrupted to both (or either) receptacle, right? That would indicate that the purpose of the red is to feed power on. So you would not want to break away the connecting tab. Someting still strange about this however. – Jim Stewart Feb 19 '24 at 23:27
  • The wiring looks like a switched half receptacle. Code requires a switched receptacle(for a light) or a switched ceiling light in a room. No ceiling light, then good chance that was supposed to be a switched receptacle. – crip659 Feb 20 '24 at 00:31
  • @JimStewart for a year I didn't have an extra hot wire to pigtail so I did a shepherd hook for both the red and black on the top same screw and a single black wire on the bottom screw on the hot side. Since yesterday or so I have been running with wire configuration above. When I did the voltage tester on the wires I noticed only one hot wire from the test. – jtd92 Feb 20 '24 at 05:04
  • @crip659 I tried flipping on and off the switches in my room and it didn't do anything to the outlet. When I used the non-contact voltage tester and noticed only one wire lit up the pen – jtd92 Feb 20 '24 at 05:08
  • Possibly the red wire is not connected to anything else right now. If you wanted to investigate you could disconnect the red at the receptacle and see if everything still works. Possible scenario is originally one receptacle of the duplex was switched via the red wire (tab broken then) but someone negated that by connecting the other end of the red wire (in a switch box) to line hot instead of switched hot. Then they rewired the switch to serve a newly installed ceiling fixture. Look in a switch box by the doorway for a red wire now disconnected. – Jim Stewart Feb 20 '24 at 11:37

1 Answers1

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Best practice is leave it exactly the way you found it, allowing for prior nitwits.

Usually, when somebody goes to the trouble of attaching two different hot wires from 2 different sources to a receptacle, it's because they have split the receptacle. That would be revealed by the "tab" being broken off on the hot side.

This is intended for switch control of desk or floor lamps, as a (cheap for the builder) substitute for installing a proper overhead light.

However, it also happens all the time, that the prior nitwit did not know any of this, and did a receptacle swap e.g. for aesthetic reasons, and didn't know about tabs and didn't break off the tab. The usual sign of this is that a switch somewhere goes completely inoperative. And sometimes over the ensuing years that switch is deleted.

You ask about "gold standard" but what you're really implying is "A guideline for the rank novice". Unfortunately, what you're doing, asking on StackExchange, is about as good as it gets for the novice who has yet to learn to decrypt subtle signs like a /3 cable delivering 2 hots to a receptacle and one hot continuing onward. (or vice versa perhaps). I don't have a good answer for an easy way to spot this.

In your case I would fish the old receptacle out of the trash and look for the broken tab. If this picture is of the old receptacle, then I'd consider "prior nitwit theory" and break the tab off the old receptacle before removing it, and see if a switch suddenly starts controlling one of the two sockets here. Let that be your guide for breaking the tab off the new receptacle.

Also note that el-cheapo receptacles (which I don't necessarily recommend) are 50 cents, so one could certainly "try" breaking off the tab on a cheapie and see what happens. I generally recommend spec-grade receptacles for their quality, and particularly (if you can stand the rectangular openings) the Leviton Decora Edge receptacles with their "lever-nut" style terminals. It means you can make a reliable and legal connection without a torque screwdriver.

Harper - Reinstate Monica
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  • "Leviton Decora Edge"... if only I'd known! But, I own a torque screwdriver now, with the proper ECX bits, so I'm good to go in all cases. – FreeMan Feb 19 '24 at 19:38
  • This outlet in my bedroom, pressing the light switch doesn't do anything to the outlet at all. I noticed theres only one breaker instead of a two breakers tied together like for the kitchen appliance. – jtd92 Feb 19 '24 at 19:56
  • What does the light switch do, e.g., turn on/off a ceiling light or wall sconce? If you would remove the cover plate on this switch and look in, you might see the red wire. Chances are this would be the same red wire as in the receptacle. If so, is it connected to anything? Assuming not connected, then the red wire would not be serving any purpose and could be disconnected in the receptacle box, end covered, folded into the back. It would not hurt anything to leave it connected, but it would be an unneeded hot wire in the switch box. – Jim Stewart Feb 20 '24 at 17:07
  • Seems you have a non-contact voltage tester. If you do find the red wire unconnected in the switch box, your tester should show it to be energized with the breaker on. Then if you would disconnect it in the receptacle box, test it again in the switch box and it should no longer be hot. That would confirm that it was the same red wire in the two boxes. – Jim Stewart Feb 20 '24 at 17:16
  • @jtd92 generally in a switch context, when a socket is installed without the tab broken, it breaks the switch entirely causing the switch to be inoperative, and everything it controls is forced-on at all times. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Feb 20 '24 at 23:34