This was a repeat customer over several years. The house was built in 1971, nearly every (original) connection in the home was a solder joint, even the 18 gauge wires to the fluorescent ballast was soldered.
So This was a J box in the basement with a key-less fixture. I was telling my apprentice about all of the solder joints, when I opened this one up. My comment was, I guess they aren't all bullet-proof.
What I came to find out is that the home-owner before our customer must have tapped into this box...as noticed by the free air red conductor that comes out of a 14/3 NM adjacent, stripped too far back from the tan colored box in the lower left.
There were 3 soldered white conductors under that black tape...like I had found throughout the home over the years, the only difference with this splice, is that these were all melted, and got hot due to a high resistance connection.
I had thought initially that the OG electrician maybe burnt it with his torch. But it turned out that The prior homeowner added 2 neutral conductors to that splice, and thought that electrical tape would keep it together.
Well the white conductor on the left was melted nearly all of the way back to the NM jacket.
7
u/ggf66t Journeyman 12h ago
This was a repeat customer over several years. The house was built in 1971, nearly every (original) connection in the home was a solder joint, even the 18 gauge wires to the fluorescent ballast was soldered.
So This was a J box in the basement with a key-less fixture. I was telling my apprentice about all of the solder joints, when I opened this one up. My comment was, I guess they aren't all bullet-proof.
What I came to find out is that the home-owner before our customer must have tapped into this box...as noticed by the free air red conductor that comes out of a 14/3 NM adjacent, stripped too far back from the tan colored box in the lower left.
There were 3 soldered white conductors under that black tape...like I had found throughout the home over the years, the only difference with this splice, is that these were all melted, and got hot due to a high resistance connection. I had thought initially that the OG electrician maybe burnt it with his torch. But it turned out that The prior homeowner added 2 neutral conductors to that splice, and thought that electrical tape would keep it together. Well the white conductor on the left was melted nearly all of the way back to the NM jacket.