Daisy chained electric outlets--what to do?

Question

I bought a house three years ago. About a year ago, we started having issues with outlets not working. I had an electrician come and tell me that the electrical issues are due to the wiring being daisy chained. His quote was expensive and it wasn't mission critical, so we did nothing.

The problem seems to be expanding, and it recently hit the outlet that powers our fridge, so it's time to deal with it.

Here is my question. Do I need an electrician to fix this problem, or can my practical handy husband undo this daisy chained wiring circuit by circuit? If your opinion is the latter, what resources or links can you send me to learn how to do it? I did a YouTube video search and much of what I came up with was how to daisy chain, and not how to undo it.

Answer 1

If this happened to me, my first step would be to turn off the breaker for the circuit that the fridge is on. Then I would remove the wall plate for each outlet that's on that circuit, unscrew the outlet, and check the wiring connections. You may find that wires are loose under the terminals, or that some or all outlets are using backstab wire connections. Backstabs are a method of connecting wire to an outlet by basically poking the bare end of the wire into a hole in the back of the outlet. It's held in place by a little spring inside the outlet. Sometimes the connection isn't great, or loosens over time. (Here is a post that shows a pic of an outlet with both backstab and terminal connections—the two connections on the right of the pic are backstabbed.)

If you can, remove any wires that are backstabbed, and move them into the screw terminals. If insufficient terminals, you can use wire nuts and pigtails, or purchase commercial grade outlets. The latter use a clamp under the terminal which allows you to connect 2 wires to each screw terminal, so 4 wires per side. They're a little more expensive, but also more robust than your standard builder grade units.

If you confirm good connections and still have flaky operation, then you move on to next steps.

Answer 2

The overwhelming majority of house wiring is 'daisy-chained', that is, groups of outlets are arranged in a 'branch' and connected together outlet-to-outlet. Perfectly normal stuff.

The problem isn't the 'daisy chain', it's that a couple of your connections have opened up. This isn't normal and points to a workmanship issue.

There's a couple of possibilities:

• Back-stab (poke-home) wiring via the outlets was used
• Aluminum wiring was used

The first possibility ranges between annoyance and potential safety problem. The issue is the push-in ("Quickwire") style is that the spring contacts fail with time and can cause a fire.

More here: What are "backstab" receptacles/outlets?

The fix is to re-make the outlets without the backstab, using side terminals only. It's not that difficult; it's within reach of a 'handy' DIYer. Someone with skill can do this in about 10-15 minutes per outlet.

Besides fixing the backstabs, it's worth it just to replace old, worn and broken outlets with newer, safer types.

The second possibility is more serious. If your house has aluminum wiring you should consider getting it redone in copper. Aluminum wiring has a couple of issues (expansion/contraction, oxidation) that causes connections to fail, leading to a fire. This is especially the case with outlet wiring, where connections on either back-stab or screw terminals would loosen up and get hot.

Aluminum wiring was used in some North American homes between the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s; especially in mobile homes. Numerous failures resulting in fires led to its abandonment for branch wiring by the late 1970s. It is still used today, but as a practical matter only for larger feeds.