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Pigtail a 4 wire outlett

2K views 2 replies 2 participants last post by  bbman 
#1 ·
Hey guys - first time post here so i'll try to be as detailed as I can. I have 30 yr old aluminum wiring throughout my new house and i've been upgrading here and there as we do some renovations. I am not going to be renovating the main floor however so an electrician advised I just pigtail the outlets as a cheaper option to replacing the wiring. I had him do a few (for $15 an outlet) and it didn't seem that hard. I went and got anti-oxident paste, copper wiring, new outletts, covers and marretts rated for aluminum to copper.

I have done a few in the house (light switches and outlets) but have a question about outlets that have 4 wires plus a ground all terminated at the outlet. To tail these off, i find it very difficult to squeeze 5 single pigtails (this is 5 marrettes, and 5 additional lenghts of copper wire) into the existing box. My question is - Am i supposed to be doing 5 pig tails? or should i be doing 3 by tailing both Black aluminum wires to a single copper, and both White aluminum wires to a single copper then terminating just the 2 copper wires and ground at the new outlett?

This would cut down on 2 marrets & 2 copper tails and would make it alot easier to get everything back into the box.

Thanks for any help!
 
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