There is a 20 amp breaker in my panel that has four receptacles connected to it. Two of the receptacles are in the living room and the other two are in the kitchen. One of the kitchen outlets is a GFCI outlet and one of the two outlets in the living room is wired in series (I apologize if that is the wrong terminology) with the GFCI outlet. Please note all four receptacles are 15 amp duplex outlets.
I run my home theater off of the living room outlet that is not connected in series with the GFCI outlet and at times it draws a large amount of current.
I had an issue with that particular outlet. A plug partially melted and I had difficulty removing the plug. After I was able to remove the plug, I threw out the detachable power cable and had an electrician come to replace the outlet. He believes that the plug melted due to a poor connection with the outlet. He removed the original receptacle and replaced it. However, when he rewired the receptacle, he removed the "jumper" that was connected via pigtail to the 12 awg from the panel and replaced it with a new jumper that is 14 awg. I only found this out after he completed the work as I asked him about the wire gauge to confirm that I had 12 awg from the panel. I expressed some concern about the use of 14 awg and he stated that it was perfectly fine, conforms to code and makes it easier to place the outlet back into the box.
Does it seem ok to run 14 awg to the outlet when the wire from the panel is 12 awg? Should I have any safety concerns?
I can bypass that outlet by connecting my equipment to the living room outlet wired in series with the GFCI. However, I had concerns about connecting my equipment to an outlet wired in series with the the kitchen GFCI (tripping the GFCI, current limiting, etc.). Should I have any concerns about that?
I run my home theater off of the living room outlet that is not connected in series with the GFCI outlet and at times it draws a large amount of current.
I had an issue with that particular outlet. A plug partially melted and I had difficulty removing the plug. After I was able to remove the plug, I threw out the detachable power cable and had an electrician come to replace the outlet. He believes that the plug melted due to a poor connection with the outlet. He removed the original receptacle and replaced it. However, when he rewired the receptacle, he removed the "jumper" that was connected via pigtail to the 12 awg from the panel and replaced it with a new jumper that is 14 awg. I only found this out after he completed the work as I asked him about the wire gauge to confirm that I had 12 awg from the panel. I expressed some concern about the use of 14 awg and he stated that it was perfectly fine, conforms to code and makes it easier to place the outlet back into the box.
Does it seem ok to run 14 awg to the outlet when the wire from the panel is 12 awg? Should I have any safety concerns?
I can bypass that outlet by connecting my equipment to the living room outlet wired in series with the GFCI. However, I had concerns about connecting my equipment to an outlet wired in series with the the kitchen GFCI (tripping the GFCI, current limiting, etc.). Should I have any concerns about that?