That Thursday when every outlet in a house was backstabbed and half were loose

I rolled up to a service call in a 70s ranch house outside Austin. The homeowner said lights flickered and a few outlets just quit. I popped the first cover plate and saw it right away, every single outlet was backstabbed with those little push-in holes. I counted 27 outlets in that place and every one had at least one loose connection. The kitchen circuit was so bad the neutral wire just slid out when I touched it. I spent the whole day swapping them over to screw terminals and pigtailing the boxes. Who actually thinks those backstabs are a good idea for a long term install? Has anyone else run into a whole house full of them?

2 comments

2 Comments

patricia31718d ago

Ugh, that's a nightmare of a service call right there... backstabs are the absolute worst. I don't know how anyone thinks those little push-in holes are a good idea, especially in a whole house. It's not like it was just one or two bad ones, it was every single one... that's just lazy install work to begin with. At least you got them all swapped over to screws, that's a solid day's work right there. I bet that kitchen neutral was just barely hanging on by a thread, scary to think what could have happened. Good on you for catching it all.

olivia_rivera8818d agoTop Commenter

Honestly gonna have to disagree hard here. Backstabs have been tested and UL listed for decades, they wouldn't be on every single residential outlet if they were some ticking time bomb. The real problem is people shoving in undersized or solid wire wrong, then blaming the design. Plus screws can come loose over time too, especially with thermal cycling in a kitchen. Fact is, properly installed backstabs hold fine for years, and the time savings on a whole house add up fast. Maybe the hate is overblown and it's more about bad installs than the actual product itself.