Hello everyone!
We bought a new construction home in 2018. About a week ago, our cleaning service had an incident where our outlet sparked when they tried to use their vacuum cleaner. The maids said that it happened when they plugged the vacuum cleaner into two different outlets and the sparks left scarring on the outlets. I assumed it was a faulty vacuum and all that needed to be done was replace the damaged outlets with new ones.
We found a local electrical repair company that has a very high BBB rating. They said the sparking happened because the outlets were wired by "backstabbing" the wires through the holes in the back of the outlet, rather than being secured by the screws on the sides of the outlet. The electrician also found a third outlet that was scarred from sparking damage. At this point we do not know whether the maids also plugged the vacuum into that socket and didn't tell us, or if it was damaged some other way. We have reached out to the cleaning service to try to find out.
The electrician also told us that all three sockets are on different circuits. One is a GFCI circuit and the other two are standard. Notably, only one of the three circuit breakers tripped when this happened. On the GFCI socket, neither the circuit breaker nor the GFCI tripped.
The electrician inspected some of the other outlets and switches in our home and told us they were all backstabbed. He said at a minimum we should replace every outlet on the three affected circuits (not just the three damaged ones), and run a high voltage test on the three affected circuits to determine whether any of the wires on the circuits were damaged from the incident, and of course replace the circuit breakers for the circuits that didn't trip. That would cost $4,000 USD.
However, the electrician strongly recommended going further to also have them replace all of the outlets and switches in our entire house so that they can eliminate the "backstabbing" and wire the outlets correctly. He also wanted to "pigtail" all of the devices. This would cost $9,000.
The three damaged outlets have already been replaced. The builder was nice enough to do this for free even though we were three months outside of our electrical warranty. But naturally the builder blamed the problem on the vacuum cleaner and not the wiring.
This leads me to my questions:
1. How concerned should we be that only one of the three circuit breakers tripped? This seems to me to be the strongest evidence that there could be a problem with the wiring, as opposed to the vacuum cleaner.
2. We may never know whether a malfunction in the vacuum cleaner caused the sparking, or if it was bad wiring, but the question still remains, is "backstabbing" such a bad practice that it warrants replacing all of the outlets and light switches in our entire house?
2(a). This seems like something that would be a fairly easy do it yourself job, although it would be very time consuming. (Just replacing the outlets, I would not trust myself to do the pigtailing)
Thanks!
We bought a new construction home in 2018. About a week ago, our cleaning service had an incident where our outlet sparked when they tried to use their vacuum cleaner. The maids said that it happened when they plugged the vacuum cleaner into two different outlets and the sparks left scarring on the outlets. I assumed it was a faulty vacuum and all that needed to be done was replace the damaged outlets with new ones.
We found a local electrical repair company that has a very high BBB rating. They said the sparking happened because the outlets were wired by "backstabbing" the wires through the holes in the back of the outlet, rather than being secured by the screws on the sides of the outlet. The electrician also found a third outlet that was scarred from sparking damage. At this point we do not know whether the maids also plugged the vacuum into that socket and didn't tell us, or if it was damaged some other way. We have reached out to the cleaning service to try to find out.
The electrician also told us that all three sockets are on different circuits. One is a GFCI circuit and the other two are standard. Notably, only one of the three circuit breakers tripped when this happened. On the GFCI socket, neither the circuit breaker nor the GFCI tripped.
The electrician inspected some of the other outlets and switches in our home and told us they were all backstabbed. He said at a minimum we should replace every outlet on the three affected circuits (not just the three damaged ones), and run a high voltage test on the three affected circuits to determine whether any of the wires on the circuits were damaged from the incident, and of course replace the circuit breakers for the circuits that didn't trip. That would cost $4,000 USD.
However, the electrician strongly recommended going further to also have them replace all of the outlets and switches in our entire house so that they can eliminate the "backstabbing" and wire the outlets correctly. He also wanted to "pigtail" all of the devices. This would cost $9,000.
The three damaged outlets have already been replaced. The builder was nice enough to do this for free even though we were three months outside of our electrical warranty. But naturally the builder blamed the problem on the vacuum cleaner and not the wiring.
This leads me to my questions:
1. How concerned should we be that only one of the three circuit breakers tripped? This seems to me to be the strongest evidence that there could be a problem with the wiring, as opposed to the vacuum cleaner.
2. We may never know whether a malfunction in the vacuum cleaner caused the sparking, or if it was bad wiring, but the question still remains, is "backstabbing" such a bad practice that it warrants replacing all of the outlets and light switches in our entire house?
2(a). This seems like something that would be a fairly easy do it yourself job, although it would be very time consuming. (Just replacing the outlets, I would not trust myself to do the pigtailing)
Thanks!
