Wago 221 Electrical Connectors

I cannot tell you how tired I am of following behind electricians who treat wire nuts like Bic pen caps. Open a box, pull out some wires and off goes a wire nut. Note: not the new house problem, this is the old apartment in the city. There must be a better way, right? Wire nuts just seem lame. Not hard to use correctly but often used incorrectly, wrong sized nut, wrong gauge wire, etc. So digging around, I found these connectors from a company called Wago. Anyone use them?

https://www.wago.com/global/electric...connectors/221

https://toolguyd.com/blog/wp-content...nction-Box.jpg

I had to look up "wire nuts". I rewired three of my houses myself until the law in the UK was changed in the early 2000s to make it more difficult to do it legally without an electrician's qualification. The last house I rewired did indeed have ceramic wire nuts throughout, dating from the 1950's because I found a scrap of newspaper with a 1953 cricket test match score wedged behind some of the wiring. These wire nuts were banned in the UK many decades ago and I replaced them with current junction boxes.

The Wago connectors are not widely used in the UK but they are legal, which implies that our regulatory authority, at least, thinks they are superior to wire nuts.

Our mains voltage is higher than yours I think.

I found this: https://www.electriciancourses4u.co....roduct-review/

I've never used those but these work great.

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-...8711734&rt=rud

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Originally Posted by Paul Jacobs

I had to look up "wire nuts". I rewired three of my houses myself until the law in the UK was changed in the early 2000s to make it more difficult to do it legally without an electrician's qualification. The last house I rewired did indeed have ceramic wire nuts throughout, dating from the 1950's because I found a scrap of newspaper with a 1953 cricket test match score wedged behind some of the wiring. These wire nuts were banned in the UK many decades ago and I replaced them with current junction boxes.

The Wago connectors are not widely used in the UK but they are legal, which implies that our regulatory authority, at least, thinks they are superior to wire nuts.

Our mains voltage is higher than yours I think.

I found this: https://www.electriciancourses4u.co....roduct-review/

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Wire nuts in the US are plastic caps with a steel or aluminum conical-shaped threaded inserts. You twist the bare copper end of the wire together, then thread the cap onto the twisted-together wire end. But if you do it wrong you can loosen the twist and any other snafus. It isn’t complicated and can be done right but somehow ends up not getting done securely.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twist-on_wire_connector

The ceramic ones are the same except they don't have a conductive metal lining. They rely on squeezing the wires together and acting as an insulator (pre-plastic technology).https://i.imgur.com/bXdykz8.jpg

Jorn, those Wago connectors are used a lot when replacing fluorescent light ballasts. Back in the day when I did a lot of lighting upgrade energy efficiency projects, those were where it was at. Because our electricians were doing very repetitive work, those plug-in connectors made a huge difference in how quickly we could move through a building. It's LED replacement nowadays.

But also, I've never seen a real electrician use a wire nut wrong. They either use the blue and orange 3M wire nuts or the tan Ideal ones that have a broad size range.

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Originally Posted by thollandpe

Jorn, those Wago connectors are used a lot when replacing fluorescent light ballasts. Back in the day when I did a lot of lighting upgrade energy efficiency projects, those were where it was at. Because our electricians were doing very repetitive work, those plug-in connectors made a huge difference in how quickly we could move through a building. It's LED replacement nowadays.

But also, I've never seen a real electrician use a wire nut wrong. They either use the blue and orange 3M wire nuts or the tan Ideal ones that have a broad size range.

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Yeah that's more likely hitting the nail on the head than missing. Our apartment building is the sum of its abusers sometimes.

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Originally Posted by j44ke

I found these connectors from a company called Wago. Anyone use them?

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Not those specifically but familiar with Wago generally. One of the major sources of connectors for electronics, generally very good quality stuff so if the design suits your purpose go for it.

One thing to consider with connectors like those is whether they’re openable and reusable, and how easy is it to get a wire back out.

We use connectors similar to the Wago in light fixtures. My plant is 400K square feet and one of our ongoing projects is to convert all our light fixtures to direct wire LED. A little OT, but the LEDs save a lot in electricity. My new house has wire nuts but it was built in 2007. Every one that I've come across has been tight. The guy who had the house built was an electrical engineer, I'm just thankful he left drawings.

I'm not a licensed electrician. I learned to wire back in the day and have done wiring as a weekend warrior. I did use those fasteners a couple of years ago when I installed my dishwasher. I'm impressed by how well they work when there is more than two wires, especially with higher gauge wire (like 12 gauge). I like wire nuts just fine for two wires but for more I'll now reach for the new-style connectors.

Hard to understand how you could go wrong with wire nuts. I tape them afterward.

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Originally Posted by ides1056

Hard to understand how you could go wrong with wire nuts. I tape them afterward.

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Yep, after the nut's installed start with electrical tape on the wires just below the nut, a few tight wraps clockwise and up and around the nut itself, clockwise eliminates the small chance of the nut loosening as it's wrapped.

https://i.imgur.com/lxLtnpv.png

You guys are figuring out why I find it irritating.

I've seen your house, so I understand.

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Originally Posted by ides1056

I've seen your house, so I understand.

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I’ll take that as a compliment! :-)

I have never once seen a wire nut taped as in the above photo while digging around in the walls of our apartment unless I made the connection myself. More often I see different gauge and types of wire jammed into a wire nut in order to hold the connection together.

Anyway, just looking for alternative methods to use while I am there, so to speak.

It absolutely was.

Old wiring is scary. A building I am working in has bare wires run through porcelain insulaters running through floors joists about a foot apart. No insulation but the tubes pressed into the joists.

Some new wiring is pretty scary too, eg the kind with soy-based insulation Toyota put into their cars that is a favorite snack for rodents.

Knob and tube is fine as long as you don't try to insulate!

Put me in the camp that taping a wire nut is way overkill. Trust the process.

Aluminum-conductor wire scares me. Just came across an all-electric building built in the early 70's when copper prices were through the roof, with all aluminum wiring. It's not so much what goes on the junction boxes, it's in the panels. The bolted lugs are notorious for loosening up.

The alert should sound anytime you come across details that work was not done by an electrician. Bad or non-existent grounding, mixing up the hot and neutral, short leads in the box (my friend's father once wired a camp where he installed the switches and receptacles and then pulled the wires tight to save copper), splices outside a box.