Would-be do-it-yourself types have a lot of questions about their intended projects, but if they're searching the internet, eHow.com is definitely not the best place to look for that needed help. Why? Because they might run into half-baked advice from the likes of freelancer Elizabeth Knoll, as exemplified by her sterling post "How to Change a Wall Outlet to Double Outlets." As is so often the case, Elizabeth's instructions are incomplete, misleading, or just plain plain wrong.
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| Try pulling this one out of the wall... |
In reality, there are only three circumstances in which you can convert a single-gang outlet to a double-gang outlet without tearing a big-ass hole in the wall. It's not that difficult if you have access to the back side of the wall from an unfinished area – a basement or attic, for instance – or if the electrical box is the "existing construction" type that attaches to the drywall instead of to the framing. If you own a million-dollar house with premium electrical work that includes screw-in "slider" boxes (you rarely find them at DIY hardware stores like Lowes or Home Depot), you might
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| ...or maybe this one, Liz! |
be lucky enough to do this work, but if you owned that house you would probably just pay a real electrician... Otherwise, there's no darned way to, as Knoll puts it,
"Loosen the screws on the top and bottom edges of the electrical box and pull the box out of the wall..."
Where does she think those screws are, anyway? Maybe if she'd ever actually seen an electrical box, she'd know that 1) the vast majority of electrical boxes are nailed to a stud and 2) anything used to attach that box will be accessible only from above, below, or behind the box - behind the drywall or plaster.
So, now we're at the step where you start wiring the plugs. One small problem, though: Elizabeth says to
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"Place a screwdriver on the new electrical box's wire knockout hole. Tap the screwdriver's handle with a hammer to remove the knockout. Insert the new double electrical box into the hole. Feed the wiring from the first outlet through the knockout hole."
Ummm, shouldn't you – we dunno – attach the box to the wall before you start wiring things up? Knoll never mentions this procedure at all. According to her, you just wire the plugs and slap on the cover plate; leaving the box flopping around in the wall. Sheesh: what a dummy. By the way, her wiring instructions are for wiring the plugs in parallel, but she doesn't mention any difference between wiring in parallel and in series, most likely because she has never heard the terms. And this woman is telling us how to install electrical outlets? That's downright dangerous! |
| Though her long list of instructions looks useful, in reality they aren't: they're not because Elizabeth Knoll, like just about anyone else from eHow.com we award our Dumbass of the Day, had no idea what she was talking about when she wrote this... but she wrote it anyway, just to collect a few bucks. What an ass. |
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