Wire Nuts, the Dummy Version

Wire nut sizing

Remember back when politicos and the media called the internet the "information superhighway"? We're not certain, but an informal poll of Antisocial Network staffers suggests that the term was last used in 1999... but back to the topic. If the internet is the information superhighway, then content farms are its dead-end streets (excuse the mixed metaphor). You think you're getting something useful from one of the contributors and then BAM! bullshit! Such is the case of two-time DotD winner Edwin Thomas of the Demand Media stable, here found at HomeSteady.com attempting to answer, "How Do Wire Connectors Work?"¹ Eddie was doing OK until... until he wasn't.

Oh, Thomas got going with some fairly useful information, albeit clumsily worded, in his introduction, where he said that,

"The purpose of using a wire connector, or wire nut, is to join a device or switch into a circuit with the wiring of the building."

Yeah, we guess that's about right, but again: "clumsy." Next, though, Edwin goes on a bit of a rant that demonstrates his unfamiliarity with the wiring biz: "To splice wires, positive wiring must be matched with positive, and negative with negative. These wires can be identified by their coloring." Umm, Ed? there's no such thing as a "negative" wire in a household circuit. You meant to say "common" or "neutral," didn't you? Sure you did... And you forgot there's a ground wire, too. Then there's Thomas' claim that "sometimes the end [of a wire] will be threadbare,"a claim none of our DIY electricians has ever heard and a phrase -- "threadbare wire" -- that seems to occur mostly in self-published novels! Edwin moves on to inform his readers that

"The inside of a wire nut is a conductive screw cap..."

...which is sort of correct, although if you smack a wire nut with a hammer you'll learn that the "screw cap" is often a cone-shaped coil. He gets it – or his references get it – that the exterior is nonconductive material. What he doesn't get is the reason why wire nuts come in different colors. Thomas claims that

"Wire nuts are sold in a variety of colors, allowing a person to arrange a scheme of identification. A simple example would be to use only red nuts for positive leads, and only blue nuts of negative leads."

Three things are wrong with this utter bullshit. First, there's that "negative leads" crap again, Second, the only "scheme of identification" in the electrician business is to use a green wire nut on grounds, and that's fairly rare. But the biggest dumbassery of this claim? Those different-colored wire nuts aren't for color-coding the connections, they're to identify the capacity of the wire nut: the number and gauge of the wires it can safely connect. Get that wrong and wires will be popping out all over the place! And you wondered why the Antisocial Network had singled out Thomas for another Dumbass of the Day award? Well, now you know.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how-does_4923267_wire-connectors-work.html

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