Electrical Outlets in Brick for Dummies

outlet in brick wall

Anyone remember the "Car Talk" show? The Magliozzi brothers (Tom and Ray) constantly made fun of art history majors, along with just about everyone else. Truth be told, if there is any college major our staffers hold in lower esteem than "communications," it's probably art history. We've only come across one or two of them who ventured into freelancing (about topics other than art), but one of them is a doozy: he's Jagg Xaxx¹ from eHow.com, and "How to Install an Electrical Box in a Brick Wall" is an example of the combination of cupidity and stupidity that made eHow.com the laughingstock of the internet.

Since Demand Media (parent of eHow) demanded an introduction, Xaxx was able to waste about a quarter of his post blathering about why he thought you might want to do this little job:

"...the interior walls of many houses, apartments and lofts have been stripped back to reveal bare brick. You may want the convenience of an electrical outlet in the middle of your bare brick wall." Jagg's conceptualization of the problem is pretty limited: we think it far more likely that the OQ wanted to place a box in a brick veneer wall, quite probably on the exterior of a building. In a situation such as Xaxx (supposedly) envisioned, most renovators would mount the box on the exterior, because face it: it's damned near impossible to fish wire through a solid brick wall...

Jagg had lots of instructions for chiseling a hole in the bricks and for securing the box in the hole. He also devoted almost 70 words to wiring an outlet and placing it in the box, though he made no mention of any other possible uses for an electrical box (e.g., a switch or a light mounting). But when it came to the actual hard part of the job, getting the wire into the location, he passed that off with just 35 words:

"Bring the wire to this location either by drilling up from underneath the floor, inserting the wire from the other side of the wall or running a metal conduit along the surface of the wall."

The first two of those "solutions" are dirt-stupid, and the third – surface-mounted wiring – would not require a box inserted into the brick in the first place. If the brick is a veneer on a stud-framed wall, getting wiring to the location is the same as fishing a wire through a wall with drywall on both sides. If it's solid brick, you would have to be a masochist to try to "[drill] up from underneath the floor" – not to mention that brick walls don't sit on floors...

Jagg (yeah, sure) completely failed his assignment (as he usually does). Clearly ignorant of standard construction techniques, of brick veneer, or of masons mortaring electrical boxes in place during construction; Xaxx just pounded out enough bullshit to meet the minimum word count. That's more than enough to qualify this putz for a Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ We're not really stupid enough to fall for the obviously fake name, not to mention the eHow biography that's almost as obviously fake...

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