Alright, I decided to change some wall outlets today.

 

I fucking hate flathead screws. 

 

Alright, so these outlets are so old (30+ years) that the clip retention mechanism has outright failed.  This will be fun. 

 

Alright, that was physically painful to remove.  Interestingly, the old outlets had 4 holes per side, while the new ones had only 2.  I looked it up, since the old outlets were spaced much farther, but it's safe to do what I did.  The extra set of wires are meant to hook up outlets in parallel, which significantly cuts cost on wiring.  So one set provides power to the outlet, then the other set allows the outlet to provide power to the next one.

 

Also, the cables were fucking PAINFUL to remove thanks to the clip mechanism failing, I had to pull REALLY hard.  I have blisters on my thumbs now.

 

The outlets have a 3 piece clip on system, allowing for no visible screws, which looks rather clean. 

 

They have 2 4 amp USB outlets with built in over current protection.  Also, the eagle eyed of you may notice that the positive and negative slots have sliding plastic covers making them tamper resistant and allowing them to be much safer in regards to accidental insertions. 

 

 

And it works.

Ignore the messy floor, one thing at a time.

Now for the next outlet.

 

This one is next to my bed, as you can see, there is a red wire which hooks up to the light switch.  It only controls the top outlet, but I still absolutely hate it being hooked up to an outlet, not to mention that I can't even fit the extra wire due to the lack of holes in the new outlets.  So we are going to make some modifications.

 

After some more painful wite removed I just cut the red wire off to make the exposed part flush with the insulation.  Then I covered the end with eletrical tape.

 

And this one works just fine as well.  Interesting fact, this outlet had a bon non functional ground, so I think that the old outlets juse ended up failing in that regard, I'm actually real happy that it has a proper ground now.  Either that, or the wall switch connection was interfering with the ground somehow, but I don't see how that's possible. 

 

 

And this is why I really wanted the tamper resistant outlets, my bed is real close to it, and it was worrying me.  There is no way that something will accidentally insert into the outlet now.

 

I still have 2 more outlets in my room, but I'll wait until tomorrow. 

The extra USB ports per outlet is fucking awesome, and yes, I consciously chose black.