I received a call from a friend of mine who was having issues with strange horizontal lines appearing on his TV when running the microwave or dishwasher. I just want to point out that they did not share a circuit breaker.

So i stopped in for a visit and had a chat with him. He says that this didn’t happen before the dish washer was installed. So then it became time to investigate! I started by checking the connections on the dish washer itself. We had a heck of a time getting the thing out to get at the connections, which as it turns out are easily accessed from the front anyway. All appeared well except the wires were a little short. No big deal, lots of spare wire under the unit for future.

So we move onto the point of connection, the counter plug. (Just let me say one thing, counter plugs are NOT allowed to have anything taken off of them. They are counter plugs and that is it!) So we pry the plug out of the wall and this is what we find… The three big issues here are:

1. There are 8 wires attached to this device
2. There are more than two wires under the screw helice
3. Both the screws and the push-in terminations are in use

All of these things are not allowed to happen! This is a huge risk that could cause arcing. It may have already been doing so given the fact that the TV was giving the random horizontal lines.

This was very easy to fix thankfully. The proper way of doing this is it use wire nuts (Marettes) and group together the appropriate wires with tails that can be attached to the plug. This next picture will show the finished product.

As you can barely see, the wires are neatly pushed to the back of the box after being paired with their proper mates.

This actually solved the issue that he was having with the line appearing across his screen during the use of his dish washer and microwave.

Please take caution when adding appliances or when replacing receptacles. Electricity is something that should not be toyed with. Also, call an electrician!

Please do not use this as a guide to aid in solving problems you are having. If you are having issues, please, call the proper tradesman(woman) in your area. This way we can ensure that it is solved quickly and properly to help prevent issues that can be caused by poor wiring.