I need a wire nut large enough so that I can bundle seven 14 gauge neutral wires together. I am trying to splice it so I can connect it to my new smart wifi leviton light switch. I don't know which wire nut size to buy. The boxes say for example: minimum 2#14 gauge – maximum 2#10 gauge. My question is, can you tell me which wing nut or brand or size to buy so I can group 7 neutral wires together?
None of the sizing chart on the box says the exact words of "ok to bundle seven #14 gauge wires together. Which one should I use?
Electrical – Wire nut several wires together
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Related Solutions
First thing to confirm would be which direction the switches are being fed from. There are 2 ways that you can do this - feed from the switch:
Or feed from the fixture:
When feeding from a fixture, you'll notice that one of the white wires is actually being used as a black wire. It is common practice for this to be "coded black", usually with a single wrap of black electrical tape, but not everyone does this. By the description in the comments, it sounds like everything was being fed from the fixtures except for the porch light (although it seems odd to do a lamp post that way given the extra wire required, but I digress). My guess is that the box where the recessed light went was wired correctly, just using the bottom method from the 2 pictures above.
The second step is to confirm that the wire you have marked as "Service Box" goes to the distribution box. If it does, your previous wiring set up was probably like this (in which case there should have only been one wire nut in the box other than any used for grounding):
Until you do these two things, it would be premature to decide on how to combine switches or re-wire. You could reverse the wiring for the garage or lamp post to combine switches, but you'd need to figure out what to do about the hot running into the fixture (capping it may not meet code in your area). What you would basically be doing is changing from fixture feeds to box feeds and figuring out what to do with all of the fixture hots. Multimeter readings likely aren't going to be much help - pictures of all of the boxes at the fixtures would help more (or diagrams of each box with wire connections noted).
I'd start with confirming the wiring the diagram above, get the wiring back to how it was originally so everything works again, and then posting an update with the information above for advice on how to change how it is wired.
EDIT: Porch and lamp post can be combined like this:
Since the 4 white wires are already connected, they need to stay connected. It would be correct to wire all 6 whites together. Note that for 6x #14 wires you need to use a new red wire nut.
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Best Answer
You would not bundle seven under one wire nut. I expect someone will amplify my answer with direct code call out. Basically, no more than 4... almost EVER, under any wire nut, and you must use the nut sized for the largest collective wire awg you are using. (not just buy a larger wire nut to stuff more inside of it).
Further, do not exceed the current rating of the breaker and in general having a situation like this begs the question whether it is smart to run another circuit to break up the load and the distribution path. Either way, exceeding 4 is typically not advisable and a fire hazard.
What you would do, is use up to 3 neutrals and a ~6" white jumper, and then 2 more neutrals, and another ~6" jumper, followed by one more wire-nut with 2 neutral and the end of the last jumper. Here you are distributing the wires as even and safely as possible provided it fits safely in the box and the circuit is not overloaded.
The box for the nuts you intend to buy certainly should list a limit on them. If you tell us the gauge (all are 14awg)? And the brands you are looking at it would be easy to lookup their recommended limits. E.g.: https://www.idealind.com/content/pdfs/catalogs/wire-connector-catalog.pdf