What to do when the wires barely fit in the box? We got them to fit with a lot of fusing, but I'm not sure if that's okay or not. Lots of smushing down and the outlet covers don't fit flush on some. My concern is twofold – that getting all the wiring in there as fiddly and bent to make it fit will somehow make a dangerous situation. And if we just did it outright wrong and that's why it's not fitting.
Part of the problem: using GFCI outlets, surface mounted PVC and plastic boxes because this is in a wet location and I couldn't find any other boxes that were appropriate. 20amp circuit, so the wiring was fairly stiff.
Specifics: Big project this weekend to wire a fish room. As it is to be around water, went with pvc and plastic gang boxes and gfi on each outlet (at a wince-worthy expense) With the help of a friend who is not an electrician but has done a lot of cabling and electrical work, we installed 2 20amp circuit breakers in an empty panel, and 11 boxes with 22 GFI outlets using romex 12 gauge. I think this was the first time he worked with 12 gauge wiring though. We were actually able to make most of them fit, but there is a lot of wire in each box, and some of the outlets are sitting at odd angles because of the way the wire was put in there.
It might be fine, and with some more finessing get the ones at angles in there the rest of the way. But I want to verify it's okay, and if its not, figure out where and how to get deeper boxes to be used in a wet area. (I did see plenty of deeper boxes but not in an area that was meant to be surface mounted and weather resistant).
Best Answer
One option is to use a single gang mud ring for double gang box.
you can get metal or plastic ones.