Wiring outlets in parallel or series

A common misconception when doing receptacle wiring is that, when you daisy-chain them in a circuit, you're wiring them in series.

You're actually wiring them in parallel, and that's a whole different thing.

Wiring 3 outlets in parallel

How to wire two outlets from one power source

How to wire outlets in parallel

Wiring outlets in parallel wiring diagram

Residential wiring outlets in series

Each device in a parallel circuit receives electricity independently of the others, so if one of them fails, the others stay on. Compare that to a cheap string of Christmas lights, which are usually wired in series. One bulb burns out and the whole string goes off.

Virtually all devices in residential circuits — except for switches — are wired in parallel.

It would be against code to wire receptacles in series, and there's no good reason to do it anyway.

Wiring outlets in series with gfci

The total voltage in a series circuit equals the sum of the voltage drops, which means if you have something plugged into each of the receptacles, the voltage of the series outlet at the end would be too low to do anything useful.

In a parallel circuit, the voltage across each component is the same. It's possible to overload a parallel circuit, but if you do, all the devices experienc

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