More wiring (old house stuff)

[Daniel Meyer]

Crawling through the attics this weekend...hope I don't ever get stuck. I am not...by any definition, a small man. It would take the fire-department, jaws of life, chainsaws, forklifts, a tazer, three naked women, and 200 pounds of lard to get me out.

Anyway...from the blog:
The wife was teasing me...as she heard me thumping around in the attic griping about various dangerous things I was finding there. Zip cord. Bare wires. Pinched wires. Old wiring laying unprotected against the ceiling, but still connected to the main knob and tube feed (the fixture had been wired back up with butt splices and zipcord). Apparently banging my head on low beams and cursing was also involved.



The rest here

[alph]

I’ve ripped out tons of that crap!  It’s amazing some of these old houses don’t go up in smoke more often with that type of wiring!  A lot of the stuff I pulled out was aluminum, under gauged and over ampped, with a penny as a fuse!!  Running from light, to outlet, to the furnace!  All one circuit! 

Did you save any of the “tubes”?  I did, still don’t know why.  They seemed too neat to throw away at the time…..

[Daniel Meyer]

Did you save any of the “tubes”?  I did, still don’t know why.  They seemed too neat to throw away at the time…..

I've saved several of the ceramic insulators (knobs) in a couple of different styles, but have not come across any intact tubes yet.

[hubcapsc]

Hooray for beadboard!



-Mike

[Big IV]

Yup, my remodeling project still has one switch in the kitchen that does nothing. I'm reasonably sure that the wire is capped off, I watched a contractor do it and then shove it back into the attic before doing the soffitt. I have yet to find where it went in the attic, because I should have found it before the extra insulation was blown in.
I finally gave up on drawing a map of why the bathroom circuit was so over loaded (they tied every other room of the house to it apparently).
Yup, remodeling and un-wiring can be an interesting feat at times.