Ooooooold house wiring

[gui_tarzan]

Our house was built in 1887 and the wiring (and plumbing and heating) have been added to/upgraded a few times over the last century. I knew this going in and the house has been in our family since 1954, but I swear I did not know just how bad some of it was.

I spent most of the last two days re-wiring part of our main floor (the upstairs already has romex) because I had open grounds and a couple of reversed hot/neutrals on several outlets. What they did fifty years ago is just plain ridiculous! But now I have safe 12-2 with a ground going to my workshop, one bedroom and part of a run to two other rooms. The cloth-covered wire is so brittle it's just scary.

I have done enough supervised electrical wiring in the past that I know what to use where and how to follow building codes. But I can't do the run from the meter to the breaker panel, the wire is just too big and stiff and not long enough for my new panel so that will have to be hired out. I already spoke to the power company and they verified the service coming into the house is more than sufficient for the upgraded panel.

Sometimes I wonder how they got away with wiring from the panel to a box, split out to three different locations, one leg to a small fuse box that goes off in three other directions, and so on. Wow. Most of that is gone now and wired properly.

[xtian]

Mine too, though my house is relatively "modern" with a birthdate of 1948. I have a couple of copper rods pounded into the dirt to serve as earths.

[dorrisant]

A lot of times with older houses electrical systems were upgraded as new devices were available as standard. For instance, when electric water heaters came out many of the existing services were too small for the extra load. Most times this happened the service was paralleled to the water heater and the meter base and meter were the only things that had to be changed to accommodate the water heater current draw. Code has changed and most building commissions would never allow anything like that now. I rewired hundreds of houses back in my younger years... Some of the stuff I saw would make your hair stand on end, sometimes literally.

[David Root]

The first house I bought was a little bungalow w/basement in Salt Lake City that was built in 1927. All brick, good lumber was hard to come by in those days I guess.

Lath & plaster internal walls, original cloth covered wire still there but not used any more, at least none that I could see(!).

Only four blocks from the fault line of the last earthquake which was about 1300 years ago. The fault line splits out about 100 feet in height. Geologists say it blows every 1300 years or so.

So the Big One is due any time. The electric service was still transformers off poles in your back yard then....glad we sold and moved to Sandy...into a big wood modern house! With underground power service too.

Right in the central liquefaction zone, but I guess you can't have everything.

[Structo]

It's amazing how many building still have the original wiring.

The old knob and tube wiring still exists in a lot of places.

In practice aside from not being a grounded system, is fairly safe since the fabric insulated wires are separated on the insulators.

[img:418:500]http://ripleyelectric.ca/index/wp-conte ... /03/kt.jpg[/img]

The early Romex type wire had insulation that mice really liked to chew on.

But probably the worst idea was using aluminum wire in the 70's.
Oxidizes, poor contact and conduction, fire, etc.

My house has an aluminum wire from the meter to the main breaker box,
but the rest of the house uses copper wire Romex.