Hidden knob-and-tube wiring.
Recently I inspected a 1920-era apartment building for a client. The potential buyer and his real estate agent — and more than likely the seller — were under the impression that all of the old knob-and-tube electrical wiring had been taken out and replaced with modern wiring.
This can be a very difficult thing to ascertain 100%. Wiring is often updated in stages, sometimes over decades. Sometimes this hodge-podge approach to wiring updating results in little bits of old wiring remaining in service. It may only be a circuit or sometimes only part of a circuit, but it is there nonetheless and can be distressing to everybody. The picture shows a switch that I pulled out during the inspection and lo and behold — there was knob-and-tube wiring servicing it.
YUP, interesting wiring, a lot of this was around in the 80’s in triple decker apartments in
Worcester, Mass and Fall River Mass as well as Rhode Island, I’d connect a lamp socket
to two long wires, ground one wire and whatever other wire I touched that made the lamp
work was considered the ‘so called hot wire’ sometimes the “Neutral’ wires were fused as well.
Once I knew which wire was “HOT’ I ‘d connect to the black in romax cable. There is NO
ground wire in this set up and I never saw a circuit for an electric stove or range.
This wiring may have been o.k. back when one was satisfied with a few lamps and a
vacuum cleaner and waffle iron but what with a million different things to plug in now
and with blown in insulation, yeah I would not want this wiring either and neither do the
insurance companies, the will still insure your home provided you have the wiring updated
in 90 days.