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Posted by CAS on May 31, 2006, 12:18 pm
Eww, and I thought our knob and tube wiring on the INSIDE was bad
enough!
Lots of good advice already. We're almost done doing our 80 year old
house without opening any walls, so I'll add a few things we've
learned:
- Find your main vent stack. If your house is like ours, you may well
have a TON of space around it to run wires through. We tried several
other approaches to getting wires from the basement to the attic
(through two stories) before wising up to this one.
- Cutting into baseboards is often easier than cutting lath and
plaster. (Even when those baseboards are OAK!) Our lath and plaster
doesn't come down much below the top of the baseboards.
- Pulling baseboards and/or crown moulding off, running wire, and
reassembling is relatively easy. You will spend a bit of time with
putty and paint after you put the trim back, but it's much easier than
patching lath and plaster. (Pulling down the crown moulding allowed us
to wire the ceiling lights on the first floor without using surface
conduit or making huge holes.)
- We got very little use out of the long flexible drill bits, but tons
of use out of the 18 inch (or longer) -rigid- drill bit extenders.
Those are great, since you can swap out bits as they get dull, and you
can use a couple of them together while working in tight spaces where a
longer extender wouldn't fit at all. Most of our interior walls had
firestops at about 5 feet from the floor.
- Fish tape is ok, but fish sticks are better unless you need to take a
bend. Either may get stuck on the keying inside lath and plaster
walls, but fish tape is especially evil in this regard. I understand
it's great in conduit, but we did very little conduit.
- Pull with gravity when possible. (Pull from attic from outlet box,
not from outlet box to attic.) Pull with a partner whenever possible.
One person pushes the line into the space you're pulling through, the
other person pulls out at the end, keeping light tension on the line at
all times, to prevent getting hung up on lath and plaster keys.
- Dental floss with a small weight (like a nut) on the end works better
than fish tape as long as you're working with gravity.
- We also used about 15 feet of flexible, skinny chain. You can drop
it down from the attic and as long as some of it hits the hole in the
mid-wall brace you've just drilled, it will fall through to the outlet
hole.
- If your chain sticks to a magnet, you can attempt to catch it with a
small but powerful magnet connected to a fish stick. This worked much
better for us than trying to get two fish tapes to hook, but sometimes
it just didn't work at all, if there were nails, etc in the space we
were trying to fish through.
- If you've already got knob and tube running through your joists,
consider using those holes (after removing the porcelain inserts) to
run your wires, rather than drilling new holes and further weakening
the structure.
Hope that helps! :)
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Posted by HerHusband on June 1, 2006, 11:33 am
CAS,
Thanks for the great tips!
> I thought our knob and tube wiring on the INSIDE was bad enough!
My in-laws house is a real mess when it comes to wiring. From what I can
tell the original house probably had a single 120V drop for lighting. At
some later point the house was "upgraded" to 240V to support the electric
range. Then a variety of subpanels were added over the years as additional
appliances were added. The back porch had an assortment of electrical boxes
including a large EXPOSED knife switch, a small fuse panel, and a couple of
small breaker panels. Wiring ran all over the wall in various forms
including knob and tube extensions, metal conduit, cloth covered romex, and
a piece of modern romex. A virtual museum of electrical technologies. :)
I posted some pictures of the old wiring on the back porch at:
www.mountain-software.com/wiring1.jpg
www.mountain-software.com/wiring2.jpg
www.mountain-software.com/wiring3.jpg
I'm happy to say this mess is all gone now that I have the new service
installed.
The knob and tube wiring on the side of the house was the real surprise.
Comes out of the wall in the attic, runs down the side of the house, and
then back into the basement. The insulation was clearly not intended for
outdoor use, as it has mostly crumbled and fallen away. A quick check with
a meter and tracing the wires confirmed those outdoor wires carry the full
power for every outlet in the living room and bedrooms. So I still have a
fair amount of work to do before I can remove those wires from the side of
the house.
> - Find your main vent stack.
Not an option. It's only 2" and on the outside of the house.
> - Cutting into baseboards is often easier than cutting lath and
> plaster. (Even when those baseboards are OAK!)
My thoughts exactly. Since they already have outlets in the baseboards, it
would be nice to have the new outlet locations match the old ones.
> Pulling down the crown moulding
No crown moulding in their house.
> - If you've already got knob and tube running through your joists,
> consider using those holes (after removing the porcelain inserts) to
> run your wires, rather than drilling new holes and further weakening
> the structure.
The knob and tube wiring is all surface mounted along beams in the basement
and the tops of the ceiling joists in the attic. The only exception is
where wires run up through the floor to an outlet.
I'm drilling holes for the new wiring and moving everything up into the
joist bays. Though we have no plans to finish the basement ceiling, this
would allow that and gives the wiring a bit more protection.
Thanks again!
Anthony
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Posted by Wayne Whitney on May 27, 2006, 6:07 pm
> By the way, my in-laws currently have one or two electrical outlets
> per room mounted in the 8" high baseboard. I'm planning on adding a
> few more. Are there any codes that would prevent me from locating
> additional outlets in the baseboard?
As another poster mentioned, this is compliant with the NEC, so the
only issue would be some additional local code. I did this in my
house with 1x10 baseboards. It gives you an extra 3/4" of depth, so
the really deep boxes will fit in a 2x3 interior wall. It is also
easier to cut the wood neatly than to cut the plaster neatly.
My method was to use a rotary cutter (rotozip) set to the proper depth
to cut out the baseboard. I made a template that I could just nail in
place and run the rotary cutter around the inside. After cutting out
the plaster, I mounted an old work box to the baseboard with
screws--if you want to use plaster ears, you need an old work box with
extra long screws on the plaster ears because of the baseboard
thickness. Then I had to use "midsize" faceplates to provide proper
coverage of the box and screws.
Cheers, Wayne
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Posted by Dick Adams on May 27, 2006, 4:36 pm
> I am in the process of replacing the wiring in my in-laws 100 year old
> house. So far the work has been in the basement, with short runs up to the
> appliances. But now I'll need to run wires up to the attic for ceiling
> lights, fans, and smoke detectors.
> <snip>
>
> If all else fails, I figured I could mount a length of conduit in the
> corner of one of the closets, as a chase to run wires from the basement to
> the attic. But I'd prefer to fish the wires in the wall if possible.
>
> Any tips?
I have done this twice. The first one was knob-n-tube. I will
never fish thru an exterior wall again. So I run the conduit
up the interior walls and all outlets and switches are on the
interior walls.
As for runnig conduit to the attic, the closet is the I would
do it. I ran the conduit thru the corner of the closet nearest
the door and inside a PVC pipe that went through both floors
(first floor and attic floor.
Also where I have seen knob-n-tube, the meter has been inside
the house. Almost everywhere code is going to call for the
meter to be outside. And as soon as you do that, you will an
electrician to pull a permit and to inspect and approve your
wiring. I learned that after-the-fact when the meter reader
saw the changes. Fortunately I found a cooperative contractor
(35 years ago). He liked my work.
Dick
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Posted by HerHusband on May 27, 2006, 8:05 pm
> all outlets and switches are on the interior walls.
There's no insulation in my in-law's house, so fishing wires to the outlets
from the basement should be no problem. As long as there's no blocking in
the wall, the switches won't be too bad either.
It's the full run from top to bottom where blocking is involved that it'll
be an issue. I'm "hoping" the interior walls don't have the blocking, but
haven't had the chance to check that out yet.
> I ran the conduit thru the corner of the closet
Seems to be the overall favorite... :)
> Almost everywhere code is going to call for the meter to be outside.
> And as soon as you do that, you will an electrician to pull a permit
I already have a permit, and the new panel and meter have already been
inspected and approved. It's just a matter of updating all the individual
circuits now.
The current knob and tube wiring has everything on ONE circuit. :)
Anthony
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