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Rewiring older home Alex 04-15-2007
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Posted by Alex on April 15, 2007, 5:49 am


Hi Everyone,

My wife and I are looking at possibly moving into her mother's old
home, but one of my concerns is the wiring in the house. The home was
built in the early 1950's, and with an older fusebox outside the house
(old screw-in fuses) plus no ground on any power outlets (two-prong),
we're thinking of having the house rewired plus putting a newer
fusebox (with circuit breakers) inside the house.

The house is three bedroom, one bath (about 1200 sq), and there's
about 3-4 outlets per room. Does someone know the approximate cost
we're looking at for such a job? Also, would it be something I could
do to some degree? Possibly running all the wires back to a central
location to have an electrician come in and wire-up the box with
inside lines plus city power?

Thanks for any suggestions or ideas ...

Alex


Posted by on April 15, 2007, 8:08 am


> Hi Everyone,
>
> My wife and I are looking at possibly moving into her mother's old
> home, but one of my concerns is the wiring in the house. The home was
> built in the early 1950's, and with an older fusebox outside the house
> (old screw-in fuses) plus no ground on any power outlets (two-prong),
> we're thinking of having the house rewired plus putting a newer
> fusebox (with circuit breakers) inside the house.
>
> The house is three bedroom, one bath (about 1200 sq), and there's
> about 3-4 outlets per room. Does someone know the approximate cost
> we're looking at for such a job? Also, would it be something I could
> do to some degree? Possibly running all the wires back to a central
> location to have an electrician come in and wire-up the box with
> inside lines plus city power?
>
> Thanks for any suggestions or ideas ...
>
> Alex

You and your wife probably use more electric devices in more places
than your mother; want GFCI protection in kitchen and bath; Arc Fault
protection in the bedrooms; hard wired smoke detectors. The only way
to get a cost is to get an estimate from a local tradesman.
T


Posted by on April 15, 2007, 8:22 am


The new service alone will be $1500 to $2000.

The rest of the cost will probably be determined in some part by the
degree of difficulty of pulling wires from point A to point B in an
older house.

As far as doing some of the work yourself that would be up to the
electrician.

When its all said and done his name is on the whole job.

He may or may not be comfortable with that.




Posted by hallerb@aol.com on April 15, 2007, 9:09 am


On Apr 15, 8:22?am, greg6...@gmail.com wrote:
> The new service alone will be $1500 to $2000.
>
> The rest of the cost will probably be determined in some part by the
> degree of difficulty of pulling wires from point A to point B in an
> older house.
>
> As far as doing some of the work yourself that would be up to the
> electrician.
>
> When its all said and done his name is on the whole job.
>
> He may or may not be comfortable with that.

hey our home was like that no grounded outlets but BX cable, replaced
outlets, all nicely grounded now.

this can save big bucks, minimizing work to new service go 200 amp.


Posted by Alan McKenney on April 16, 2007, 2:01 pm



> hey our home was like that no grounded outlets but BX cable, replaced
> outlets, all nicely grounded now.

The armor of BX does not provide a secure ground.
It may look grounded now, but not work in the future.

That's why BX is no longer sold -- grounded boxes and
appliances had a nasty habit of getting un-grounded.
The steel armor rusts, develops cracks, or the electrical
connection between the armor and the box develops high
resistance.

It was replaced (some time *after* the 1950's) by AC cable,
which looks a lot like BX, and is often called "BX",
but isn't. AC has, among other things, an aluminum wire
or strip running lengthwise inside the armor,
which you have to make sure is squeezed between the
armor and a clamp on the box. There may be additional
requirements on the armor, too.

+ + +

By the way, I discovered that those plug-in
"grounding tester" thingies don't always test that
an outlet is wired correctly.

I found an outlet where the ground pin and the "neutral"
pin were both wired to the bare copper wire (the
white wire was capped off, because it was really the
other hot leg of a 240 V circuit.)

The plug-in thingie said it was just fine.


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