Need some help from the Resi guys.

Status
Not open for further replies.

KD4315

Member
Hello all,
I need some help with rewiring my house. I have a plan and I wanted to run it buy the resi guys here. My background is all commercial, industrial, and government work. I've worked with MC cable a hand full of times and I've never touched romex so when it comes to residential work I'm out of my comfort zone. We're planning on expanding our house soon but I need to rewire it before we do that. Our house was built in 1954 and we still have the original knob and tube with the original 30A service. We have a total of 10 receptacles in our house. Another issue of a 1950s house is no insulation in the walls. My plan is to upgrade our service to a 225A service with a 42 Circuit panel. My plan is to go room by room and tear out all of the rock and upgrade one room at a time. Since I'll have a 42 circuit panel I can run a dedicated circuit to each room and not have to worry about space in the panel. This will allow me to do it at my own pace, not have to worry about cut in boxes and fishing romex down finished walls. This is probably overkill but I think it's a solid plan. Is there anything I'm overlooking or potential problems I can run into doing it this way?
 

iwire

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Massachusetts
My plan is to upgrade our service to a 225A service with a 42 Circuit panel.

First suggestion is forget 225, it will be a 200.

Typically meter sockets are rated up to 200 amps and then jump up to 320/400 amp sizes and I doubt you need greater than 200 if you are getting by on a 30 now.

Also residential load centers are 100, 150, 200 etc. not 225 like commercial panels.

My plan is to go room by room and tear out all of the rock and upgrade one room at a time. Since I'll have a 42 circuit panel I can run a dedicated circuit to each room and not have to worry about space in the panel. This will allow me to do it at my own pace, not have to worry about cut in boxes and fishing romex down finished walls. This is probably overkill but I think it's a solid plan. Is there anything I'm overlooking or potential problems I can run into doing it this way?

You will need AFCI breakers for a lot of it assuming you are under current NEC rules. GFCIs are required in many locations, GFCIs have to be accessible, they can't end up behind things.

There are quite a few rules for homes, for sure you want to read article 210 and note all the references and requirements for dwelling units.
 

ActionDave

Chief Moderator
Staff member
Location
Durango, CO, 10 h 20 min from the winged horses.
Occupation
Licensed Electrician
I agree with iwire. 200A service is all you need and unless you have a ton of electric heat you won't come close to using all of it.

I don't do a lot of resi. but enough to know that the biggest difference between it and commercial are the rules in 210 for dwelling units.
 

infinity

Moderator
Staff member
Location
New Jersey
Occupation
Journeyman Electrician
I will add that the wood in your walls may be tougher than the nails in the boxes you will be using. :)

The last renovation job that we did had old hard wood that was so tough that in some places we had to drill pilot holes for the staples. :jawdrop:
 

mopowr steve

Senior Member
Location
NW Ohio
Occupation
Electrical contractor
I think your home is much older than 1950's if you have knob and tube. Try more like 1880-1930. After that cloth covered romex through early 60's then to PVC jacket after that.
As stated earlier use Art. 210 for the majority of layout and doing room by room with the exception of interconnected smoke detectors works well.
 

al hildenbrand

Senior Member
Location
Minnesota
Occupation
Electrical Contractor, Electrical Consultant, Electrical Engineer
KD,

I like your plan. The room by room gut and reset will allow a substantial improvement over the original construction, providing insulation, vapor sealing, and wiring to new construction standard. Don't forget to install the communication wiring of your choice (cable, CAT 6, doorbell, thermostat, security, etc.).

Doing the house, room by room will necessitate some planning for the wiring that goes from the room, that is gutted out, to room(s) that are yet to be gutted. MJF pointed to that in his post (smokes and CO detectors are generally daisy chained on a 14/3). Threeway switching that goes across areas is another. There may be more. Try to do ALL of the wiring splices behind switches, receptacles, luminaires, and smoke/CO detectors. With careful forethought, keeping the box volume calculations in mind, you will be able to pull off the job without a single blank plated junction box. Article 314.16 should be referenced a lot of times.

As Steve noted, a 1954 house with K&T is unusual. . . it's late, as by 1954 two wire ungrounded romex was widely available and well accepted by much of the trade. It's not impossible for the 1954 home to have K&T, just unusual. It would have been seen by many electricians of that day as being very labor intensive to install. If both are in fact correct, that you have a 1954 installation of K&T, you will probably have a very interesting story if you can learn who chose K&T and paid for it to be installed.

As part of the reset, you have the ability to relocate the communications wiring, and, if practical, I'd get it grouped in the area with the rest of the power and light electrical. Also, installing low voltage raceway to individual locations, like spokes of a wheel from the communications closet (hub) will help "future proof" your installation by permitting re-pulling as new communication cables become the standard.
 

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
As Steve noted, a 1954 house with K&T is unusual. . . it's late, as by 1954 two wire ungrounded romex was widely available and well accepted by much of the trade. It's not impossible for the 1954 home to have K&T, just unusual. It would have been seen by many electricians of that day as being very labor intensive to install. If both are in fact correct, that you have a 1954 installation of K&T, you will probably have a very interesting story if you can learn who chose K&T and paid for it to be installed.
Maybe some "old timer", at that time, wasn't impressed with NM cable for some reason:)
 

480sparky

Senior Member
Location
Iowegia
........ Since I'll have a 42 circuit panel I can run a dedicated circuit to each room and not have to worry about space in the panel. ..........

You'll run out of circuits doing this. Take the laundry room, for instance. A circuit is required for the laundry receptacle, so are you going to add yet another circuit just for the light? If you have an electric dryer, now you've used up 4 spaces just for the laundry room. Right there is 10% of your panel.

Bathrooms: Are you going to run the bath circuit, plus a lighting circuit, to each one? Two per bath, multiply by number of baths..... do the math.

If you're like most leckturshuns, you'll have 5 or 6 circuits for the kitchen alone. Now you want to add two more for the dining room (SABC plus lights)?

And we haven't even begun with the bedrooms, living room, garage, basement, hallway etc. One might say, "What if....." a gazillion times to justify overwiring everything, but all you'll do is waste time and money. Circuits aren't just a number in the panel... each one costs money. And with the requirements today, like ACFIs, each circuit gets more and more expensive. It all adds up.


You rarely need a dedicated circuit for each room. Even on high-end custom homes that have 400- and 600-amp services, two bedrooms can share one circuit, as well as supply the lights in the hall and bathroom.

I lost count, a long time ago, of the number of 40-space panels I've seen crammed with double- and triple-tapped breakers when wired by someone with this line of thinking.
 

growler

Senior Member
Location
Atlanta,GA
Our house was built in 1954 and we still have the original knob and tube with the original 30A service.

I think your home is much older than 1950's if you have knob and tube. Try more like 1880-1930..

As Steve noted, a 1954 house with K&T is unusual. . . it's late, as by 1954 two wire ungrounded romex was widely available and well accepted by much of the trade. It's not impossible for the 1954 home to have K&T, just unusual.


A few years ago one of the forum members from the San Francisco area stated that the use of knob and tube in that area was not unusual even in the 50s and 60s.
 

growler

Senior Member
Location
Atlanta,GA
I like your plan. The room by room gut and reset will allow a substantial improvement over the original construction, providing insulation, vapor sealing, and wiring to new construction standard. Don't forget to install the communication wiring of your choice (cable, CAT 6, doorbell, thermostat, security, etc.).


I not sure I like the plan. It really depends on the size of the house and the number of people living there. If it just a man or just a man and his wife it may be possible but when you throw in a larger family in a smaller house there can be lots of problems.

One of my brothers tried to do it that way and it did work out well at all. He knows remodeling because that's what he does for a living but trying to get a wife and kids to live in a house under construction for a couple of years can be trouble. He ended up renting another house and just doing the remodel all at once and getting it over with.
 

mgookin

Senior Member
Location
Fort Myers, FL
If you run out of spaces in your panel you can always put a main lug panel adjacent the MDP. But this building has a 30A service today. That sounds like a cabin. Even if he adds 3x the area, his 200A service and 42 space panel should be fine.

I suggest a sub panel in the workshop where you can easily make changes as your equipment changes over the years.

And nothing beats having emergency lighting in critical areas in your home when a storm knocks the power out. At the electric panel, in the hallway, at the gun safe to name a few.

As to the hard wood due to age, I recall having to drill to drive nails and going through lots of drill bits.

You'll remember the project for a lifetime. Enjoy it.
 

curt swartz

Electrical Contractor - San Jose, CA
Location
San Jose, CA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
I was told that SF would not allow NM cable early on so K&T was still the standard wiring method.

225 Amp Combination Service Entrance Devices (Meter/Main/Loadcenter) are a standard item now on the west coast.
 

JFletcher

Senior Member
Location
Williamsburg, VA
Hello all,
I need some help with rewiring my house. I have a plan and I wanted to run it buy the resi guys here. My background is all commercial, industrial, and government work. I've worked with MC cable a hand full of times and I've never touched romex so when it comes to residential work I'm out of my comfort zone. We're planning on expanding our house soon but I need to rewire it before we do that. Our house was built in 1954 and we still have the original knob and tube with the original 30A service. We have a total of 10 receptacles in our house. Another issue of a 1950s house is no insulation in the walls. My plan is to upgrade our service to a 225A service with a 42 Circuit panel. My plan is to go room by room and tear out all of the rock and upgrade one room at a time. Since I'll have a 42 circuit panel I can run a dedicated circuit to each room and not have to worry about space in the panel. This will allow me to do it at my own pace, not have to worry about cut in boxes and fishing romex down finished walls. This is probably overkill but I think it's a solid plan. Is there anything I'm overlooking or potential problems I can run into doing it this way?

From rewiring part of this house that was built in 1953:

~You may not have sheetrock, rather plasterboard and a skimcoat. It's my experience that this stuff is impossible to match with sheetrock, so tearing it ALL out is really the only way to go. Have fun at the seams/ceilings (the joints are reinforced with what looks like chicken wire). If you want to save any of it, take a picture, then tear it out.

~ptonsparky mentioned the hard wood. He hit the nail on its bent head. You can count on bent nails being the norm rather than the exception.

~ None of the boxes originally installed will be big enough to accommodate new wiring/devices, and how you'd have to wire this now is not how it was wired then (iow, you wont be able to use existing wiring as any sort of blueprint).

~ If you're doing one room at a time, you need to bring a few feeds from receptacles and lights from the previously renovated room up into the attic or crawlspace to feed the next room's lights/receptacles, otherwise you may well end up with too many home runs in the panel as other's mentioned. Leave enough cable to not have to use a j-box.

~ NM cable (romex) is pretty easy to work with. That said, if you havent run it before, avoid youtube like the plague: a good 95% of videos on there do not show proper installation. 334 of the NEC deals with NM cable. I would get a proper stripper for the jackets and another for the wires; tho one can use Kleins and a razor knife, it would be awfully easy to damage a conductor this way.

If doing my own house as you are, I would not backstab receptacles.

I'd also wire it as if it were going to be inspected even if your area allows unpermitted work by a HO. In that respect, you may very well need to consult or get the help of an electrician who deals with residential; there are a ton of codes to know.

Have fun, it will be a labor of love. Maybe post some pictures of before, during, and after.
 

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
Nothing says you have to use NM cable, if your background is running pipe go for it.

You still have require receptacle spacing, AFCI, GFCI, and a few other requirements, but they do work with other then NM cable methods.

Chicago has required metal raceways for a long time in dwellings AFAIK.
 

jusme123

Senior Member
Location
NY
Occupation
JW
You'll run out of circuits doing this. Take the laundry room, for instance. A circuit is required for the laundry receptacle, so are you going to add yet another circuit just for the light? If you have an electric dryer, now you've used up 4 spaces just for the laundry room. Right there is 10% of your panel.

Bathrooms: Are you going to run the bath circuit, plus a lighting circuit, to each one? Two per bath, multiply by number of baths..... do the math.

If you're like most leckturshuns, you'll have 5 or 6 circuits for the kitchen alone. Now you want to add two more for the dining room (SABC plus lights)?

And we haven't even begun with the bedrooms, living room, garage, basement, hallway etc. One might say, "What if....." a gazillion times to justify overwiring everything, but all you'll do is waste time and money. Circuits aren't just a number in the panel... each one costs money. And with the requirements today, like ACFIs, each circuit gets more and more expensive. It all adds up.


You rarely need a dedicated circuit for each room. Even on high-end custom homes that have 400- and 600-amp services, two bedrooms can share one circuit, as well as supply the lights in the hall and bathroom.

I lost count, a long time ago, of the number of 40-space panels I've seen crammed with double- and triple-tapped breakers when wired by someone with this line of thinking.

he can combine circuits inside panel once everything is wired thereby reducing amount of circuit space needed
 
If you want a lot of panel, Siemens now has the P5470B1200CU: 54 spaces, 70 circuits, 200a main breaker. (The "P...CU" is the higher-end line, copper bus.) Also in the spirit of doing the best for your own house, the upcharge for the nicer devices will add up to very little. Many of the old hands here like the P&S commercial grade.

But why demolish the walls? If you've a basement below, and an attic above a 2nd floor, then you can probably fish to anywhere you want. In my house, I could install new boxes everywhere, with no extra holes, but with much recourse to the 5' flexible drill bit (with extension, if you're seeking extra terror), made a little less scary by watching my progress with a borescope. You can fish a 2nd-floor receptacle from the basement, is there isn't brick firestop or an annoyingly-angled brace. (Which there probably are, come to think.) There are many threads on this forum with clever advice for old-work resi fishing.

And you needn't demolish walls for the insulation, blown-in cellulose is green, won't trap moisture, and needs only a 3" or 4" hole in each stud bay. Depending on your exterior the work might leave no trace (for example with vinyl siding, or shingles).

For installing boxes into even the oldest hardest wood, the Arlington one-boxes (or Smart Boxes) apply to old work as well as new, and an impact driver will screw them into anything. (They tend to angle out a little bit on me, presumably because I'm over-driving or otherwise doing it wrong, but a madison bar nicely brings a canted-out box back to flush. Or you can shim.)

If you're doing the job incrementally, you can always leave fish string behind to easily add another cable into a box from attic/basement. And ENT is cheap enough: I'd run a couple (one for power, one for communications) connecting attic & basement, workshop, and a couple other locations.

Good advice from JFletcher: One each of the Klein 1412 and K1412 will make NM very easy to work with. And he's also right that your existing boxes are going to be nasty small: maybe 12.5ci/gang, maybe less. Easier to cut them out and replace. Also, fishing becomes much easier with that old box out of the way. If you've got brittle old plaster that you don't want to shatter, then use a sawzall with long thin 24-tooth blade, and no oscillation, to remove the old box. I like to cut new holes with my multitool, with a carbide bit; I'm extra-cautious because my unusual old 1934 plaster's texture can't be matched by modern humans.
 

K8MHZ

Senior Member
Location
Michigan. It's a beautiful peninsula, I've looked
Occupation
Electrician
For installing boxes into even the oldest hardest wood, the Arlington one-boxes (or Smart Boxes) apply to old work as well as new, and an impact driver will screw them into anything.

I have had better luck replacing the phillips screws with robertson heads. It really sucks when the screw gets about 1/4 inch from being seated and the head strips out totally round. We have some really hard wood in some of these old homes. It's almost like bone.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top