Chicago homes

[brian john]

I have worked on some Historic places 150-200+ years old and witht the help of some true craftsman we we able to install, pretty much anything the National park service specified without damging the infrastructure.

I think if you look at how modern houses are built I doubt most will out last the wiring methods in use today.

 

[sparky 134]

That is just plain untrue.

Trust me when I tell you that electricians used to working with cables can make changes in finished homes just as well, if not easier then you can in pipe jobs.



See electricians from outside of Chicago are very familiar with both cable and pipe methods so they know from personal experience what can be done. :smile:

On the other hand an electrician from Chicago really does not have any cable experience and only knows what the brothers have told them.

So, with finished walls, you can pull out the 'rope' and pull in new 'rope' without opening the walls ? You must be a magician. Tell me, how do you remove the 'rope' when it's stapled in place ?

By brothers I'm assuming you mean the union. I am non-union BTW.

 

[JohnJ0906]

So, with finished walls, you can pull out the 'rope' and pull in new 'rope' without opening the walls ? You must be a magician. Tell me, how do you remove the 'rope' when it's stapled in place ?

Why would the old romex need to be removed?
I never waste time with that.

 

[iwire]

So, with finished walls, you can pull out the 'rope' and pull in new 'rope' without opening the walls ?

Why would we remove the old cable?

Normally you disconnect it at both ends and abandon it in place. Then you snake in a new cable.

If it is an older home the NM may actually have been snaked in already so in that case you can sometimes use it to pull in a new cable.

 

[LarryFine]

Due to conduit being installed in homes decades ago when it was time to replace the cloth covered wire we didn't destroy the house doing so.

I never knew that wire changes were supposed to be scheduled. What's the time limit?

Conduit also offers better protection against damage from screws and nails. 'Rope' offers no such protection.

True enough, but don't forget that conduit is also about protecting the environment from the wiring.

Fire was the main impetus behind the decision to require conduit as a prophylactic measure.

 

[LarryFine]

Conduit does allow for changes unlike 'rope'.

That is just plain untrue.

Trust me when I tell you that electricians used to working with cables can make changes in finished homes just as well, if not easier then you can in pipe jobs.

Bob, I agree, but I think Sparky is only referring to cases where existing conduit is used, not new runs.

 

[LarryFine]

Since the original homes had no electricity, the first wiring methods (K&T, BX) were all snaked in, so you can simply use the old wiring methods to pull new NM cable in.

I agree. The first books about wiring I read when I was a kid were at least half about wiring existing houses. Plus, a large portion of my first years as a helper included plenty of pre-Civil War houses and other buildings.

I learned early on how to fish well, and I've taught myself a lot more since then. I have fished what most would have considered impossible to do without making any access holes, and a lot more with few holes.

 

[LarryFine]

On the other hand moving a switch box over 6" can be much more work in EMT.

Exactly....there is a downside to EMT as well.

I can't rightly remember having ever been called to move any box over 6" in an old-work situation.

I can, but I've more often been asked to have a box flipped to the other side of the wall.

 

[LarryFine]

Some of the first conduit has been said to be orignaly installed as a gas feed to a gas light fixture in a home. Latter it was converted to electric and wires were pulled inside.

I can attest to that, and sometimes they used the pipe stub-out to support fixtures supplied by K&T, which was poked through the lath in loom tubes next to the pipe.

It's amazing how they could wire an entire two-story house by prying up only two adjacent T&G floorboards down the center of the house, next to the central load-bearing wall.

Looking at some old RMC Jobs you have some respect for the amount of labor that went into the work. Remembering there were no power tools. Some places I seen where all the pipes inside were threaded (no connectors). Just my guess a cary over from gas lighting days or labor was cheaper than fittings.

That's just how conduit was done. There was no EMT. Often black rigid and K&T were used in one house, depending on the exposure of the run.

Those old light fixture boxes did not have ears. Every light you would have use nipples the right length & reduced thread size off the center of the box.

That's where hickeys came into play - hanging fixtures from existing pipe. The first boxes with the threaded 'nipple' built-in was to make up for the lack of a gas pipe where electric fixtures did not replace gas ones.

 

[LarryFine]

What do you do with NM when you need to move a box and you don't have enough length on the cable?

Abandon it and pull another.:smile:

That's correct.

Unless you are moving toward where the wire comes from (and it's amazing how far away one can remove a staple through a 4" hole when one is motivated), or unless you can tolerate a blank plate on the existing box, you replace the cable segment.

We can never justify making a permanently-buried splice. I have added switches and receptacles in order to have a place to splice another cable without having to leave a blank-plated J-box, or to have a place from which to drill up and/or down with a flex-bit.

The ECs that spend a lot of time in old homes can get a cable almost anywhere without damage to the finish.

They also install hi hats in finished homes without damage.

Absolutely. We recently installed 14 recessed lights in a 1st-floor kicthen/dining-area without making a single access hole (or any buried splices.) Every bit of drilling and fishing was done through the can holes.

 

[LarryFine]

I have worked on some Historic places 150-200+ years old and witht the help of some true craftsman we we able to install, pretty much anything the National park service specified without damging the infrastructure.

Agreed. When it comes to rewiring, balloon framing was a blessing in many ways compared to modern platform condtruction. It's nice to be able to drop a chain from the attic to the basement/crawl along any outside wall, as well as many interior walls.

 

[LarryFine]

Tell me, how do you remove the 'rope' when it's stapled in place ?

If the box is staying, and we're sure we won't ever need the old cable, we snip it short as possible with diagonals, and then push it out of the KO with a screwdriver. If the box is coming out, its even easier.

 

[active1]

I never knew that wire changes were supposed to be scheduled. What's the time limit?

1. Insulation starts cracking.
2. You need a higher temp conductor for a fixture.
3. When your required to meet current codes for 20a circuits, dedicated circuits, ark faults, etc. due to other work being done or even home sales in rare cases.
4. The insurance company will not insure cloth or AL branch circuits.

***********************************************

Larry Quote:
"That's just how conduit was done. There was no EMT. Often black rigid and K&T were used in one house, depending on the exposure of the run."

I understand that but my point was why thread every last pipe inside a structure except for the fact that fittings were a cost / supply issue or the labor was more of a pipe fitter crowd.

***********************************************

Larry Quote:
"That's where hickeys came into play - hanging fixtures from existing pipe. The first boxes with the threaded 'nipple' built-in was to make up for the lack of a gas pipe where electric fixtures did not replace gas ones ."

We also call em' male enlargers. I got more than my share of them.
http://www.garvindirect.com/product.asp_Q_parentID_E_321_A_subCatID_E_376_A_prodID_E_1431

Yes some early gas lighting fixture boxes were converted to electric.
Sometimes the old gas pipe was used to run the electric wires.
Sometimes a fixture box that was converted to electric would still have a nipple that was still connected to a gas supply. You take the hickey off and gas would come out.

http://www.codecheck.com/cc/wiring_history.htm#gaslightpiping
PS here in NY (Poughkeepsie) we have lots of old victorians which still have active wiring run thru old gas piping. In fact it was a surprise to find gas piping in a house or two where the gas was still in the pipes and actually lit - yes I took photos. No that pipe was not running wire too. I'd guess that those wires were run as soon as electricity was available on the street, or in some cases maybe combined with K&T as I find both in those houses.

http://books.google.com/books?id=oa...&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPA143,M1

Your old wiring P. 143
Some electricians ran wires thru gas piping in the very early days of electric lighting as they replaced gas with electric ones.

http://oldhousemyhouse.thisoldhouse.com/2007/09/wiring-updates-.html
Another job had a ceiling fan install in an old, old 1870 house, I cracked open the light cover and found a LIVE GAS PIPE up there..House had gas light in the 1880's and they never turned it off.

http://www.inspect-ny.com/plumbing/gasfaults6.htm
While the gas piping routes in some older Victorian homes have often been converted to use for electrical wiring, often we've been surprised to find that supposedly long-abandoned gas fixtures, pipes, and fittings, are actually still active, and potentially dangerous.

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Electrical-Wiring-Home-1734/2008/2/Electrical-wiring-inactive-gas.htm
The original builder of my house installed very elegant exterior gas lights. The gas lights required a very tall ladder to ignite and turn off. I made the decision to severe the gas lines and try to convert them to electric. I have successfully wired 3 of the 4 lights. I have been unable to fish to the 4th light because of the inaccessiblity of the old gas line and the number of 90 degree turns.



Also there was a time when fixtures were a combination of gas and electric. The reason is electric was not as reliable as gas. Gas was the primary lighting with electric as the second. Gas lights burned with the flame up and electric provided down lighting.

Here is a combination light:
http://www.rubylane.com/shops/circaantiquesltd/item/00060
More about it:
http://www.craftsmanoutdoorlighting.com/us-lighting-history.html

 

[iwire]

Bob, I agree, but I think Sparky is only referring to cases where existing conduit is used, not new runs.

Which kind of work do you get more of?

 

[knaack134]

That is just plain untrue.

Trust me when I tell you that electricians used to working with cables can make changes in finished homes just as well, if not easier then you can in pipe jobs.

See electricians from outside of Chicago are very familiar with both cable and pipe methods so they know from personal experience what can be done. :smile:

On the other hand an electrician from Chicago really does not have any cable experience and only knows what the brothers have told them.

I don't know if you are refering to African Americans or union members, either way I'm both. And believe it or not even a black union guy like me from Chicago can figure out a cable installation.
BTW i just bought a 2000 sq ft. home here built in 1960 with an 8 ckt panel and repulled the entire home up to 2008 standards by simply removing the devices. Try doing that in a place with extension cords in the wall.

 

[knaack134]

Is it true that in Chicago there is no wiring other than in conduit? What type of conduit is allowed (if so)?

Emt is required for power. Phone, data and other low voltage can be run as cables without emt (in a single or two family dwelling).

 

[sparky 134]

Emt is required for power. Phone, data and other low voltage can be run as cables without emt (in a single or two family dwelling).

Last I heard low voltage had to be piped to an accessible area such as an unfinished attic or basement.

 

[quogueelectric]

That's the crux of the whole question. It does sorta smack of socialism to require something certain to possibly prevent another o'leary cow situation or London fire.

England has just as catestrophic of a fire in London as Chicago did, except they took a different approach. They wire in cable, but require extensive testing and certification of the wiring system on a regularly scheduled basis.

What, What happened to Olearys cow?????

 

[quogueelectric]

You guys seen that video on Chicago wiring? Something like "Chicago's solution to aged wiring". In the video, these guys do a service upgrand and pull all new THHN in the whole house and change to new devices in a day.

Okay, here it is. An interesting quick 7-minute watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-kFhYTu8co

Nice video make sure all those rope only guys get a good look.

 

[iwire]

Nice video make sure all those rope only guys get a good look.

When was the last home you wired with pipe?