Repairing homeowners' wiring

[goldstar]

I'm sure we've all had numerous experiences repairing or replacing electrical work done by the average homeowner. But I thought I'd share this sad and somewhat funny story with you.

An elderly woman in my town is planning to sell her house and move but, before her house could be sold a home inspection was done. Included in the inspector's notes was the repair of banjoed wire across joists in a partially finished basement, installation of roamex connectors and/or clamps in metal (old work) gem boxes and rewiring several receptacles that showed up as "reverse polarity". I agreed to do the work. How difficult could the job be ?

This guy was retired with a lot of time to kill !!!

[ June 17, 2003, 05:57 AM: Message edited by: goldstar ]

 

[tom baker]

Re: Repairing homeowners' wiring

A good example why I don't like to answer the posts from the obvious DIY'rs. You don't know what else they didn't ask.

 

[hornetd]

Re: Repairing homeowners' wiring

I had seen this done using double connectors in order to keep the wire count down in shallow boxes but I have never seen it done by threading the cable through separate knockouts of the same box.
--
Tom

 

[caj1962]

Re: Repairing homeowners' wiring

The first guy I worked for in the trade did this. He would install the recpt during rough in. We ran the cable through each box and then pulled enough slack to skin the wires(his job) and then pull them back in with the cable before going to the next box. He said it was "code" to do it this way. Also claimed it saved a ton of money over the other guys because we did not waste any wire. He also would use wire nuts and prefered to twist and solder. This was way back in the late 70's when I started out. Some of you guys with more grey hair than me might comment about when soldering conections became obsolete.

 

[hornetd]

Re: Repairing homeowners' wiring

My favorite example of this was the very similar customer who called me at nearly eleven at night saying that there was a light in the basement that would not turn off and it was frightening her and would I please come right away. Knowing nothing about the clients financial circumstances I explained that the minimum call out was four hours at double time and that I could come at seven AM for a fourth of that for a two hour service call. She said she would pay the night call out but I would have to wait a week for her daughter to send her the money. I went to the home and discovered that her now deceased husband had spliced lamp cord to knob & tube wiring in the basement to supply additional receptacles. A brutal heat wave was ongoing and her daughter had bought her an air conditioner. It was plugged into the lamp cord circuit. The insulation had melted off the cord and the conductors were glowing in the dark in the basement ceiling. To make matters worse her husband had done his own plumbing and the basement stank of sewer gas. When the fire department arrived they confirmed that the gas was in the low end of the explosive range. Fortunately this retired school teacher had taught one of the fire fighters on the responding units. They took her to the fire house while we vented the building. They left me a fan to keep the gas out of the flammable range and I went to the all night big box store to obtain the needed caps and plugs to close up the sewer gas leaks. By dawn I had the lamp cord removed and two new circuits installed for the air conditioners. The firefighters warned me that because of the law she had retired under she was as poor as a church mouse so I charged her four hours straight time for the work that night. The FD got a Federally Assisted Code Enforcement (FACE) loan to modernize her utilities to a safe level. I will never forget the sight of that lamp cord glowing in the dark.
--
Tom

 

[charlie]

Re: Repairing homeowners' wiring



[ June 17, 2003, 03:41 PM: Message edited by: charlie ]

 

[james.burns]

Re: Repairing homeowners' wiring

thanks for the laugh...
really!