Old House Rewiring

[bayfarmer]

Can anyone suggest a good book or manual on the tricks of the trade to rewire an old house without pulling the plaster off the walls? Thanks for your help.

[HayZee518]

Time/Life has some good books, but you are NOT gonna learn house wiring from books. It all comes from practical experience. There are many, many scenarios which the books don't cover and a lot of tricks to the trade that you won't find in books. for instance fishing a wire through walls that don't line up one over the other. locating wall centers from the basement and drilling upward without coming through the floor outside the wall. drilling through firestops within a wall.

[bayfarmer]

While I am not a licensed electrician, I am way beyond Time-Life. I have done a lot of wiring in new situations and rehabs where the drywall has been removed. In this case I do not want to cut into the structure of the house more than I have to. An example of the type of information I am seeking follows: A retired electrician told me that you can run new wiring by removing baseboards, notching 2x4's around a room. Is this a good idea? The same electrician told me I could ground a GFI outlet by placing a jumper wire between the neutral and ground screws. This I know is not a good idea - so I really do not trust the source. Again is there a source for this kind of information other than practical experience?

[HayZee518]

your electrician buddy ought to be taken into court and hung by his thumbs. YOU NEVER APPLY A GROUND BETWEEN A NEUTRAL AND A GROUND to make a gfci work. Matter of fact a GFCI will work WITHOUT the ground wire. It measures the current imbalance between the HOT and NEUTRAL. The fact that you can remove a baseboard and notch 2X4's is not only scary, but you weaken the structure by doing that. wherever you notch a beam or a stud so close to the surface you are required to put in "nail Plates" so that any wall finish's nails don't penetrate the cable's insulation. A book, nec code upgrade examples is pretty good if you want to spend the hundred or so dollars for it.

[Kidd6488]

You know, it really, really scares me to think that there are "electricians" out there that not only do little "tricks" like that on a regular basis, but they also think that what they are doing is all ok!

When we were doing our big remodel/addition, I caught the "electrician" that worked for our contractor drilling out the back-stab holes on all the outlets, so that they could back-stab the 12AWG wire into them. Never thinking once that "hey, maybe these holes are only this big for a reason?!"

I've recently been working on re-wiring a house that was all K&T at one point. And you do just find little tricks along the way when you're doing stuff, and I guess I've just went into it thinking "Well if this drill bit comes out in the wrong spot, there's no drywall that can't be patched, and no floor that can't be fixed". And I've learned to be creative - we've unwired a feed from a junction box, and used it to pull some pullstrings from the basement all the way to the second floor, and then re-wired it back up. Made the job very easy..

[HayZee518]

the old knob n tube wiring in the walls for the most part aren't fastened anyplace except in the attic or basement where they splice into the horizontal feeds. they also have loom a tough jute fiber where the wires enter a cast iron switchbox or three inch ceiling box which is now illegal for wiring. 3/4 pancake or ceiling boxes are also in the old ceilings and won't do for the new codes. a way around a firestop is to use a four foot flexi-bit with a screw auger on the end. you can extend the flexi bit by drill shaft extensions but controlling them is difficult. the way you locate a wall for drilling up from the basement is: you take a long finishing nail and about an inch away from the baseboard, drive the nail down almost all the way between the boards of a floor. now go in the basement and locate the nail. Now you must figure out a suitable distance from the nail point to the baseboard and then an angle or another distance to the approx wall center. then you use an auger and drill up. since you cannot drill straight up on an exterior wall, an angle must be figured to drill upward. then a fish tape is pushed up the hole.

[buckofdurham]

[quote=bayfarmer; The same electrician told me I could ground a GFI outlet by placing a jumper wire between the neutral and ground [/quote]



Hayzee is right the gfci does not require a ground to work. In fact you are allowed to use them with out a ground in an older existing home that does not have a ground wire.
The problem is testing the gfci with a wood head tester does require a ground or the tester won't work. So you may think the gfci is not working.
Pushing the test button is an acceptable means of testing the gfci. It does not require a ground for that.

[HayZee518]

Leviton makes a polarity and gfci tester. It has three indicator lights on it for correct wiring, hot-neutral reversed, neutral-ground reversed. the gfci test part is a knob that inserts resistance shorts between a hot and a ground that draws 2ma, 4ma, 5ma and 6ma. 6ma is enough to kill a person.