Homes… Your Thoughts… Old or New?

[grsthegreat]

There are a heck of alot of homes with working knob and tube wiring. They are mostly #10 wire that ive found. Way back when they didnt use much amps.

Very much so a fire hazard. For years now most insurance companies wont insure a house with knob and tube….if its found.

 

[WinterDeere]

Brother in law has a log house, don't ever remember hearing him complaining about bees...maybe too far north here?

Maybe! Carpenter bees are a problem around here. They make nice long1/4” or 3/8” bore holes under railings, eves, decks, you name it. Then woodpeckers go after them and basically obliterate everything.

 

[ultrarunner]

You have live knob and tube circuits in your house?

Having spent my life living and working in old houses, I'm used to coming across the stuff, but I can't remember the last time I've actually found any knob and tube that's anything other than an old disconnected remnant. I don't think they even had standardized current handling per wire guage, at the time most of that stuff was installed, and of course insulating any wall that contains it comes with real fire hazard.

Yes and it’s the norm for pre war construction…

The 1920’s was a huge building boom in Oakland with almost all of East Oakland built during this time… bungalow style of 900 to 1100 square feet, 2 or 3 bedrooms and one bath on city lots between 4,000 and 4,500 square feet with detached single car Model T size garage.

 

[ultrarunner]

Yeah, and they basically sucked. Maybe OK in/near a city, fringe-area reception not so much.
I'd do a scan and it would act like it was detecting signals, but when it finished, zippo.

Home is on a hilltop with expansive 5 bridge view from the Santa Cruz mountains to the South and Mount Tam to the north and the Golden Gate Towers and SF to the west…

Before the conversion always got the blacked out sports games from over the air Monterey station…

 

[ultrarunner]

There are a heck of alot of homes with working knob and tube wiring. They are mostly #10 wire that ive found. Way back when they didnt use much amps.

Very much so a fire hazard. For years now most insurance companies wont insure a house with knob and tube….if its found.

Here they will not insure with Edison Fuse Main…

The reason I did the Service Upgrades as owner…

The new service just has a 30 amp breaker to the old 2 or 4 fuse Edison fuse box now marked subpanel.

In the 1980’s the city insulated thousands of attics over knob and tube.

The local hardware stores sold the insulators, loom, rubber 3M tape and friction tape.

What’s ironic is we had a neighbor that wanted a electric range so he had a service upgrade and the electrician installed a new Federal circuit breaker panel…

When they were selling it was the new Federal upgraded panel that was the problem.

 

[grsthegreat]

Federal panels advertised……our breakers never trip.


And they did not.

 

[ultrarunner]

Federal panels advertised……our breakers never trip.


And they did not.

I have 3 with Federal from 100 amp to 125 amp service.

The odd thing is I cycle the breakers annually and never an issue… circuit did trip when the electric hedge trimmer cut through the extension cord… my brother still has not lived that one down and the time when the cousins visited and plugged in 2 hair dryers into the same bathroom outlet.

The odd thing is the consumer product safety commission is very aggressive when it comes to product recalls and yet no recall on Federal panels?

Schneider, Federal Pacific, Zinsco, GTE Sylvania, Challenger, Square D are listed as safety concerns yet I personally know a house with Federal changed out to Zinsco with the new range and changed out again to Challenger when the in ground pool went in… how is a homeowner to know they are not putting in the next defective panel?

The Consumer Product Safety Commission claims over 50 different panels pose significant risk to homeowners?

How could one owner be so unlucky having safe panels installed?

Maybe the Edison Fuse was the safest of all?

 

[ultrarunner]

I’ve posted before about the only time I had a breaker burn up… church lady tenant cooked every Sunday for the congregation with skillets…

She called and said no electricity… I checked and the breaker crumbled to my touch.

Then I learned she had been cooking using a popsicle stick to keep the breaker from tripping… can’t make this up and the home is 1975…

 

[tallyho8]

I was born and raised in a home my parents built during the depression. They were given a large 100+ year old house in the French Quarter in New Orleans that they had to tear down and remove and use the material from to build a house. Over 25 years they managed to build a 15 room house with 5 baths out of the materials.

I lived in it for many years until the neighborhood went down and my wife and I wanted a smaller home on more property so we could keep our horses at our place.

We found a small home which was the oldest house in the small town we moved to with 8 acres. The people who owned it had parents who had demolished a plantation during the depression to get the material to build that home. I felt right at home. Over the years we did a lot of remodeling, bringing it up to modern day standards and never felt wanting even though our new neighbors were building mega mansions on smaller lots closer to us.

I hold back my laughter at them as they tell us about how hard it is to pay the notes on their expensive homes as I owe nothing on the home of my dreams.

 

[WinterDeere]

Yes and it’s the norm for pre war construction…

The 1920’s was a huge building boom in Oakland with almost all of East Oakland built during this time… bungalow style of 900 to 1100 square feet, 2 or 3 bedrooms and one bath on city lots between 4,000 and 4,500 square feet with detached single car Model T size garage.

This made sense, after I stopped to thnk about it. Many older houses around here were not electrified until after knob and tube was already falling out of style, either due to lack of availability in the neighborhood, or because the old folks living there had grown up without it and just didn't see the "burning need" to hook up.

I remember reading some stat that really blew my mind, maybe 20 years ago, which said something like "half of America was still living without electricity at the beginning of WW2." I don't remember if they even specified whether that was by population or land area.

Here they will not insure with Edison Fuse Main…

Edison main?!? Wow. I've lived in houses with panels full of Edison fuses, but they always had cartridge fuses for the mains.