Sheesh, my house was 40 years old when your grandfathers house was built. The coal chute and center grill joist opening for the hot air to rise are still there. Subfloor and hardwood now cover the opening.
It was funny when we had the inspector come in prior to buying the house. The kid looked 25 years old (well, to me anyway). We actually had to explain some of the features of a house this old to him.
However, the old wiring was gone, there was no knob and tube, no bx, no fabric covered, just romex. And many many stupid and non code things done with wiring, water, drain.. whatever could be messed up, he did. Luckily, the seller gave us his business card. We know who to avoid. As a plus, I got some good pictures of what not to do with wiring for my electrical safety course.
jn
It was funny when we had the inspector come in prior to buying the house. The kid looked 25 years old (well, to me anyway). We actually had to explain some of the features of a house this old to him.
However, the old wiring was gone, there was no knob and tube, no bx, no fabric covered, just romex. And many many stupid and non code things done with wiring, water, drain.. whatever could be messed up, he did. Luckily, the seller gave us his business card. We know who to avoid. As a plus, I got some good pictures of what not to do with wiring for my electrical safety course.
jn
Knob and tube was practiced in San Francisco into the 1960's. The concern was corrosion and water getting into conduit from wet air and salt spray. Its all changed since but taking electric shop in SF in the 1960's was interesting.
I have also seen houses with the "electrical panel" being a sheet of marble with switches and fuse wire on it. Again in SF in the 1960's in an old robber baron mansion from the 1890's.
My house built in 1955 went the other way with 32 breakers and BX throughout. There is a sticker on the primary panel certifying "adequate wiring". They really needed better marketing. . .
I have also seen houses with the "electrical panel" being a sheet of marble with switches and fuse wire on it. Again in SF in the 1960's in an old robber baron mansion from the 1890's.
My house built in 1955 went the other way with 32 breakers and BX throughout. There is a sticker on the primary panel certifying "adequate wiring". They really needed better marketing. . .
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When my mother in law died my wife had to get the old house ready for sale. Interior walls were all lath and plaster, and there were some bad cracks, a little water damage in spots, the usual for a house of that age. She brought in a plasterer who was very good. Of course first he had to test for asbestos, but it was all OK and he did a great job. About that time the insurance company, who don't like insuring unoccupied houses, sent an inspector and cancelled the insurance based on the old wiring (knob and tube). It's hard to sell a house that can't be insured, and as executrix it was her fiduciary duty to protect the asset, so she hired an electrician to rewire the house. That cost almost $20K, and my wife and a friend cut the holes in the walls that made it possible to pull new wires. (And the friend's husband educated the electrician about old wiring, since they had renovated a couple of houses.) Of course, once all that was done she brought the plasterer back in to fix the damage.
Finally it was all fixed and the house was sold, and the new owner gutted it and started from scratch. At least $35K down the drain for nothing, but there was never a choice.
That's an unfortunate reality. In the 1980's it was only $2000-$3000 to rewire a unit here, we did it twice. I'm thinking maybe this old house and wiring code stuff has gotten way OT, and the stuff skirting safety code for "better sound" should remain private (it's all BS IMO anyway).
Halloween is almost upon us. Took me a while to figure out how to prep the house. I did put the trash and recycle containers into the locked up space under the rear porch with the lawn mower.
The idea I think will work out well is to take a dozen or so latex gloves and fill them fast setting plaster. I will stage them along both sides of the sidewalk leading to the house. It should look like hands reaching up out of the dirt. A little bit of fake blood might just help the effect.
If I have time I have some small automotive motors that can be used to make them move.
The idea I think will work out well is to take a dozen or so latex gloves and fill them fast setting plaster. I will stage them along both sides of the sidewalk leading to the house. It should look like hands reaching up out of the dirt. A little bit of fake blood might just help the effect.
If I have time I have some small automotive motors that can be used to make them move.
My friends lock up their cats lest they become familiars, we are near Salem you know.
Your friends! Makes many things clear about you.
Around here kids are known to pull pranks the night before Halloween. So rather than clean up spilled garbage, putting it out of reach seems reasonable.
Jean Cocteau 1946 "Beauty and the Beast". Too great, and if you watch the special effects to parse out how they were done, even better.
All good fortune,
Chris
Local power entry/meter boxes are steel construction.
Oh BS, I have seen inside hundreds of local house power boxes (previous life as AC installer) and the Earthing/Neutral link wiring method shown in my photo was standard practice and evidently within regs of the time or else the original installations would not have been commissioned/signed off.
As per a previous post, provided the earthing wires are wrapped securely around the MEN link prior to soldering to ensure permanent connection was standard practice.
Further to this, wrapping with Green/Yellow tape to ensure no mechanical movement of the Earth wires ensures that no fatigue failures can occur.
Dan.
Discussing avoidance of safety and legal issues as if they were technical esoterica is foolish. Stepping outside of local legal code puts you in (deserved) legal danger and attempting to stretch interpretation of safety code puts you in moral danger. Don't be that dick.
All good fortune,
Chris
All good fortune,
Chris
When I was young we did have a black cat disappear on Oct 30th along with a neighbor's cat, seen getting into a van by our neighbor. I mean, it probably wasn't ritual sacrifice or witchcraft, but it was bizarre.
A couple years prior to that some high school kids dumped a gallon of lavender paint on that same poor cat. He was not really pleased with the paint removal...
That does not make unsafe practiced acceptable.
There were quite a bit more than "hundreds" of houses compromised by the use of aluminum wires. That does not make the practice acceptable.
You keep assuming that it was standard practice and acceptable to regs. But you seem to be making that assumption.
As I earlier stated, the use of flame soldering is not good practice for stranded wires. I will list the problems for your (everybody's) convenience.
1. Use of a flame for soldering stranded wires does not control the temperature, excessive temperature will compromise the conductor strands by scavenging of the copper into the melt. There is no guarantee that the copper cross section remaining is acceptable for proper function. This is especially true of the smaller gauge wires shown in your picture, as they will tend to solder much faster because of less mass, and while the mechanic is waiting for the larger wire to fill, the smaller one is being scavenged. Because the smaller ones are the direct bonding connections to the appliances/users, the real working joints are the worst off.
2. The flame will compromise the flux wherever there is direct contact of the flame to the flux. Electronic fluxes are not designed to be flame broiled, and tend to dry and boil off before they can do their job (brazing fluxes are designed for flame contact). The typical response to this action is more heat, more flux, more solder. Certainly not good practice.
3. There is an extreme sensitivity of the soldered wire to bending where the solder has stopped wicking. This is a very significant problem with stranded wires. Most people will not design in a buffer zone between the end of the soldered wires and the insulation, and manipulation of the joint will result in the insulated unsoldered clear wire not bending (the flexible portion) but directly at the edge of the soldered section is where all the bend will occur.. My experience here is aggravated by the fact that whenever the operational temperature of the assembly is 4.5 kelvin, the wire insulation has to be tefzel because it is one of two plastics which remain even partially flexible in liquid helium. And the tefzel is very stiff, just like the LSZH isolated wires I have to use in the tunnel of the room temperature machine I had to wire. (LSZH, or low smoke zero halogen, is for use in confined locations where humans go, it is like plenum rated wire. We use it in the tunnel as all the expansion vacuum bellows are 5 to 10 mil thick stainless, and if a fire were to occur in the cable tray, there will not be hydrochloric acid filled smoke coating all the thin surfaces of the bellows and causing eventual pinhole leaks.)
4. The act of wrapping the work when complete will indeed manipulate all the connections in a way which will start to break strands. I had to develop a technique where the stranded wire is wrapped at least two more times around the larger stranded conductor, and the purpose is to NOT fill the two wraps with solder, allow them to remain unfilled therefore very flexible. Insulation wrap can cover the two wraps all the way to the wire insulation. This has been successfully used for the last 25 years for the projects I've worked on.
5. Solder flux by design, will wick up into the stranded wire during the process of heating. There is nothing you can do to stop this. There are two parts to this..a direct lowering of viscosity such that surface tension draws it into the gaps, and the solder starting to activate chemically. Very important, the insulation over stranded wire does NOT stop either action. At the end, you can have the solder melt climb under the insulation (which most will assume means a better joint), but most importantly the flux has wicked under the insulation up into the stranded wire. This is a chemical time bomb, as the primary chemical residue from a flux with zinc chloride used as the activator is hydrogen chloride. If you were to peel back the insulation on the wires a few years after it was made, you will find the stranded wire is quite green, and many of the strands are no longer with integrity.
The intent of the National Electric Code is not to make it look pretty, or convenient for the installer who may not have the proper approved listed hardware, but to guarantee that simple mistakes do not creat time bombs that will compromise human life by electrocution or fire.
As you can see with regard to this specific topic, I have been around the block quite a bit...this is extremely familiar territory.
Your glib assertions on this topic are without merit, and can be dangerous should anybody believe your assertion that it is a safe practice because as you say "evidently within regs".
I thank you for the opportunity to be able to make clear exactly why your assertions are dangerous.
jn
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No, the explosion sounds the same....
JN - nice summary above, good information. Thanks for that!
JN - nice summary above, good information. Thanks for that!
Mods please stop the suggestions that any fiddling with your main safety bond to the grid can make your bass "bloom" or mid-range "sweeter".
Scott, weren't you the guy who said that he doesn't use a line fuse on one of his electronic devices? How safe is that?
First and final warning - no more discussion about modifying the house wiring.
It's been established that it's not to code. It's been established to be idiotic. This is not the forum to discuss how to burn your house down.
To the level heads here chiming in about the dangers, thank you.
All further discussion about this subject, STOP. Now.
Here's a topic to discuss in the meantime -
Would you rather live life with no inhibitions or live life with no stress?
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