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Thought you might find this amusing.
In January I bought a big old brick house. One thing that bothered me about it was that several switches did nothing and several light fixtures didn't work. So I called in a real electrician. He found that all the 3-ways and 4-ways were wired wrong. One 4-way had one IN traveler wired to the OUT side, so when you flipped the switch it sent the current back to the 3-way; there was no way to get power to the light fixture. After that was fixed, he found that one end had a single-throw double-pole switch instead of a 3-way, so it turns the hall lights off and keeps them off regardless of the other switches in the circuit.
There was an overhead tube fluorescent fixture in the under-stair half-bath that I kept bumping against with my head, so I removed it. I found it plugged in to a receptacle placed across a flat octagon box concealed, loose, above the ceiling. Also plugged in was one of the wall receptacles. Ungrounded, of course. So the receptacle was off when the light was off.
Some receptacles in the kitchen and 5th bedroom didn't work. I thought the problem was a dead GFCI, but they turned out to be wired in series with the attic receptacles, which are controlled by a switch in the attic stairwell. So if the coffeemaker doesn't work, you run upstairs and see if somebody has flipped both switches off when leaving the attic and turning off the lights.
At one time somebody installed several surface-mount receptacles, one being fed through a PVC conduit drilled through the bricks and carried up the side of the house. Two others are inside the pantry closet. Turns out each of the two is on its own circuit. So nearly all the upstairs L & R's are on one circuit, and we can pull 40 amps through the pantry closet.
The back-parlor overhead light is controlled by two switches, but they aren't 3-ways. Each feeds two of the four bulbs in the fixture. So you can't turn it off when leaving the room.
The dining-room chandelier was controlled by two dimmers wired in parallel. I had 3-ways installed with a new cable.
I still have four switches that do nothing. Two of them have power, two don't.
Total count for the house is 56 lights, 70 receptacles, and 47 switches. I replaced the 100-amp panel with a 200-amp. The old main breaker was partly melted.
Electricity bill for November was forty dollars -- the highest so far.
Daylight LED's are a big improvement over the old yellow CFL's and incandescents.
M'eh, nothing new there, I'd even hazard that you got off easy (my wiring was like yours only I ALSO had no ROMEX connectors for the wires going into the metal junction boxes, the wires for about 3 of those boxes were charred and black from shorting ~ very close to an electrical fire).
I've seen others talk about their old houses where someone re-used knob and tube for the last run to switches/fixtures and just wire-nutted modern wire to those leads. Dead illegal (and will result in someone dead). Others who had live knob and tube that shocked them, all sorts of hidden/buried junction boxes.... people will take every shortcut they can think of to save themselves 30 minutes or $20.
Welcome to owning an old house. Wait until you start doing Other maintenance items, my roofing deck was a mess of covered-over rot, crawlspace still is a mess of abandoned HVAC and plumbing debris that contractors just covered up with the vapor barrier, trash piles in the yard (found when putting in irrigation), blah, blah, blah.... Still worth it, just annoying. My house will definatly leave my hands in MUCH better shape than when I bought it.
LOL! We had some of the same issues from an electrician's helper who thought he could DIY on his own 1996 reno of a 1940-built home. Just sayin', it ain't always just an old house.
M'eh, nothing new there, I'd even hazard that you got off easy (my wiring was like yours only I ALSO had no ROMEX connectors for the wires going into the metal junction boxes, the wires for about 3 of those boxes were charred and black from shorting ~ very close to an electrical fire).
I've seen others talk about their old houses where someone re-used knob and tube for the last run to switches/fixtures and just wire-nutted modern wire to those leads. Dead illegal (and will result in someone dead). Others who had live knob and tube that shocked them, all sorts of hidden/buried junction boxes.... people will take every shortcut they can think of to save themselves 30 minutes or $20.
Welcome to owning an old house. Wait until you start doing Other maintenance items, my roofing deck was a mess of covered-over rot, crawlspace still is a mess of abandoned HVAC and plumbing debris that contractors just covered up with the vapor barrier, trash piles in the yard (found when putting in irrigation), blah, blah, blah.... Still worth it, just annoying. My house will definatly leave my hands in MUCH better shape than when I bought it.
It really is amazing to see what people are capable of. This is why building codes exist, of course that doesn't stop people from doing work themselves without pulling permits and ending up with God knows what. lol I guess I should be lucky the worst I have is 2 bedrooms and a hallway on one 15 amp circuit.
So... I'm guessing you did not have an inspection prior to the sale?
How much of this did you know about? Did you get a significant discount on the home? What was the overall situation?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed Ferris
Thought you might find this amusing.
In January I bought a big old brick house. One thing that bothered me about it was that several switches did nothing and several light fixtures didn't work. So I called in a real electrician. He found that all the 3-ways and 4-ways were wired wrong. One 4-way had one IN traveler wired to the OUT side, so when you flipped the switch it sent the current back to the 3-way; there was no way to get power to the light fixture. After that was fixed, he found that one end had a single-throw double-pole switch instead of a 3-way, so it turns the hall lights off and keeps them off regardless of the other switches in the circuit.
There was an overhead tube fluorescent fixture in the under-stair half-bath that I kept bumping against with my head, so I removed it. I found it plugged in to a receptacle placed across a flat octagon box concealed, loose, above the ceiling. Also plugged in was one of the wall receptacles. Ungrounded, of course. So the receptacle was off when the light was off.
Some receptacles in the kitchen and 5th bedroom didn't work. I thought the problem was a dead GFCI, but they turned out to be wired in series with the attic receptacles, which are controlled by a switch in the attic stairwell. So if the coffeemaker doesn't work, you run upstairs and see if somebody has flipped both switches off when leaving the attic and turning off the lights.
At one time somebody installed several surface-mount receptacles, one being fed through a PVC conduit drilled through the bricks and carried up the side of the house. Two others are inside the pantry closet. Turns out each of the two is on its own circuit. So nearly all the upstairs L & R's are on one circuit, and we can pull 40 amps through the pantry closet.
The back-parlor overhead light is controlled by two switches, but they aren't 3-ways. Each feeds two of the four bulbs in the fixture. So you can't turn it off when leaving the room.
The dining-room chandelier was controlled by two dimmers wired in parallel. I had 3-ways installed with a new cable.
I still have four switches that do nothing. Two of them have power, two don't.
Total count for the house is 56 lights, 70 receptacles, and 47 switches. I replaced the 100-amp panel with a 200-amp. The old main breaker was partly melted.
Electricity bill for November was forty dollars -- the highest so far.
Daylight LED's are a big improvement over the old yellow CFL's and incandescents.
Yes, I did get a good price on the house. The owners were three Australians who had tried to rent it out and one of them had to come back halfway across the world to evict the tenant. So people had been living there without having electrical fires and I did see that there was a breaker panel and the tube-and-knob was disconnected. I expected some strange wiring but not that much.
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So... I'm guessing you did not have an inspection prior to the sale?
