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volts500

wrote:
A good point made by another poster, if you have blown-in insulation,
it results in a serious code violation with K&T....something many
people are not aware of and salespeople tend to say nothing about.
Also, you might want to take a peak in the attic and/or basement to see
if the old cloth covered cable was spliced into the K&T without using
boxes, another serious code violation.

I know that you don't want to hear it, but IMHO, K&T and cloth covered
cable has had it's day and the "phase out" has been extended by NEC
long enough.

around here pittsburgh area all K&T is boxless

Everyone knows, or should know, that K&T is boxless everywhere. Back
in those days there was a keen awareness of the hazards of bad
connections so the joints were made by highly skilled people with great
care, soldered and taped with something besides Jap wrap. Original K&T
needed no boxes for that reason. Somewhere along the line somebody
installed cloth covered cable in the OP's house and _those_ were the
connections to which I was referring. Any connections made to the
original K&T were very likely made with wire nuts, if that, and need to
be in a box. This is only one of the many types of abuse that K&T has
suffered over the years.

It's sometimes hard to find, but seeing an original installation of K&T
that hasn't been butchered by bad splices and destroyed by
overloading/overheating is a thing of beauty.

it was spliced inside the wall with no boxes, then covered over by
wood lathe and plaster so a overheated connection can cause a fire, and
insulation just makes it worse.

I believe that K&T has withstood that test of time with flying colors.
It's the hacked and abused wiring that gets the bad rap, and yes,
insulation makes it much worse.

NOTHING lasts forever and what else do YOU own that lasts over a 100
years?

The wiring in milions of homes. K&T is pushing 100 years and still
hanging in there. The insulation in today's wiring will last much
longer, installed properly. Also, the plethora of today's electric
codes will help ensure that today's wiring will not be overloaded and
abused like K&T was.