On Jun 4, 1:45*pm, David Nebenzahl wrote:

Well, you wrote, and I quote:

* *There are plenty of older houses around here with old
* *wiring, old fixtures, and old dimmers.

As you noted, our experiences differ: I've *never* seen an old (i.e.,
non-triac) dimmer in a house with old wiring and old fixtures. And I've
worked on plenty such houses (in the SF Bay Area). Maybe it's a
geographical difference.

As most things in construction - probably.

Unfortunately the trend around here now is for people to buy a nice
older home, knock it down and put up an over-sized McMansion. Some a-
holes knocked down a house from 1693. That's not a typo. Another one
had two houses and a beautiful storybook cottage on the property and
the owner refused to let it become a historic landmark (even though
one house was from the late 1700's) as they had "plans" for it and
didn't want their hands tied. Their plans went up in smoke with the
bankruptcy, the judge (who I swear someone got to) sold it for a
pittance to a lawyer (who is now in jail) and the lawyer promptly
knocked down all three houses and took down about two hundred trees.
The only think the building department could get him on was for
"unlicensed demolition". He started building a monstrosity before he
got put in the pokey, it languished uncompleted for years, and just
was completed a couple of years ago.

R