JIMMIE wrote:
On Sep 10, 11:05 pm, wrote:
On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:47:25 -0700, David Nebenzahl





wrote:
On 9/10/2009 7:34 PM spake thus:
On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:43:09 -0700, David Nebenzahl
wrote:
But there's one thing about the old wiring that's puzzling to me.
Usually K&T runs are done with pairs of wires (Hot & neutral)
running alongside each other, and in most cases that's followed
he a run up into a wall will have a pair of wires going up into
the subfloor.
But there are a couple of places where a *single wire* is routed up
out of the basement into the house above. In these cases, the wires
are all hots. No corresponding single neutral wire anywhere nearby.
Presumably the neutral side of the circuit is tied to the neutral
of another pair of wires.
This, of course, makes it difficult to map these circuits, since I
can only assume that the neutral connection is made to the neutral
wire corresponding to the hot wire. That's my operating assumption,
anyhow: my plan is to simply replace these single-wire runs with
Romex, using only the black wire. (Hmm, wonder if they make 12-1
Romex w/o ground? Probably not.)
Anyone ever seen this situation in an older house?
Typical "ring wiring" In the low current requirements of years gone by
it was not uncommon. The first house my folks bought in 1958 only had
2 circuits. All K&T, and the "live" was connected to the fuse at both
ends.
Apparently this house has a couple of partial "ring" circuits in
addition to more conventional (by U.S. standards) wiring.
What you soon learn working on old K&T houses is there is no such
thing as "conventional"- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I was trying to sort out the K&T wiring in my grandfathers house. I
followed a pair of wires through the attic thinking one was hot and
the other neutral. Wrong, both were hot and went to overhead lighting.
The switches were in the neutral side and these wires connected to a
pipe buried in the ground along side the house. Apparently this was
the neutral/ground buss. The current switches in the house were modern
switches but from some old photos taken in the 40sI learned they used
to be knife switches. Final solution was to just rip everything out
and rewire.

Jimmie

The switching on the neutral side carried over into the romex days. I
found that in my next to last house we bought. BUT they did have all
the switch branches junctioned in boxes in the attic, so it wasn't a big
deal to make it right.