DIYbanter - View Single Post - 3-way switches -- old house wiring

TomR[_3_]

micky wrote:
On Sun, 24 Nov 2013 17:42:26 -0600, wrote:

The downfall of K+T wiring
has always been that the color came off the wires, lack of a ground,
and unsafe *IF* people would put oversize fuses in (which was far too
common).

I lived for 12 years in a 1930 apartment building in Brooklyn. It had
fuses of course, but the owner had put Fuzestat (spelling??) sockets
in each fuse socket, in the basement and in each of the 49 apartments.

Blue was 15 amps, and only a 15 amp Fuzestat fuse would screw into a
15-amp Fuzestat socket. The threads were at the wrong angle or too
narrow for other size fuses. The Fuzestat socket had raspy teeth so
that unscrewing one from the fuse socket it was in was hard to do.

I think 20 amps was orange. Each apartment got 20 amps in a basement
fuse, and one or two 15 amp fuses in the apartment itsellf. My
6-room 3-bath apartment ran on 20 amps, which was enough, even most of
the time with a small air conditioner. .

This all kept any idiot tenants from putting in fuses that were bigger
than they should be. They were more expensive, maybe a lot more,
than regular fuses, but worth it. In my case, the tenant paid for
them.

If you still have fuses, by all means replace the fuse box
with modern breakers. Or at least use the proper fuse. But for low
amperage lighting, particularly if modern CFL or LED lights are used,
there is no reason to have to rip a house apart to replace K+T
wiring.

Interesting info. In my case, the building has a modern circuit breaker
panel and a lot of newer wiring with grounded 3-prong outlets etc. But,
some of the circuits -- such as these 3-way switches -- are on the old
wiring.