On Mon, 25 Nov 2013 11:16:56 -0500, "TomR" wrote:
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. .
BTW, with Fuzestats, there is no easy way to put a penny in the socket
and bypass the fuse. Another big advantage of them. There is a
button conductor in the bottom of the hole, but there isn't the
typical side-of-the-hole conductor. Instead there are are two metal
tabs that slide along the top of the Fuzestat socket as the fuse is
screwed in, and make contact when it's all the way in. It's hard or
impossible to touch these tabs because the fuse is big enough to cover
the whole thing.
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.
BTW, I was the tenant. I certainly paid for the fuses in my apt. but
I didn't want to wait for the super or wake him up in the middle of
the night, so even after he locked the button to go to the basement,
I bypassed the lock switch, went myself, and changed my fuse myself.
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.
Also interesting.