On Wednesday, August 12, 2015 at 6:27:10 AM UTC-5, philo wrote:
On 08/12/2015 02:47 AM, Uncle Monster wrote:


From your description of what you were cutting out, it appears to be ridged conduit. I can imagine that it's a fun job. If you think about the why of rigid conduit, pretend you were converting a home from gas lighting to electrical lighting back in the day, where would you install the wiring if not knob and tube? If I already had a pipe somewhere that was no longer being used for gas, I think I'd use it as a conduit for wire. Of course wiring practices evolved and changed as standards were published and inspections became the norm. I'd guess there were many house fires cause by the ignorance of that magical source of energy, electricity. That's probably the reason the rules and standards for electrical wiring were codified by the National Fire Protection Association which may have come into being for that reason. I don't know the history of the NFPA without reading about it because it may have been around since the days of gas lighting and the need for standards back then for insta
lling gas lines in buildings. Since I haven really researched it, I'm just guessing. Now that I've become curious, I must vanish for a while and read up on the history of the organization, dammit! á•™(‡€€¸†¼€¶)á•—

[8~{} Uncle Code Monster




The conduit was not an old gas line. It would have been all new at the
time and of greater diameter that the pipe used for gas lighting.

It would have been essentially impossible to pull wires through that
thin diameter pipe.


Though they were capped off of course, the gas lighting pipes were still
connected when I moved into my house and one of the first things I did
was to disconnect them.

Fortunately there was a junction in the basement so I could disconnect
them all at once.


Another thing I did almost immediately after I moved in here was to take
the light switch out of the shower stall!!!!!

I don't think you mentioned how old the house was, just the wiring. Of course the tiny pipes wouldn't work for wiring with the very old pitch and cloth insulated wire but the 1/2 inch and larger pipes would. One thing that would be interesting would be to pull a single old style wire through the small gas line going to a gas light that's been converted into an electric light using the metal pipe for a neutral. Of course modern plastic insulated lamp cord will fit through one of those small gas lines going to a gas light making conversion to an electric light easier. It would be pretty slick to use bright LED's to mimic a flickering gas flame. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle Light Monster