....really WAS, things would be a lot easier.

I just went to replace a flickering CFL in the little office
upstairs. when I unscrewed the glass from the light fixture (one of
those ones with a little nipple that holds the glass on) the whole
thing fell down in my hand. OK, so someone didn't use a nut they were
supposed to, no big deal. Look up inside box, surprised to see Romex
with ground. (not totally surprising, because that side of the
upstairs was remodeled at some point in the vague past. Because it
was done with paneling instead of drywall, I thought it had been done
in the pre-Romex era, but I guess not.) OK, that's good - possibly
one less thing to address on my future rewiring project. I correctly
wire the ground to the fixture, hang correctly from box. Pull cover
plate off of switch out of curiosity, find also modern Romex with
ground - but only one cable in box. So I have a switch leg. But
there was only one cable in the ceiling box as well... must be
junction box in attic. @#$#$%. Remove receptacle directly below
switch, again out of curiosity, and also find only one cable
entering. WTF? must be a bigass box up there. Hoping for cool day
to investigate. But here's the kicker - even though there is three
wire romex in the box, the ground and neutral are all connected
together. Check light in hallway, same thing, one romex entering,
this time the ground is clipped. Pull switch that controls it, which
is on an original wall, that one is still the original cloth-insulated
NM. That must be one heck of a junction box in that there attic.

Here's what I find really hard to believe - the PO's of this house did
not do any electrical work, they told me so. The guy that they bought
it from was a CONTRACTOR.

The appeal of this house to me is that the PO's did very little work
to it therefore very little is messed up. However, everything that
I've seen that looks like it WAS done since the house was built, has
been WRONG.

I doubt the guy is still in business because the people we bought the
house from were there for something like 18 years. However, I feel
like I ought to go down to city hall and get the guy's name just in
case he still is, just so that I never hire him. I hope that he also
didn't do any work as "favors" for the neighbors...

How hard would it have been to simply wire up all the new work
correctly, and then when it was all done run a ground wire to a water
pipe or something? Would it *really* have been that difficult? (how
in the HELL did this ever get inspected?)

nate

"N8N" wrote in message
...

How hard would it have been to simply wire up all the new work
correctly, and then when it was all done run a ground wire to a water
pipe or something? Would it *really* have been that difficult? (how
in the HELL did this ever get inspected?)


You're kidding, right? These morons don't ever have anything inspected. That
would mean they actually pulled a permit. They never do that, either, unless
their "remuddling" is obvious from the outside like an addition, etc.