Good morning everyone and Happy Wednesday.

One of the great things about Philly is that the houses built back in the day were built by artisans and built to last a long time. One of the drawbacks of an older city is that it is older and certain systems/components in a house become outdated such as the electrical system.

Signs that you may have an unsafe/outdated electrical system.

1) If you still have a fuse box instead of a main panel box with a main breaker shut off.

2) Houses built before the mid 1940's use knob and tube wiring, which is the original wiring system for houses, a lot of insurance companies no longer insure knob and tube wiring due to the advance age, the fact there is no ground for the electrical system, and that most of these older systems have been compromised in some way by homeowners. Knob and tube wiring has a hot wire and nuetral wire but no grounding. Great grandma had a light fixture and a toaster back in the day and that is what these systems were designed for, my daughter uses more electricity in her room than my grandmother uses in her whole house.

3) If you have two prong outlets everywhere in your house than you have an older wiring system that is outdated, now sometimes three prong outlets are used to replace the two prong outlets, but the outlet is not grounded. A simple way to know is buy a circuit tester at a home center/hardware store for $6 - $7.

4) If you have adapters in the outlets that is allowing you to plug equipment/appliances such as computers with three prongs into 2 prong ungrounded outlets, that is considered a hazard.

5) Most older houses only have 1 -2 outlets in a room and no outlets in a bathroom as there was nothing to plug in back in the day, so if you are using extension cords/power strips everywhere to make up the difference, this again is considered a hazard. A 15 amp breaker is generally designed to carry 8-10 switches/outlets on a circuit and a power strip can easily allow 8 - 10 items to be plugged into one outlet thus creating a potential overload for that one circuit.

6) It is also a good practice to install GFCI outlets in areas such as bathrooms/kitchens/laundry areas/outside where water/mositure can come in contact with electricity. They cost about $8 - $10 each.

7) If your house was built during the Vietnam era there is a small chance that it may have been wired with aluminum branch wiring and there has been numerous lawsuits involving this practice due to house fires. Mainly during 1965-1975 as the copper prices soared due to fact that it was needed for munitions, much like today.

The best suggestion is do not modify the electrical system yourself if you do not know what you are doing, instead of power strips and extension cords everywhere hire a licensed electrician to install outlets as needed. The electrical loads/demands made on houses these days makes each house a mini power station and great care should be taken when adding a new appliance or equipment to your home whether you rent or own or are just moving from room to room.

Have a good day,
Home Inspector BC

Its like you read my mind. . . I've been wondering about this over the past week.

When an electrician comes in to make the upgrade, does he/she need to get into the walls (leaving another issue to repair), or can the adjustments be made at each existing outlet alone?

You are unable to bring the knob and tube setup up to code without doing some damage. Just replacing each outlet will not fix the situation.

Im having my kitchen remodeled and they removed all the K&T wiring in there and replaced it all with current code fixtures....cost me a few bucks but well worth my peace of mind. Im going room to room and eventually the entire house will be current....it takes time and is well worth it IMO.

I do have 20A outlets in my bedrooms though....the previous owner had them ran to power window AC units etc....not much consolation but its better then nothing in the summer. My K&T setup powers the room lighting.....we dont use the older outlets if we can avoid it. Anything without a ground makes me suspicious.

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There's no way we could afford to replace all the K&T wiring in our house, so when we moved in we just upgraded what we could. We've heard several times that K&T wiring is not all that bad, as long as you don't touch it and don't overload it. An electrician friend redid the whole electric panel with a grounding wire, ran new lines up to the 2nd and 3rd floors so we could have AC units, and replaced quite a few of the outlets that had been improperly converted to 3-prong grounded outlets, back to 2-prong. It's not perfect, but it's a heckuva lot safer than when we moved in.

A silled/caring electrician should be able to install new wiring with minimal access openings to help fish new wire. The type of framing will also have a lot to do with the amount of access holes. A lot of older homes in the area were built with balloon framing which means the wall studs run from the basement straight up into the attic making it easier to fish new wiring. If a house has platform framing is makes it more difficult to fish wires to upper levels.

The first floor is always the easiest to rewire because of access from the basement. Electricians can also run new wiring inside a conduit along the baseboards and mount new outlets on the baseboard as well. It would cost less to do this and is less invasive but some people do not like the aesthetics.

If your budget does not allow for a complete upgrade now, than do a partial in areas that electric demands are high like home entertainment areas, office/study area that have computers/printers/et cetera. Kitchens and bathrooms are other areas that tend to use a lot of electricity.

Thank you for your time and have a Happy Wednesday,
Home Inspector BC

Excellent summary and dead accurate, according to our recent experience.

We purchased a house in Haddonfield, NJ two and a half weeks ago, and as you described, we needed to have all knob-and-tube removed in order to obtain homeowner's insurance. Our third-floor attic is finished, which limited access to the second floor, so they did have to cut a significant number of holes in the plaster and lath on the second floor to fish out the K&T and run new copper wire on the second floor. Access to the first floor was available through the basement, and so damage was less, although they still had to cut a lot of holes.

Time to complete the work, including the addition of several new outlets, a couple of fixtures, a new service cable and upgrade to a 200A box was about 2-1/2 weeks (finishing today, actually). Cost, including plaster patching, was in the $12k range.

As noted in Item 2 of the original poster's first post, it would be *highly* advisable to check with an insurance company about any K&T-related issues before purchasing a new house. We talked to four companies, and "Is there any knob and tube wiring?" was literally the second question every one asked. Two would not even insure until it was remedied; the other two would issue a policy contingent upon the full removal of the K&T within 30 days.

In my opinion, why bother REMOVING the old wiring?
Less damage and labor would result by simply running fresh Romex fished though the walls/floors to the upgraded outlets.
As for the insurance companies question about K&T wiring, I'd think they would ask if there was any ACTIVE wiring of that sort. Dead K&T lines shouldn't be an issue with insurance companies.
I've seen plenty of homes upgraded with newer Romex and they've left the old, DISCONNECTED hard-to-get-at K&T in the walls.
The same goes for the old "gas lamp" piping some old homes have, if it's been disconnected from the main gas line, why go to the extra unneeded expense to yank it out of the walls?

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I have State Farm and they never asked if there was any K&T wiring in the house.....kind of odd if you ask me.

What if they asked if you had a basement drain? I dont have a drain in my basement nor do I have a sump....OH NOES!

__________________
Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird.

“Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through." Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL)

Yes there is a place where you wont be treated like a child.

The Obama File

Doesn't matter if you like the message or not-it still resorts to being cleverly designed:

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Say things I might regret
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Just relating my personal experience with the issue since it is happening as we speak. Some of the additional work may have resulted from the fact that we did upgrade the overall electrical layout by adding a number of oulets and a couple of fixtures, plus rewiring some of the overhead fixtures. We did get quotes from four electricians - all in roughly the same ballpark as far as cost and amount of labor needed.

As far as insurance company procedures, we thought deactivation might be an option but were told to get it out. Perhaps there's a concern that some DIYer will reactivate it in the future? We most probably would've modernized the electrical at some point anyway, so it was mostly timing.

At any rate, it's now done, and we can concern ourselves with the myriad other issues that come with the purchase of an older house. I sure do love the neighborhood and location, though!