Author Topic: 1915 Electrical appliances  (Read 5885 times)

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Offline SeanB

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Re: 1915 Electrical appliances
« Reply #25 on: April 02, 2018, 06:16:50 pm »
My little old lady neighbor still has ungrounded sockets in most of the house. Some rooms do have grounds like the kitchen and bathroom and I think maybe the bedrooms. There's definately no GFI anywhere though. :scared:

Then she has been living in the house for a really long time, long enough that the code changes that meant grounding all sockets is not applied to her. Probably still has screw in ES socket fuses as well, and old DCC gutta percha cabling in the walls as well.  going to be expensive to whoever buys the house to rewire it up to code, as likely the DCC cable will not survive any leakage testing with a pass.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: 1915 Electrical appliances
« Reply #26 on: April 02, 2018, 10:07:47 pm »
Then she has been living in the house for a really long time, long enough that the code changes that meant grounding all sockets is not applied to her. Probably still has screw in ES socket fuses as well, and old DCC gutta percha cabling in the walls as well.  going to be expensive to whoever buys the house to rewire it up to code, as likely the DCC cable will not survive any leakage testing with a pass.

Not necessarily. In the US anyway it's perfectly acceptable to buy or sell an older house with electrical wiring that does not meet current code, as long as it was up to code and passed inspection when it was built. She obviously lives in an older house, but that says nothing of how long she has lived there. There are millions of houses out there with old wiring, my aunt & uncle live in a 1922 house that has had a lot of electrical updating done but some of the original knob & tube wiring and 2-prong receptacles remain in service.
 

Offline jmelson

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Re: 1915 Electrical appliances
« Reply #27 on: April 03, 2018, 08:22:47 pm »


Not necessarily. In the US anyway it's perfectly acceptable to buy or sell an older house with electrical wiring that does not meet current code, as long as it was up to code and passed inspection when it was built. She obviously lives in an older house, but that says nothing of how long she has lived there. There are millions of houses out there with old wiring, my aunt & uncle live in a 1922 house that has had a lot of electrical updating done but some of the original knob & tube wiring and 2-prong receptacles remain in service.
Not quite correct.  A lot of old stuff is still permitted, but grounded outlets and/or GFCI is required where grounded appiiances/things are present.  So, outdoor outlets, garage outlets, kitchens and bathrooms must have GFCIs.  The GFCIs even COME WITH labels to indicate that this outlet has  no "equipment ground".

Other than the specific locations for GFCIs, a lot of other old stuff is permitted, such as 2-wire (no ground) Romex, even knob and tube wiring!
Not too many houses with screw-in fuses left, thankfully!

Jon
 

Offline james_s

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Re: 1915 Electrical appliances
« Reply #28 on: April 03, 2018, 11:24:40 pm »
Are you sure it has to be updated to sell the house though? About 10 years ago some friends of mine bought a house that still had the original 100A plug fuse panel. A few years later I replaced it with a new 200A breaker panel and service drop, fun project, came out really well. Previously there were a few grounded receptacles but most of the original circuits were not, and only one bathroom had a GFCI. This was of course taken care of in the upgrade but we could have left the whole system alone.

Unfortunately if you do mess with anything, you have to bring the rest of it up to code. I had planned to replace the rather small and aging 200A breaker panel in my house with a new fullsized panel but I'd have to update so much else now that it's not really worth it, easier to get by with what's there.
 

Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: 1915 Electrical appliances
« Reply #29 on: April 04, 2018, 02:30:36 am »
Here in the US the biggest oops is people who have installed grounded outlets on ungrounded circuits.  With exceptions as noted above it is permitted to have ungrounded circuits, but the inspectors will test outlets and require repairs if a grounded outlet is not fully connected.  Some jurisdictions will allow restoring an ungrounded outlet.  Others demand a rewire.

Shade tree electricians often install the grounded outlets "as a convenience" to allow using appliances/tools with grounded plugs.  As an alternative to clipping the ground pin off the plug.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: 1915 Electrical appliances
« Reply #30 on: April 04, 2018, 02:59:06 am »
Well it's certainly preferable to clipping off the ground pin.

In the house I mentioned, a number of grounded outlets had been installed with a separate ground wire added in the basement, I left most of those as-is because I wasn't doing anything in that part of the house. Others I rewired because I was already running new circuits to that area. I more than doubled the number of circuits in the house as I recall. Previously the entire basement was on one 15A circuit, which I found had a 30A fuse and the insulation was starting to melt off the wire in the panel.
 


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