My house has the porcelain tubes for electric. Im 46, and we have a lot of stuff hooked up. Is it safe? No. But its all a game of money. You either have it, or ya dont. You only live once.........
Knob and Tube wiring
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Yea, I still have some knob and tube in my house but only serves light duty loads <15 amps. Have heard the copper guage in those old wires are equally to or greater than that in modern 20 Amp circuits. Everything else in new stuff including panel box. Still have push button switches too. My pipe is single wall to the clay thimble in the 25 year brick chimney with stainless liner. The chimney thickness all the way to the inside of the house flush with inside wall 1 foot thick. All meets code by permit.
I have been told my wires are like new by a few people. The outside sheathing looks bad, but thats just a cover. The lines inside are nice. Id love to have my house rewired, but cant swing that right now. I have a new fuse box, got rid of the glass ones, lol.....Im in the loop now....I have a breaker box! Old house living.........but shes paid for.
stoveliker
Minister of Fire
I'm not sure what you mean. The outside sheeting is what isolates the voltage from shorting, sparking,.and burning down your home?
I mean the outer shell, if you want to call it that. Its jut like fabric sheathing, to run the wires themselves all over the house. Its old school.
stoveliker
Minister of Fire
Ok. I have zero experience with old wiring in this country. But I did replace old wiring back in Europe that had a fabric sheeting that seemed to have been oiled. It was integral part of the protection of the wire there.
Maybe things are different here - but why put fabric on there if it serves no purpose? And if there is a purpose, I'd want to have it be functional.
Maybe things are different here - but why put fabric on there if it serves no purpose? And if there is a purpose, I'd want to have it be functional.
The fabric sheathing covers and protects the rubber (guta percha?) insulation. As this breaks down over time it can turn to dust, leaving bare wires. This still may or may not be relatively safe if totally undisturbed but remodels, leaks, rodents, urine, etc. can cause continuity and shorts or heating between the separated lines.
Yep, protects the wires, and makes it easy to run the 3 wires together. One thing about my house, is they didnt leave much slack at the outlets. If you replace one, its hard even tho its an easy job. No slack.
Code used to require all knob and tube wires to be separated. Not run together. When run in close proximity they needed porcelain sleeves (tubes) to keep the isolated from each other.
en.wikipedia.org
The higher ampacity of K&T wiring is due to the distance between the hot and the neutral, allowing better dissipation of heat. However, this can become dangerous when insulation is on top of or blown around this wiring. The safest practice with the remaining K&T is to keep the load on that circuit very light. We have one room with K&T and that wiring only has LED lights on it.
Moving this off-topic discussion to the DIY forum.
Knob-and-tube wiring - Wikipedia
Moving this off-topic discussion to the DIY forum.
Yeah , I agree....try to limit the usage. I have LED and energy saver bulbs in everything, and I wait til dark, dark to turn my lights on if I can. Everything is basically Energy Star, which I dont know mean a lot, but they are newish. My last bill was 94 dollars. Thats not bad at all for what we run.
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