Electrical rewire hints

Well you need to learn about home construction so you know what is inside your walls. Might be best to start will installing just one new outlet.

Tear out the drywall (if that is what you have) and this will expose what is inside the wall. Just tear out about 1 ft. wide and from floor to ceiling.

Then learn about what is inside the wall. You may have studs, maybe insulation, maybe a fire block, etc. Maybe you will see pipes and wires inside the wall.

Get a book on home construction and this will teach you about what you are looking at inside the wall.

Then you will need to run the new wire to the main panel. This can be done through the attic, through the ceiling, through a basement, along a brick wall, etc. Learn about how your home is constructed and where you can run the new wires.

You will need lots of tools.

Next get a book on home wiring. Read it cover to cover.

Then get an electrical permit to install your new outlet. You can ask the inspector questions before doing this, but it would be better if you have read a book on home construction and electrical wiring first. Then you will have a basic understanding of terms used to describe things (can communicate your plans to inspector better).

Once you install your new outlet, you will need to learn how to replace the drywall you removed, and get it to match the surrounding wall.

Then after you have installed one new outlet, you will understand what is involved, what is inside the walls, and how you can re-wire existing outlets or install new outlets. And that you may be able to fish wires or just cut out small portions of walls to run wires.

There is a lot of stuff to learn, and a lot of tools to buy. May want to check and see what books are available at your library. The more you know about home construction, tools, and electrical wiring, the better.

Doing these projects can cost a fortune if you do not yet have the tools. So if you just bought your house and are cash drained as I was when I bought my house, might want to stick to the reading for now...

Also you can ask specific questions here. Best to give as many details as possible. Especially about your external wall construction. Brick, wood, etc. Best to ask one specific question at a time, like "I want to install a new outlet on external wall". Then give details of what you want to do.

Reply to
Bill
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I"m a first time new home owner, and a wanna be do it yourselfer.

I am wanting to upgrade the electrical wiring in my home because none of it has a ground wire. When running the new wire is it good to cut holes in the wall, or fish tape.

A main concern I am having with the project is that many of the outlets are on external walls.

Any tips on howto best complete this project. And also a good place to find resource material.

Reply to
joe

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Read, read and read more. Not hard as I done it myself. I also installed a new breaker panel. Take your time it can kill you.

Reply to
Brian

Sounds like you're *way* over your head. Rethink tackling a job that big given your current skills/knowledge level.

Doc

Reply to
John H. Holliday

What kind of cable do you have? Steel cable uses the metal covering as the ground. If you have this type of cable you may just have to replace the non grounded outlets and attach a ground wire from the box to the new outlet.

Reply to
RBM

Wet you feet (not literally!) with a small branch circuit that you can isolate reliably (there's probably no such thing in an old house!) Verify with a multimeter once you throw the breaker that the circuit is dead. Then if there no conduit, put up some. Rewire with #10 or #12 depending on the load. Put in GFCIs. You'll get an idea of your appetite for this project. If you have conduit already, you will learn the joys of pulling new wire. #10 or 12 is stiff enough to thread without a snake, if you have 2 bends or less. Get a pro to do difficult things like replace the meter, etc.

Reply to
Nexus7

If you have never done this before, I suggest several weeks of planning and studying. Read as many books as you can. Talk to electricians. Go visit home construction sites to get an idea of what is in the walls.

You might want to find an electrician that will work with you. You could be his helper as you learn from him. I did this a few years ago with a young man who wanted to rewire an old house that he bought for investment. He was very willing to learn and had done a tremendous amount of homework on home wiring. He had bought his own tools and I gave him a material list and suggested some supply houses. He worked very hard and I showed him a few tricks. He had also studied the National Electrical Code book and consequently was able to do things to code which was beneficial during inspection time.

Always get a permit and inspection for your work. Doing it wrong could be harmful to property and human life.

Home wiring is not something that you can learn much about by reading a few articles or postings on the internet. Do you think that I could do your job very well if my only knowledge came from a newsgroup? I have seen a lot of do-it-yourself wiring. Much of it was sloppy. Some of it has been hazardous. Only a small percentage of it has been impressive.

John Grabowski

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Reply to
John Grabowski

If the wiring is adequate except for the lack of a ground wire, you can run a seperate ground wire back to the panel -- or the nearest grounding electrode conductor (GEC) if that's more convenient -- without having to tear our the walls. You can buy a 60" springy steel drill bit. Punch a very small (patchable) hole in the wall next to an outlet that needs grounding and fish the drill bit in the wall and drill you way to the attic or basement. You can then use the drill bit to fish a green wire back, which you use to ground the outlet and the box.

In my case, the GEC was easier to get to than the main panel, so I collect the new ground wires there under a couple of BIG split-bolt connectors.

You also don't need to ground every outlet in the house. Convenience outlets in the bedroom, for instance, are probably just fine without a ground. Ground one outlet in each room on an interior wall maybe.

-Bob

Reply to
zxcvbob

Yes, exactly what kind of cable he has now is very important. Before Romex it was call BX iirc. It has a spiral metal cover that functions as a gound.

People lived in your house and millions like it without getting killed or even shocked for decades, maybe for 100 years. So maybe you don't have to do this. A whole house is a bigggg job. Practice on one added outlet or light that you probably need somewhere.

Don't stand in water while you do anything. I have three wire and everything, and during the last flood I had from my kitchen sink above, I was standing in water, and I tried to unplug something by pulling on the cord from a foot away from the plug, and I got a small voltage shock while I did it. (2 seconds?) I guess I could have been killed, Although I have gotten 110 volts before, never from my hand to my feet and never when any part of my body was wet.

The wire was insulated but I guess the leak made the dirty wire wet, and it conducted some electricity.

And there was a guy at Beth Steel killed by a radio. I can't imagine what happened, unless the case had a piece missing. After that, all of us even in the office building had to use three pronged appliances for everything, even if we brought in our own fan or radio.

Despite all these horror stories, I'm still saying that if you use proper behaviour, what you have now is probably safe, and if you don't use proper behagviour, even after you improve it, you wont' be safe.

If it has the metal sheath now, putting in 3 wire cable won't be an improvement, aiui.

Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let me know if you have posted also.

Reply to
mm

Yes, probably both.

Well, then it might not be possible without ripping the walls open. Did you want to learn how to drywall also?

You have chosen (if in fact this is not a troll) a very challenging project. It once took me all day to install a switch on an outside wall, and all I had to do was run the cable up to the attic. Good luck with a whole house.

I highly recommend taking a course in home wiring, if you can find one locally. Around here they are offered at high schools and the local vocational school.

Reply to
Toller

I went through the same thoughts when I bought my house 2 years ago. I was going to retrofit ground to some outlets (mainly because it is inconvenient to use adapters to plug some appliances in, like computers which routinely have a ground prong.

Initially, I ended up replacing a few receptacles with GFCI receptacles which although not really a safety ground, does give you similar protection and is allowed by code. No new wire to run and you get that all important third hole. You need a GFCI for each outlet you want to convert, using the load output from one GFCI is not advised to add protection downstream like you can do with a 3 wire system.

Ultimately I waited until I remodeled some rooms at which time I had the walls open and could easily replace all the wire to that room and adjacent rooms (sharing a wall) which was over 50% of the house. With minimal prior experience, I did all the new plumbing, electrical, framing and wallboard etc. You can do it if you think you can. Just buy 2-4 books on the subject and get comfortable with the methods before starting.

If you insist on running new wires, you use all of the above methods to get from point A to point B. Use whatever works for each wire and change methods as required. Unfortunately most wiring is stapled inside the walls and cannot be easily replaced without making many holes. A good compromise is to remove the bottom 24" of wallboard in all rooms which will give you access to most of what you need to get at. With 24" this is 1/2 of a 4x8 sheet of wallboard making fewer cuts when you close up.

Reply to
PipeDown

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