I have a house that was built in the 50's and none of the outlets are grounded. I am getting ready to add new molding through out the house would this be a good time to ground all the outlets as well?? i was thinking of running a single copper wire from the ground at the breaker to the rest of the outlets. my house is on a slab so basement is out of the question and i have valted ceilings. i just wanted to know if this was a bad idea or not?
It's a good idea to do the wiring before installing the molding, as you will most likely have some plaster to repair, however, IMHO, installing just a single wire is a waste of time. Whatever labor is involved getting the single wire to the outlets is going to be the same as if you installed Romex. For an extra $200 -300 (US) you'll have a far superior installation. After you do all that work, you will be glad you spent the extra $.
K&T???
Your much better replacing it to make resale easier someday and besides code doesnt allow a seperate ground
You'd be hard pressed to find K&T installed in the fifties, and the NEC does allow a separate ground wire run to correct his problem. That being cleared up, Volts500 still has the most practical solution
If the wiring is BX its very possible he doesnt need ground wire added and may be able to use the existing armoring as ground provided it tests ok
just change receptables and add pigtail between box and ground connection n new receptables.
avoid at all costs those cheap backstab outlets they are terrible and cause flakey connections
HaHaHA
Here in Cleveland (OH), K&T was the *only* material used in res work well into the 60's. Can't give you an exact cutoff date, but I suspect that the grounding requirements ca. 1965 prompted the permission for NM cable.
Jim
That's hard to believe. You'd think with it being so labor intensive, they would have gone to ac, or nm in the forties
This is exactly what I did in my late 50's house. Everything was wired with BX. However, it had cloth covered rubber insulated wires. Talk about brittle flakey old insulation. Just removing the outlets was enough to crack the insulation. In many cases I ended up running new BX, In others, I covered the pigtails with heat shrink tubing. Surprisingly, only the wires coming out of the BX were brittle. If you cut back the armour, the wires still inside the armour were like new.
So if you open those boxes up, take care with the insulation.
dickm
The labor is exactly why it remained for so long. Cleveland was/is a labor town and they controlled what city hall wrote (ordinances) for a long time.
Outlying areas (several counties in fact) continued to follow the Cleveland practice for nearly as long. As a result, we have literally millions of homes with K&T. Can you picture the mountain of porcelain knobs that would be created if all these homes were stripped at one time? Jim
Well, like you point out, newer grounding code is what killed K&T. In many respects it really was the Cadillac of wiring. David Shapiro mentions in his book that San Francisco used it up until the forties, and parts of New Orleans , up into the eighties
so could i run the Romex through the studs when i am replaing the molding like if i was adding a outlet?????? because like i said basement space and attic space is next to none
volts500 wrote:
YES
some areas of us still MANDATE cast iron fpr plumbing just to keep plumbers working....
featherbedding comes to mind.........
snipped-for-privacy@aol.com spake thus:
Where? Cite, please.
In Westchester County, NY, underground waste lines have to be cast iron. You can transition to abs, or pvc above ground
San fgransico just a few years ago this old house episoide
I have read that K&T was used in the war years to save on metal and that K&T is still used in some areas prone to fooding because it dries out faster. (I wouldn't guarantee either tidbit.)
-- bud--
That's exactly what Shapiro wrote in his book, regarding parts of New Orleans that flooded often
Remember the title? Seems like not a lot of extended information on grounding out there.
-- bud--
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