OT: Electrical plug question

My son's house?

The kid's house has been modified with a "new" panel but it's half Romex and half K&T, so the K&T has been "upgraded".

But it happens. There is no requirement for grounded outlets in existing structures (grand fathered). There may be a requirement to mark them as ungrounded and/or put a GFCI on the circuit.

No boxes[*] in the ceiling of the kid's joint. I didn't much like it either but that's that.

Kid just bought the joint two years ago.

The light over the vanity in my VT house had no box either. In fact the romex came up one stud bay, then crossed over a stud, through a notch cut in the sheetrock into the next bay where it was fished through the metal fixture. No bonding to the fixture, no strain relief, no insulation protection at all. The house was built in '85 and this was original wiring. Retarded electricians aren't rare.

So no matter what I come up with you are going to trash the idea, right?

No. There are many devices that can be used to make tracing and troubleshooting individual conductor circuits in conduit and raceway easier - but NOTHING will make it as simple as following cable.

I have found just following the cable simple way to figure out where the conduit runs. Unless you have a situation where you should just tear it out and start over because of others incompetence.

Picture if you will a 300 foot building with 4 panels,160 circuits, and something in excess of 600 outlets, with the wiring running in conduits above a 12 - 15 foot suspended ceiling that has been renovated 3 times in 10 years. Over a mile of that wire was installed by myself - and none of THAT caused problems other than finding where the unused circuits had been dead-ended to get my power. THAT was fun - - - -

Follow what cable? The wires run through conduit from the panel to the outlet - through numerous "pull boxes" through a virtual GRID of conduit.

How do you "follow the cable" when the "cable" is multiple independent wires pulled through a steel pipe?

Honest questions, was the price per foot below the market, when all the problem addressed was the cost still below market?

Fun can also be trying to pull wires through a conduit that was not sealed in a light weight concrete floor, then you pull the drywall down and reroute.

If you put the tracer on the hot lead you can follow it at the outlet and switch boxes, conduit does not act like a faraday cage.

In conduit that only tells you where the "hot lead" is going. You seem to have the impression that the normal procedure is to pull multiconductor cable through conduit. That is something that is sometimes done where a multiconductor cable has to pass through an exposed area and needs protection, but the norm is separate, independent conductors.

GUARD #1: Halt! Who goes there?

ARTHUR: It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot. King of the Britons, defeator of the Saxons, sovereign of all England!

GUARD #1: Pull the other one!

ARTHUR: I am. And this my trusty servant Patsy. We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights who will join me in my court at Camelot. I must speak with your lord and master.

GUARD #1: What, ridden on a horse?

ARTHUR: Yes!

GUARD #1: You're using coconuts!

ARTHUR: What?

GUARD #1: You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin' 'em together.

ARTHUR: So? We have ridden since the snows of winter covered this land, through the kingdom of Mercea, through...

GUARD #1: Where'd you get the coconut?

ARTHUR: We found them.

GUARD #1: Found them? In Mercea? The coconut's tropical!

ARTHUR: What do you mean?

GUARD #1: Well, this is a temperate zone.

ARTHUR: The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plumber may seek warmer climes in winter yet these are not strangers to our land.

GUARD #1: Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?

ARTHUR: Not at all, they could be carried.

GUARD #1: What, a swallow carrying a coconut?

ARTHUR: It could grip it by the husk!

GUARD #1: It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut.

ARTHUR: Well, it doesn't matter. Will you go and tell your master that Arthur from the Court of Camelot is here.

GUARD #1: Listen, in order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings 43 times every second, right?

ARTHUR: Please!

GUARD #1: Am I right?

ARTHUR: I'm not interested!

GUARD #2: It could be carried by an African swallow!

GUARD #1: Oh, yeah, an African swallow maybe, but not a European swallow, that's my point.

GUARD #2: Oh, yeah, I agree with that.

ARTHUR: Will you ask your master if he wants to join my court at Camelot?!

GUARD #1: But then of course African swallows are not migratory.

GUARD #2: Oh, yeah.

GUARD #1: So they couldn't bring a coconut back anyway... [clop clop]

GUARD #2: Wait a minute -- supposing two swallows carried it together?

GUARD #1: No, they'd have to have it on a line.

GUARD #2: Well, simple! They'd just use a strand of creeper!

GUARD #1: What, held under the dorsal guiding feathers?

GUARD #2: Well, why not?

In house wiring. You are over thinking it.

Conduit is not the norm in house wiring.

Was where I grew up.

Markem wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Chicago?

On Tue, 31 Dec 2019 17:04:33 -0600, Markem wrote:

DEFINITELY. There was over 3 million dollars of leasehold improvements done to the building by the previous tennant (who never got to occupy the bulding due to his fraud) and we spent only $60,000 in renovations to make it suitable for our use - and we leased it for the same price as if it was bare walls. No question it was the deal of the century. I pulled out over 1800 feet of co-ax and re-routed a lot of cat5. Had to sort out all the cat5 too, because when the supplier of the server came to take away their equipment they cut all the cat5 cable off about 3 feet from the ceiling above the door to the server room. I had to identify and re-terminate 128 network cables - and some were terminated 568A and some were 568B - no rhymr or reason. Then I had to hang a rack above the door for the network switches anc connect all the IT system cables to one pair of switches and all the IP Phone cables to another pair of switches.

Then we converted the theatre portion to office space - putting a trench in the concrete floor for a sequestered raceway where we pulled several miles of cat 5 cable and power cables for the workstations on the main floor as well as on the raised poertion (was stepped theatre seating - we removed about half of the rizers - which were built solid enough you could have parked at least a D9 on them). I had to get wiring fot 6 workstations into the rizer area which was 2 layers of

Then the HVAC system - what a mishmash. 4 rooftop units. controlled from 3 controller locations and 6 thermostatrs - with zoning - and the control for the north end unit in the middle of the building, and the control for the center unit about 15 feet farther north - you get the picture????

The eaziest part was tracing the cat 5 - because it wasn't pulled through conduit. And yes - I had fox and hound, and I had network tracers (cable analysers) - and numerous other "toys" including a modified Tyco RC truck that I ran across the suspended ceiling to pull fish ropes for pulling in data cables - - - - Took a bit of concentration to run the little beggar in reverse for 200 feet dodging the hangar wires- had to have the drive wheels at the front to crawl over the "T" bars. I'd get it stuck. pull it back a bit with tnhe fiash cable and give it another try 'till it would drop through the opening in the ceiling at the other end (where I had removed a tile)

THAT was a LOT easier than pulling extra wire into an already half full conduit and we resorted to using it to pull in AC cable (BX) on occaision when there was no available power circuit in the conduit where it was required.

Except for outlets located IN the floor - both data and power, EVERYTHING was fed from above, through conduit in either steel stud or concrete block walls.. Fun getting additional conduit down into the steel stud walls was remedied by dropping armoured cable instead for power.

Tell that to the hound trying to "follow" the fox!!!! Yes - if you could find the end of the wire you could confirm it was the end of that wire - most of the time - but crosstalk could make a parallel wire indicate as well. - just like plugging the breaker detector into an outlet then going back with the sniffer to figure out which breaker it was on ---- You could narrow it down to one of 3 breakers most often - then by turning them off and on pin down which one was your target - - -

Separate independent conductors are not just the "norm" - it is all that is allowed except for short runs for "protection".