Knob and Tube Wiring

The last couple of days has been spent removing disconnected old knob and tube wiring. The house was rewired sometime before we purchased it. Unfortunately they left all the old knob and tube wiring.

So far we have not run into any that is active, which is great. I know when we had the home inspection, the inspector made a point to remark on every bit of knob and tube he could see. So we decided it had to be removed for future sale and our piece of mind.

The tube is easy to remove as it slides right off the wire. The knob on the other hand appears to either be nailed or screwed to the joists. I told R to keep all the knob and tube pieces because I have an idea for a craft project.

We are also removing any old nails, screws, boards, straps, etc that we come across that are no longer needed. Just in the room that was the coal room we spent 5 hours . We also removed the door since is has it's original glass but was hanging by one hinge. The door will go in the barn with all the other doors that are currently not in use.After dewiring the coal bin we moved to the furnace room. This room is much harder to remove the knob and tube since the vast majority of it is hidden above the heating ducts. We did remove the old security system wall box, old copper tubing that went to a long gone fridge, and some knob and tube. We came across about three junction boxes without covers and numerous places where the wiring is criss crossed and just a mess. That mess will have to wait until we can turn off the power and disconnect the wires to untangle and use Romex staples to hold in place.

R also did some crawling around in the crawl space under the family room/library. He says it will be a tight fit. We are hoping that most of the ducting can be assembled and fed though the opening.

The good news is that R said he didn't see any daylight leaking through anywhere. Yeah!!!

Also we have determined that if the family room/library was not original it was added soon after the house was built since we found knob and tube under the family room/library.

We also found out where the water was coming into the coal room. There was always a damp spot on the floor. Upon closer inspection we found that there was a deep hole, the size of a quarter, drilled into the floor. It was allowing ground water to seep into the coal room during rainy periods. That will have to be plugged with hydraulic cement. I have no idea why someone would drill a hole through the concrete basement floor but they did and now we will fix it.Tomorrow we will try and tackle some of the heat ducts under the family room/library. Yippee!

Time to Move the Work Inside

It's time to move inside now that snow is in the forecast. So today was spent removing needless wires (more phone wire and some disconnected knob and tube) and making a list of the needed materials to fix some shoddy duct work.

They (whoever installed the furnaces) installed new duct work whenever they installed the current two furnaces and much like whoever installed the roof (same time period) they did a shoddy job. Both the living room and the family room have crawl spaces rather than basement. The basement is in the center of the home and does not expand under the wings.

The duct work they installed in the crawl spaces was the flexible plastic duct work wrapped in plastic and insulation rather than 7 inch round sheet metal duct which was used up until they entered into the crawl space. This flexible duct has just deteriorated and fallen apart. We removed all the bad ducting, measured for new, and decided what parts would be needed to get to where we needed to go. Then it was off to Home Depot where they (associates) were absolutely no help. But we finally found what we needed and left.

Tomorrow we will redo the furnace air inlets because they were done with those cheap flexible dryer exhaust tubing, not the sturdy flexible duct and then they nearly clamped it shut when they used a hose clamp to hang it to the floor joist under the kitchen.

If we have time left we will start the installation of the new round sheet metal ducting under the family room. That job should take several days since there is very limited space to work. Plus while he is in the crawl space he might as well cut away as much of the old 'not in use anymore stuff'.