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this is probably the best forum for this, but I never actually saw this person, which is probably good for his life expectancy, or at least his health.
My sister bought a house near me and we've since spent so much time and money fixing up the place. She didn't buy it as a fixer upper. But every time we turn around we are discovering new and inventive way of how not to build/upgrade a house.
Having been an electrician in the Navy, I've been slowly working on the electrical system as we've remodeled room. Now we are working in the attic replacing the old wiring before new insulation is installed. I get the master bedroom finished and she asks for me to remove the hall light so that a new ceiling can be put in. No problem.
We turn the hall light on and start flipping breakers to find the right one (the labeling is atrocious). We find the right one and I start to work. First I remove the hard wired smoke detector. No problem. Then I remove the cover and bulb to the light. I twist the fixture and undo the wire nuts disconnecting the fixture from the box. This is where the fun begins.
Looking inside I see a lot of wires twisted together. Seems that whoever wired this light also used the light box as a junction box to feed other loads. Not how I would have done it but not exactly bad either. So in I go to start untwisting wires and quickly pull my hands back out. It was still live in there! But I had watch the light go out and the smoke alarm which had been live was dead to the touch. I check with my multimeter and sure enough 120. So I send my helper out to start flipping other breakers. We find it, one breaker below the first one. Important later.
So I untwist the wires and get them out of the box. Then I start looking for the two source wires. I can only find one. Odd. Taking a close look at the one I found I noticed that it's a four wire cable (ground, white, black, and red). Bad suspicions form in my head. So I attach my meter to the black and white and ask my helper to turn on the last breaker. I only get a slight reading jump up on my meter. So I take the lead off the black and touch it to the red. A full 120. Next I had him turn off the second breaker and turn the first back on while going back to the black. It now read 120.
Yes that's right. The idiot who wired up the house took a single four wire cable and hooked it to two breakers! At that point my brain broke and I safely hooked the source lines back to two separate line, sans junction boxes. I'll have to go back and correct it at the point where it enters the attic. I don't do service entrances.
My sister bought a house near me and we've since spent so much time and money fixing up the place. She didn't buy it as a fixer upper. But every time we turn around we are discovering new and inventive way of how not to build/upgrade a house.
Having been an electrician in the Navy, I've been slowly working on the electrical system as we've remodeled room. Now we are working in the attic replacing the old wiring before new insulation is installed. I get the master bedroom finished and she asks for me to remove the hall light so that a new ceiling can be put in. No problem.
We turn the hall light on and start flipping breakers to find the right one (the labeling is atrocious). We find the right one and I start to work. First I remove the hard wired smoke detector. No problem. Then I remove the cover and bulb to the light. I twist the fixture and undo the wire nuts disconnecting the fixture from the box. This is where the fun begins.
Looking inside I see a lot of wires twisted together. Seems that whoever wired this light also used the light box as a junction box to feed other loads. Not how I would have done it but not exactly bad either. So in I go to start untwisting wires and quickly pull my hands back out. It was still live in there! But I had watch the light go out and the smoke alarm which had been live was dead to the touch. I check with my multimeter and sure enough 120. So I send my helper out to start flipping other breakers. We find it, one breaker below the first one. Important later.
So I untwist the wires and get them out of the box. Then I start looking for the two source wires. I can only find one. Odd. Taking a close look at the one I found I noticed that it's a four wire cable (ground, white, black, and red). Bad suspicions form in my head. So I attach my meter to the black and white and ask my helper to turn on the last breaker. I only get a slight reading jump up on my meter. So I take the lead off the black and touch it to the red. A full 120. Next I had him turn off the second breaker and turn the first back on while going back to the black. It now read 120.
Yes that's right. The idiot who wired up the house took a single four wire cable and hooked it to two breakers! At that point my brain broke and I safely hooked the source lines back to two separate line, sans junction boxes. I'll have to go back and correct it at the point where it enters the attic. I don't do service entrances.
That's right - the neutral wire for ANOTHER CIRCUIT found its way back to the fuse panel by going in through one screw on the neutral side of this outlet, and out through the other screw on the neutral side. Needless to say, I used a wire nut to fasten these 2 neutral wires together, with a "pigtail" leading to the outlet itself, so in future the outlet could be changed (if necessary) without breaking the neutral return for another circuit.
So we took a wire nut and shorted the wires.
)
--- Sheldonrs
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