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Houses are crazy


Turbs3000

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So we have owned the same house since '87 and still know the owners that built the house in '84. The appliances are all from the original build date. In that time the only major appliance that has needed replacing was the furnace 10 years ago. But now, now that the house is just over 27 years old it has all started to fall apart. In the past 6 months the a/c unit crapped out, lost the fridge, the oven coil exploded, and the water heater just took a dump.

 

Now, I am in no way complaining, more, I am in shock. I can't believe those crappy bulk bought builder appliances lasted 27 damn years. I also find it crazy/humorous that they all died within such a small time frame.

 

That is all. Thank you.

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Our a/c unit was built in '84. I'm trying to save up some $$$ to get it replaced. It sucks in the summer as it runs almost 24/7.

 

But yeah that sucks. Sucks when it all happens at once.

 

I just fixed a pretty bad leak in my main drain pipe coming from the sink with a handful of plumbers putty :). I'm not about to tear the kitchen sink apart to get to it.

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roof is probably next!

Haha we actually did do roof, windows and siding about 3 years ago. It didn't need it but with the "hail damage" we just couldn't pass it up.

 

The house doesn't by chance have an old crappy 100 amp pushmatic breaker box does it?

If so, change it out for an updated 200 amp setup while you are at it.

 

No worries, all modern electrical thank god. We have an ancient shady setup at work and electricians won't even touch it. I couldn't imagine having some knob and tube or something in the home.

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No worries, all modern electrical thank god. We have an ancient shady setup at work and electricians won't even touch it. I couldn't imagine having some knob and tube or something in the home.

 

:lol:

No, I wouldn't expect anything that ancient in an early 80s build.

My old house though was built around 82 and had the pushmatic box. I had odd electrical problems off and on for a couple years. Batches of things would randomly "go bad". After we upgraded the box, we never had another problem.

Could be coincidence, but I doubt it.

Glad your already updated. Just figured I'd throw it out there just incase.

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My girlfriend's house was built in the 40's, and though it didn't have knob and tube, it was wired with 2 conductor, so no receptacles were grounded. My dad (journeyman electrician) called it "BX Cable", and it basically looked like very old 1/2" flexible conduit. He and I had the pleasure of re-wiring it from underneath, via her unfinished basement, along with adding a few receptables, basement light fixtures, fixing the doorbell circuit, etc. etc. etc. The panel was fortunately upgraded in the last decade, though our new work required several doublers.

 

So yea, houses, good times. I hope to buy my own next year :)

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I have Pushmatic in my house. I have thought about converting it myself but I am not an electrician. It works just fine at the moment although one breaker is touchy and and trips all the time. Fortunatly all it runs is the lamp and out let in my front ard so I don't worry too much about it.
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I had to replace a bunch of knob and tube when I moved in 3 years ago. Still have 3 lights powered by it, and it's probably going to stay like that for the long-term. Yay for 86 year old wiring!

 

But I find it curious that all of your appliances are dying a few days before the end of the world....

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I had to replace a bunch of knob and tube when I moved in 3 years ago. Still have 3 lights powered by it, and it's probably going to stay like that for the long-term. Yay for 86 year old wiring!

 

But I find it curious that all of your appliances are dying a few days before the end of the world....

 

http://www.renovation-headquarters.com/images2/electrical%20fire%20involving%20knob%20and%20tube%20wiring.jpg

 

That stuff looks scary as hell. I can see why people would want to get away from it. Must have been the absolute original way houses were wired.

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That stuff looks scary as hell. I can see why people would want to get away from it. Must have been the absolute original way houses were wired.

 

Regular insulated wire puts all the wires right next to each other. If the insulation were to ever fail, you'd have lots of arcing. Knob and tube puts inches between all the wires, so in one respect, it's actually safer. Incidentally, I've seen really old wiring that's just exposed aluminum wire, no insulation, with about a foot separating everything. Apparently insulated wire was a novel idea.

 

The real problem is the way houses were wired back then. You might run the neutral along a center column of the house (that's how mine was done) to the 2nd floor, then run a hot wire all along the exterior walls. Then you can tap into the neutral wherever you want to complete a circuit. Essentially, the entire house would be 1 circuit, which is fine when the only electronics that have been invented are low-watt light bulbs and low-power radios.

 

As demands increased, though, it was very easy to overload the rating on the wires. Also, like in my house, you can run modern wiring off an old K&T junction box. My kitchen lights were all "modern" wiring when I moved in, but we found out shortly thereafter that it was actually connected via some old K&T to the electrical box. Scary. At least the GFCI outlets was on a dedicated circuit.

 

But that's not really the wires' fault, it's the fault of the previous owner who didn't want to pay to do things right. We ended up ripping out about 95% of the K&T. The remaining circuit only powers 3 lights like I said, and replacing that wiring would mean ripping out massive amounts of plaster walls. 3 electricians told me to leave it be, so I did. At this point, the wiring is pretty well under-loaded so it shouldn't be an issue.

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