Starting the electric pull into my Mom's office...

[K Frame]

I'm putting a new electric feed into Mom's office to handle the AC. The wiring that is here is vintage 1950s (some of it maybe the original knob and tube feeds, I'm not sure).

It's fairly straight forward and easy, but it's so hot in here right now I can only work for a few minutes at a time before my glasses fill up with sweat and I have to take a break.

At least I got the AC in the living room window (it's a beast to maneuver) and I have a new AC in the kitchen window, so the downstairs is fairly cool.

[Azrael256]

Mike, remember that you can test for voltage by touching the wires to your tongue.

Standing in water when you do it makes it work better.

 

[Manedwolf]

I thought that was more the style of the 1930's, and the 1950's was just aluminum wiring? (which fell out of use near instantly after the Beverly Hills Supper Club.)

[K Frame]

I thought that was more the style of the 1930's, and the 1950's was just aluminum wiring? (which fell out of use near instantly after the Beverly Hills Supper Club.)

No, and no.

Knob and tube wiring was still in use as late as the 1960s by some old liners.

Aluminum wiring didn't start coming into vogue until the 1960s when there were dramatic spikes in the price of copper.

Aluminum as wiring has been used for decades, but normally on large-scale applications: service feeders, transmission lines, etc.

This house was built in 1903 and had electrical service from the start.

My Grandparents bought the house in 1943, and in the early 1950s my Father and Grandfather rewired most of it with what is probably the first generation of "romex" type cable. At that time it was cloth wrapped wires in a cloth wrapped bundle and impregnated with a waterproofing agent.

Plastic sheathed Romex type cable didn't come into general use until the late 1950s early 1960s. There's a lot of that in this house, as well.

All that said, things are going well. I've got my pull points through the wall in the kitchen to the basement. Right now I'm deciding where I'm going to punch through the floor in Mom's office.

I'm going to feed the wire down through the floor (using a heavy duty PVC box and conduit) and through the old ceiling in the kitchen. From there I'll run it between the old plaster ceiling and the new drop ceiling to the hole I've drilled in the wall and pull it into the basement.

Getting it from that point to the box is going to be a gold plated pain in the butt, as there is a LOT of wiring running through the joists.

Drilling the joists is going to be another wonderful experience. They're all American chestnut, which is a horrendous pain in the ass to drill. If things go well I should be finished sometime tomorrow, at which time I'll get the AC in the window and get this room cooled off. It's ghastly in here as I'm typing this.

[RocketMan]

Mike, remember that you can test for voltage by touching the wires to your tongue.

Standing in water when you do it makes it work better.

 

Azreal256, they don't do the standing-in-water bit anymore.  The fluoridation used in some places can make it hard to determine an accurate voltage.

[K Frame]

Well.

That was special.

It took me nearly 4 hours to pull the wire up about 12 vertical feet. The damned wire kept getting stuck on the plaster keys in the wall pocket. But, I finally got it pulled and the one end is in the basement and the other end is in Mom's office.

Tomorrow I'm going to mount the box, route the wire to the electrical panel, and put it into service. The final bit of fun will be lugging the new air conditioner into the house. Fortunately, this house has an elevator that I can use to get it upstairs.

[AZRedhawk44]

Fortunately, this house has an elevator that I can use to get it upstairs.

That's unique.  Never seen a single family residence with an elevator in it.

[Balog]

Generally indicates a disabled person. Never seen one in person, but I've heard of them.

Unless he's referring to a dumb waiter as an elevator.

[Hawkmoon]

Aluminum wiring didn't start coming into vogue until the 1960s when there were dramatic spikes in the price of copper.

Nope.

My uncle's house, built in 1948, was wired with aluminum. The country still hadn't gotten caught up with copper after all the usage during WW2. Copper wire was available, but MUCH more expensive.

By 1950, when my parents built a house with the same contractor, copper was affordable again and that's what our house had.

[The Annoyed Man]

Mike, remember that you can test for voltage by touching the wires to your tongue.

Standing in water when you do it makes it work better.

I'm going to go try that right now.

[K Frame]

Hawk,

Yes, aluminum was used right after World War II, but notice I said coming into vogue, as in commonly used. It took awhile to catch on, and it wasn't until the dramatic price spikes of the early to mid 1960s that it started gaining wide usage. Then its use in residential applications started dropping off because of all of the problems with proper connections.

I've always called it an elevator, because it has an electric motor and cable drive, but it's actually made by the Inclinator Company. It was installed in what used to be the maid's/cook's service staircase from the kitchen to the second floor. The maid's quarters were on the third floor. Grandma and Grandpa had a live-in housekeeper/cook/nanny from 1944 until the early 1960s.

Grandpa had the inclinator installed in the 1950s when his Mother was living with them, and she was pretty badly eaten with arthritis. Then my Grandma's mother lived with them, then Grandma and Grandpa used it, and it again came in handy when Dad was still living, and Mom still uses it. It's VERY useful for moving heavy things up and down the stairs.

[Manedwolf]

I've always called it an elevator, because it has an electric motor and cable drive, but it's actually made by the Inclinator Company. It was installed in what used to be the maid's/cook's service staircase from the kitchen to the second floor. The maid's quarters were on the third floor. Grandma and Grandpa had a live-in housekeeper/cook/nanny from 1944 until the early 1960s.

How big is this house?!

[K Frame]

It's a big house.

Very formal when it was built.

The best feature is that every bit of woodwork in the front, formal half of the house is American clear chestnut with the original finish.

The rear part of the house (kitchen, bathroom, and Mom's office) may have chestnut woodwork, but it's probably pine. It's all painted.

This is a picture from the 1940s (no, that's not me in front of it)




And this is a picture from the mid 1980s.




Mom and Dad were in the process of restoring the exterior to a more period look when Dad died.

[roo_ster]

That is a beautiful house.

[K Frame]

SUCCESS!

I just finished installing the air conditioner. It's going to take awhile for it to make a difference in here, but man, it's nice to read the volt meter and see it register 120 solid volts and listen to the AC hum.

That was one hell of a job.

Now I'm off for a shower. I'm filthy.

[Nick1911]

No broken bones, body bags, or smoking things that shouldn't be smoking?

I'd say you did good.  Time to crack a beer open and relax!

[Manedwolf]

That's a serious chimney on that thing.

Old houses are interesting. One that belongs to someone I know, that was built in 1894, we found the base of a second chimney stack in the crawlspace under the kitchen, apparently where the original cooking hearth or wood stove was.

A lot of pipes that go nowhere, too!

[K Frame]

Yeah, that is a nifty chimney. It's a bear finding anyone to work on it...

FANTASTIC draft on it, though.

House started out with a coal boiler and a coal fireplace in what was the formal dining room, but which my family has used as the living room for decades.

This is the fireplace...



My grandparents occasionally burned wood in it, even though it's a coal grate, but it's not been usable for 20+ years. There's apparently a brick or something down on the damper and it won't open. The bottom riddler grate is also broken.

[Manedwolf]

I always thought that sort of grate was a pain in the ass to rake clinkers out or or something anyway?

At least they didn't have the Victorian sort of gas grates that sometimes exploded. Old tech is fun to read about in an "Oh god!" way, things like coalgas piped into houses with carbon monoxide as one of its components, and no shutoff if a gaslamp went out.

Excerpt from an old article of the time I had found:

About an hour after that (10 oclock) the butler was alone in the room, when a violent explosion took place, lifting the stove off the ground, breaking a carved marble mantelpiece into three pieces, the centre falling upon the stove, and a cloud of smoke, or gas rising up before the looking glass (a very large one), so as to almost hide it from view.

[K Frame]

Gas service was pulled out of the house long ago.

Cleaning out the basement a couple of years ago I found the old main entry pipe.

It's so nice to be sitting at the computer and not be sweating rivers.


As for the fireplace, apparently it was common to burn lignite in fireplaces like that, not hard or even soft coal. That made the clinkers less likely to fuse to the grate bars.

[Balog]

If you're like me and have no idea what "lignite" is......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignite