Back story, we’re remodeling the bathroom. After the demo crew tore out the walls, removed the tub, toilet, sink, and floor, we’re down to bare studs and plywood subfloor. We have found some electrical ugly, which will be fixed before the walls are closed up again.
Longer version, with pictures…
Here’s the layout, not to scale:
This is an old house, it probably only had three or four circuits when originally wired, with a fuse panel and romex. Codes have changed since 1950, and there have been many alterations. An addition was put on the back in the 1970s. The fuse panel is gone, and Square D breaker panel is installed now.
The circuit in question comes from the panel and enters this two gang box in the bathroom from below.
That’s the yellow modern romex wire. In this little box was a double switch, one for the lights, one for the exhaust fan. The circuit branches out from this box, so there’s a lot going on here.
Going up to the attic, there is an old black romex, that feeds that feeds the switch and ceiling light in the hallway.
There is also a slightly newer silver/grey romex that goes to the exhaust fan. This is currently disconnected and showing bare wires hanging out, because it wasn’t “in” the box, it was wrapped around the outside of the box and held in place by the switch mounting screws.
Going up and to the left, black romex (top) goes to the lamp sconces. Yes, that’s ugly and wrong as shown.
Finally, up and to the left, black romex (bottom) goes in to the corner pocket and feeds the light switch and ceiling lights in the bedroom. From there, it then goes along the wall, behind the stack, to a burried j box in the corner
That j box has a cut off wire about 9” long that used to go in to the wall. It probably fed something that was cut off when they built the addition. Since the other end was locked in to this j box, they just taped the ends and left it. That’s coming out, and I’m planning to eliminate the j box as well.
Coming out of the j box, the circuit runs under the window and around the corner to an outlet box.
This was all behind the bathtub. The outlet box branches out some more. This outlet is in my office.
Coming out the bottom, running up behind the HVAC duct, protected by some 1970s duct tape, and heading left in to the wall, this feeds the light switch and ceiling light in my office.
Coming out the top, heading right, the (removed and capped off with yellow wire nuts) romex is the one I want to abandon.
When we first moved in, I didn’t trust my expensive computers to old ungrounded two-wire outlets and two-to-three prong adapters. I cut a two gang hole and ran a dedicated 15A circuit from the panel. That’s in the corner, under my desk, next to the box with the Ethernet plugs in it here.
To the left of that, the only other outlet box in the room is shown. This one is original.
Opening these two up, I have my new white romex feeding the source side of the GFCI outlet. And I have old black romex on the load side, feeding that other outlet.
If you’ve read this far… I’m 95% sure that the wire I want to abandon is cut somewhere around that wall corner. It used to run from one outlet in my office to the other outlet, but I cut it. I just have no memory of cutting it or connecting it to the GFCI.
Without further cutting in to plaster walls, a job I do not want to do, I can’t find the far end of this branch of romex. I have disconnected the source end in the bathroom wall, confirmed that everything still works ok, so it’s definitely not in use. A non contact tester confirms that it’s not hot from some other connection that I don’t know about. And given the way everything is daisy chained, there wouldn’t be anything else for this wire to go to.
This is a long way around asking what to do with the now abandoned and disconnected wire in the wall. Both ends are disconnected. It’s not hot. Should anything be done with it beyond wire nuts and tape?
Ideally, I’d pull it out, but some investigatory pulling on it says that it’s not going to budge.
