Electrified chicken wire in plaster! :shocking:

[wyliesdiesels]

I'm curious if any of the other sparkies on this board have seen an old house(K+T era) where the chicken wire in the plaster is electrified.

I discovered this by accident when I went to ground some of the outlets in the house- got fireworks until the breaker tripped. Its isolated to a K+T circuit that feeds the original(1932) outlet locations(the other K+T circuit feeds the lights) and the rest of the circuits in the house are Romex. The plenum on the central furnace is also electrified(I got shocked closing one of the dampers on it)!

I've checked the K+T wire in most of the j. boxes with no luck. As an electrician, I know what to look for(insulation missing and bare wire touching either the metal j. box or chicken wire) but I just can't seem to find it, so I thought I would ask on here to see if anyone else has run into this situation before!

 

[goneflyin2002]

It's gotta be rotten insulation on the feeds going into a box, and the chicken wire is contacting the live box...?

 

[theoldwizard1]

My daughter's house was built right after WWII and used 2 wire romex. The Kitchen and bathroom outlets were "grounded" by a bare wire that daisy chained between the electrical boxes and then attached to a water pipe. Of course the water pipe was cut off when new plumbing was installed in the 1970s !

 

[snyder]

Maybe PO used a 4 inch nail to hang a picture on the wall.

 

[rlev11]

Back in the late 80's we were fixing up my grandparents house after they passed on to sell and we found the drop ceiling grid in the living room was hot whenever the overhead light was on. Whoever installed it, back I guess in the sixties, nicked a wire when they nailed up the outer channel to the wall.

 

[Gary S]

Back in the late 80's we were fixing up my grandparents house after they passed on to sell and we found the drop ceiling grid in the living room was hot whenever the overhead light was on. Whoever installed it, back I guess in the sixties, nicked a wire when they nailed up the outer channel to the wall.

I found the same thing in my basement a few years ago. Somewhere in the suspended ceiling installation, they drove a nail into a hot wire and I had power on the ceiling grid. I wasn't about to remove the entire ceiling to find that nail, so instead, I replaced the bad circuit with a new one.

If I had been creative, I might have been able to keep it powered and use it as track lighting, but I didn't want to die yet.