Prior owner's hack wiring.....

[jtbinvalrico]

Seems every time I open one of these up in my 20 year old house, I see this kind of ****. I really have no idea what the previous handy-guy thought he was doing.....Yeah. That's exactly how it was in the box, exposed and hot:

Then there's the ground wire that was cannibalized off of a neighboring circuit to run power to the pond pump outside......And half the faucets in the house have the hot/cold reversed.....

I'm proud to say that I've left these things in a far better and code-compliant way than I found them......I would be embarrassed to know that another home-owner might find my work in twenty years and think the work I did was ****.

 

[ddawg16]

I couldn't live with the boxes looking like that...

I must be sick....I would have vacuumed out all of the boxes, cleaned off all the paint and mud on the wires....and installed pig tails.....

 

[Will67]

The home owner before me added on a room. It has a three way switch for lighting. One problem the fool changed the traveler wire color some where in the celing. Took me a while to figure this out when I added some outside lighting. To make it pretty I added a five gang box to house the three exising switches and the two I added.

The traveler wire for the three way switch started out red then was changed in ceiling to black.

 

[jtbinvalrico]

.....oh yeah. None of the rules apply for whatever they did with the wiring here. Nothing's color coded, it's all jumbled ****.....pig tails?....not these guys.

Any quick job like a switch replacement or small addition usually ends up becoming a multi-hour job of ripping out the old box or starting all over from the main panel.

Did I forget to mention that I found popsicle sticks used inside one of these boxes?.....Don't ask

 

[gbcamp72]

I hear you loud and clear. I moved into my new home and the 30x50 metal building had romex. Wires ended with wire nuts and electrician tape. Holes through the siding to outside fixtures without boxes just wire nuts and tape hanging in the breeze on the exterior. The shop had one 50 amp 120volt line to an RV connector. No grounding no bonding of the metal frame to a ground rod. There were four outlets and one you had to have the overhead lights on to plug anything in. Funny thing is the inspector when we bought it wrote the PO for not using GFI’s and the added those but said nothing about the wrong wires, not terminated in junction boxes, and improper grounding. I ripped it all out three weeks ago and next weekend I’ll begin with a 240 service new panel and proper grounding. It will take some time but it’s going to be done right. Undoing before you can do it right is time consuming and disheartening. I’m glad I’m starting over fresh on my project. Good luck correcting the surprises you find.

 

[Torque1st]

What a mess. Cleaning it up as you go is just one of the 'joys' of home ownership. Hopefully you find them before they burn the place down.

 

[Gary S]

And half the faucets in the house have the hot/cold reversed......

Same in my house. When I bought it, 2 of the faucets were reversed. One has been replaced and now is correct. The other one is the shower where the plumbing is locked inside a wall. That one gets fixed when it gets replaced the next time and the wall gets ripped out.
What kind of fool puts plumbing in a wall with no access? We all know that plumbing requires lots of maintenance.

 

[Torque1st]

What kind of fool puts plumbing in a wall with no access? We all know that plumbing requires lots of maintenance.

That seems to be a common problem. Just add access panels whenever possible. Don't even get me started on plumbing buried in an exterior wall...

 

[Milton Shaw]

I was in a new house(bank repo) repairing a refig, and noticed big holes in walls down the hall and bathrooms with mirror broke and vanity torn off wall. The original "plumber" reversed the hot and cold when he went by the utility room in the middle of the house. Comode's flushing with hot water etc. Instead of fixing it at utility room where he messed it up he tore all the walls out of the house. The bank representative could not figure out why a plumber would do it that way instead of fixing it one place. I showed him why, two empty six packs in the garbage can. Sober makes a big difference in plumbing and electrical work.

 

[slickgt1]

Yea my house is over 70yo. I had all that and then some. The wires, and junction boxes hidden all over the place. Wire colors switched everywhere. I tore out my second floor, and built everything new. I didn't do that to the tenants appt and the hallway downstairs. So I decided to put in a new light fixture. Turned on the lights, killed the breaker, the lights go off. So far so good. I open up the box, holy ****, it is packed. I start taking **** out, trying to figure out what the hell is going on, wires are stiff as **** too, zap. I get 110v going through me, WTF. I go check the breaker nothing else blew. WTFx2. Go back test all the wires, all are cold now. WTFx3. Tenants run out, no light in half their apt. WTFx4. Go check their panel, blown breaker. WTFx5. Yea that light fixture was a junction box for their lights. WTFx6. Two separate panels feed into one box. WTFWTFWTFWTF. I get electrocuted because some ***** wanted to save what, a box?

Plumbing was beyond messed up. You know when you buy a house, you don't really stick your hand in the toilet to check if the water is cold or hot. Yea, 2 out 4 bathrooms were flushing with hot water. Plumbing behind walls with tile. Fixed that too.

When I demo'd my appt. I ordered a 40yd container. I figured I would need a 40 and a 20. I started taking down the ceiling, only to find another ceiling with exposed wires above. Ok, whatever. Start ripping out that ceiling, holy ****, another ceiling, this one with fire damage from the fixtures, or at least where they were supposed to be. So I had 3 ceilings, but at least my ceilings are over 10' now. Was about 8'. I now have 8' doors.

When I got to the floors. 2 rooms were carpeted. I pulled up the carpet only to discover, linoleum. Started lifting linoleum, found tile. Lifted tile, found hardwood. Hardwood rotten to ****. Channels cut into the hardwood and electrical ran in them. Not even Bx, just 14ga wires. Didn't even realize they were there. We started using picks to get the floor up all the way from the bottom until we saw sparks. Blew another breaker for the tenants appt. We were working in my apt. Tell me which M-friken idiot thought this was fine.

My demo was 3, 40yd containers.

I can keep going.

If anyone looks at my garage renovation. Half the damn Bx hanging along the wall, yea I don't know where it goes. All disconnected from the panel, but I don't know why or where it is. Someday I will rip out the tenants apt, just because any little issue, turns out to be a big one.

The amount of empty liquor bottles I found in the walls, floors, UNDER THE TUB (holy **** under the tub must have been a trash bin) was ridiculous.

 

[Falcon67]

Our second bath fixtures back up to the kitchen. You'd have to rip the kitchen cabinets on the end apart to even get close to the back of the shower tub.

I've seen lots of homes go up around here, and I don't know how the electricians know what goes where. They wire it all out nice in the boxes, then call for inspect, then the texture and paint guys come through and fill the boxes with spatter, paint and ****. You can't tell wire color one in the boxes. Ours is the same way - have to chip off the texture to figure out what is what. Keeps the wire nuts in place though.

 

[VHF]

The other one is the shower where the plumbing is locked inside a wall. That one gets fixed when it gets replaced the next time and the wall gets ripped out.

With most single-handle shower valves the cartridge can be reversed to swap the hot and cold. With the water off (!) dissasemble enough to pull out the cartridge, rotate 180 degrees, and reinstall. If it is a name-brand such as Moen or Delta you should be able to find instructions on-line.

When we moved into our new house 3 years ago, both showers were backwards... I suspect the hot water was never tested before we moved in! (Plumber installs water heater, goes away, later the electrician wires it, goes away, nobody tests hot water to the fixtures!) I reversed the cartridges to fix both of them.

 

[1Garageman]

They wire it all out nice in the boxes, then call for inspect, then the texture and paint guys come through and fill the boxes with spatter, paint and ****. You can't tell wire color one in the boxes. Ours is the same way - have to chip off the texture to figure out what is what. Keeps the wire nuts in place though.

I am surprised that's not illegal; Is it?

 

[VWandDodge]

I've lived in my current house for the past 15 years and have found some neat wiring "tricks". I couldn't understand why I the ground in the kitchen lights kept biting me while I was removing a fixture. I noticed the same while working on a hall light. Not long after, I decided I was going to figure out why one outlet on the counter never worked, so I pulled it to discover some genius decided to wire the neutral to the tab below the hot wire Many people have asked if the tabs were broken, but they weren't. Once I moved the neutral to the correct spot, that outlet worked and the ground didn't bite me anymore.

 

[edeslaur]

When we added onto our last house, we found a few issues.

The wood stove chimney had insulation it it, which had fallen down against the triple-wall and was scorched in several places.

The 18" stem walls had no rebar in them. Just when I finished, because I was a bit out of shape, I plonked the jackhammer on the floor, where it punched right through.

The cement floor was no more than 1/4" thick in that spot. I kept going and ripped up more than 1/2 the floor. Looks like they ran out of concrete so they piled up the gravel.

We wanted to redo the ceiling in the downstairs with sound board, sound bars, and thicker SheetRock as we were turning it into a home theater and the bedrooms were right above it. I found 7 no-access junctions in the ceiling, one of them without a box, just taped up with electrical tape. It ran out to the barn.

The floor upstairs was not straight (sloped) and required some work to get it to line up with the new floor since we were installing red oak hardwood.

All in all, all those cut corners were quite impressive.

 

[madstat]

My house was built in 1920 and up until this week all of the second floor was on a single circuit of K&T. I decided I didn't like this and went up into the attic this week to run new romex. While in the attic I found previous owner had spliced into the K&T all kinds of places to run a new light here, outlet there... All open air connections wrapped in tape buried under rockwool insulation, what a mess. I'm sleeping better now that I have eliminated all that spaghetti up there. I do feel lucky though... the Hack wasn't an avid DIYer, most of my house is original, just the way I like it without Handyman after Handyman screwing things up.

 

[jerseywild]

I never claimed that I was an electrician, hey wait your in Michigan wrong state.

 

[housey]

I have a confession to make.. I am the son of one of these diy electrical hacks that we all despise.

A couple of months ago my old man decided to replace the kitchen lights with new LED ones. I offered to give him a hand, being an apprentice electrician but he insisted that he still knew more than I did about electrical work and had done wiring in all the houses we have lived in with no problems (this may affect you if you live in Sydney or Melbourne).

Anyway I watched him switch the lights off, climb up into the roof and just start going away at it without testing/checking, isolating the supply or notifying anyone that he was up there (could have been fun if mum/sister turned the lights on) before I insisted on doing the wiring and doing a proper job of it.

I found cables that had been left right ontop of the lights to burn, the rockwool insulation covering some lights, switching the active/neutral colours around and sometimes earth, insulation stripped back way too far with bare wires exposed, wire exposed without double insulation and finally he had stapled the cable right through the insulation onto the wooden beams. I ended up going through and replacing every bit of work he had done in that house to proper standards, and he has now been banished from doing any electrical work

 

[Lotek_Racing]

Sounds like my house!

Before I bought the place, I met the neighbours and chatted them up a bit to get the dirt on the house that the realtor wasn't telling me.

Nothing too bad but they all said what a nice reno job the owners had done.

Little did I know, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles did the reno work.

My favourite so far has been the plastic outlet box that was cut in half so that a metal medicine cabinet would fit right next to it on the opposite side of the wall.

It was safe though, there was four layers of painters tape separating the metal cabinet from the terminals on the light switch.

Shawn

 

[Will67]

I still have three mystery switches in my home that was built in 1955. I have since de-energized them but damn if I know what the were for. Also have two motion sensor lights that are hard-wired without anyway to switch em off except at panel.

 

[kenfath]

Originally Posted by Falcon67 View Post
"They wire it all out nice in the boxes, then call for inspect, then the texture and paint guys come through and fill the boxes with spatter, paint and ****. You can't tell wire color one in the boxes. Ours is the same way - have to chip off the texture to figure out what is what. Keeps the wire nuts in place though."

After the rough wiring is inspected and before taping, texturing and painting begins, stuff newspaper into the de-energized boxes. Boxes will remain nice and clean, and it was well worth the time it took to do it.