DIY Home Improvement Forum banner

Odd wiring at breaker box

Tags
break box
2K views 5 replies 5 participants last post by  dmxtothemax 
#1 ·
I picked up a very old house and have been doing some work on it. Mostly updated but some old stuff, even knob and tube left in there....

There is an old two wire entering the panel- its old and circuit goes into the floor boards and I cant find anything powered by it. In the box, one of the two wires is wire-nutted to an adjacent modern circuit's neutral wire (i.e that circuit's neutral is not connected to the ground/neutral bar). The other of the two goes directly to the neutral/ground bus. In other words, the two wire circuit does not appear to be connected to anything hot in the panel box, and just as odd one the modern and working circuits has its neutral wire nutted to this old two-wire circuit.

Any ideas what is going on here?

thanks
Jim
 
#5 ·
Working on old K&T wiring can be tricky, frustrating, and a PITA.

Some old houses I’ve been into in this area, had a common neutral, or 2 that did the entire house. Back when it was originally installed…1910’s, 20’s, they didn’t have a tenth of the load they have now. As years went by, and more electrical devices were used in the home, people added more outlets, etc. In the early days of this ‘upgrading’, people just kept tapping onto that common neutral without replacing it.

Sounds like someone may have ‘added’ more neutral to the house. Crazy, huh?
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top