Hello all, first post here. No serious problems yet but I wanted to introduce myself and explain some of the fun points. I've been in my 2 family house with my girlfriend now for about 60 days. It's early 1900-1920's with every kind of wiring you can think of. It's a hodge podge of defunct/disconnected Knob and Tube, Rotting BX, clothe wrapped wire, ect. ect.
The downstairs has been updated pretty well in the kitchen and bathroom area's, the only real issue down there is the fact that most of the outlets in the living areas are still 2 prong, I will be wanting to run new Romex down into the basement from those drops and have an electrician finish up at the panel, at least that's what I'm thinking.
This all started because I wanted to swap fans out of the units. I wanted the nicer fan and light combo in MY kitchen, not the rental apartment (
). In my kitchen, the fan box is a complete POS, but it' went together alright and the insulation on the clothe fabric was in decent condition (and it's a finished flooring above. I wont be able to deal with replacing it at this time).
In the rental kitchen upstairs? Eh, not so much. I cracked that baby open and found 8 different lines coming into this box. All clothe wiring, most of it showing bare wire. No bushings at the box inlets, tapped together half ass, and sparked like a mother when we turned the breaker back on to check on some things with the multimeter.
Luckily for me, we have half a "finished" attic, with a walk in section of bare lumber and blown in cellulose. So, my father and I went in there yesterday and started moving the cellulose around. I ended up finding what I believe to be an unboxed splice that is the feed from the 1st level on this circuit (I couldn't believe it when I saw that). I've also got atleast 2 junction boxes with no covers that were buried in insulation.
Needless to say, that breakers off, and it's going to stay off until I get those boxes replaced at the very least.
Anyways, back to the fan.
I tore the box out (along with a sizable piece of plaster) and followed the 4 BX cables back out. Here's the combo coming out of the ceiling fan box;
1 Pull Chain Light in Pantry, then fed to 2 prong outlet (unknown after that)
1 Pull Chain Light in Second Bedroom (No box). Terminates there
1 Single Pole Switch for the fan/light combo
1 Pull Chain Light in a hallway (feeds to an an outlet, 2 single poles and 2 light fixtures in the stairway, not dealing with this part for now).
That's all being fed from the spliced and caped set of wires without the box.
Here's my thing. I am by no means an expert, but I have excellent access and all of these are straight drops from the attic with no obstructions, I can snake new 12/3 very easily to each of these fixtures and pull all the old BX out (which will make me feel a lot better).
Rather then having them all coming out of that fan box, I'd like to install a junction box at the feed wires and send direct lines to the closet and pantry lights. (Or, should I leave room for expansion at the feed box, and pull the 2 lights out of a separate box? I just thought of that now).
That way I only have to deal with the hallway stuff and single pole switch at the fan junction. The other thing is that I do want to eventually ground all this properly. I'm not quite sure how I need to handle that yet.
Sorry for the long post and lack of technical terms. I'm not easily intimidated (could be considered a serious flaw when it comes to electricity probably, lol) but this little start seems to be pretty straight forward. I just want to make sure everything is done right, we get rid of the fire hazard, and I want to be as efficient as possible. Any hints, tips, tricks, heckling would be great.
I'll be here in my office researching electrical code and simple circuits all day.
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