pckcchief
Premium
join:2000-11-21
Ponca City, OK
clubs:
 ·PHONE POWER
| Old House and wall outlets
I have a old house that has plaster and wood lath walls. The wiring in the house is in fairly good shape, has a Square D breaker box and breakers. The house has some 3 prong outlets and some 2 prong outlets. Here is the issue. The house does not have enough outlets in it. I have 1 room with NO outlets, and one room with 1 outlet. I need like 2 outlets in the room with none and at least 1 more in the room with 1 outlet. My question is this: is there any way a electrician could add more outlets on new circuit breakers for me without having to tear these walls all apart?
Thanks,
Mike |
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Rifleman
Premium
join:2004-02-09
p1a
clubs:
 ·Nexicom
| It depends on which floor the rooms are on. If you can acess the wall from the basement they shouldn't be too hard to get in. If upstairs it is the same thing----if the electrician can get power from a junction box in the attic and manage to fish the wire down the wall there should be no damage. This also depend on how the original circuits are loaded. Hopefully he can add a few without overloading the ciruits but in older homes that is rarely the case. |
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bobrk
You kids get offa my lawn
Premium
join:2000-02-02
San Jose, CA | reply to pckcchief
You might also have the electrician check the three prong outlets and make sure they're really grounded. |
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Greg_Z
Premium
join:2001-08-08
Springfield, IL
 ·Comcast
| He should be able to check with one of these »www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=p···age=none
This is a even better buy, and you get 3 pieces of test equipment for the price of one »www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=p···age=none |
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bobrk
You kids get offa my lawn
Premium
join:2000-02-02
San Jose, CA
·SONIC.NET
| Oooo, my wife needs to get me that for xmas. 
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STFU | RTFM | Iraq Coalition Deaths | bobrk |
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Greg_Z
Premium
join:2001-08-08
Springfield, IL
1 edit | I have the no touch, and love it. The only one I do not have, is the outlet tester.
My wish list, is a new compressor, and a table saw. The wife is making choose one or the other, but really I need both. |
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bobrk
You kids get offa my lawn
Premium
join:2000-02-02
San Jose, CA | I'm getting a roof. Guys are putting it up now. |
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Greg_Z
Premium
join:2001-08-08
Springfield, IL
·Comcast
1 edit | I got mine in September, and have not had problems since. I made sure that my roofers had a chest full of Gatoraide & water, and the last day, due to it took longer then what we expected, fed them dinner.
Sorry to the OP, it is just that guys get sidetracked, when someone mentions toys. |
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bobrk
You kids get offa my lawn
Premium
join:2000-02-02
San Jose, CA | I think my roofers are loving this high 30's, low 50's weather. At least the rain isn't coming until Monday. |
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chmod
Premium
join:2000-12-12
Joliet, IL
clubs:
1 edit | reply to Greg_Z
said by Greg_Z  :I have the no touch, and love it. The only one I do not have, is the outlet tester. My wish list, is a new compressor, and a table saw. The wife is making choose one or the other, but really I need both. Get the Dewalt table saw, I think its $299 at HD now. Nice fence, nice saw. I made 3/8 transitions out of 3/4 because the flooring sales people are genious. Its not cabinet grade but a damn nice saw.
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Some people are like Slinkies. Not really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs. |
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whizkid3
Premium,MVM
join:2002-02-21
Queens, NY
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
| reply to pckcchief
OK, children; We know you're excited. Santa is coming, so now back to the topic...
How many floors does the house have?
Which floors are the rooms in?
Do you have an attic?
a basement?
Rifleman pretty much has it right on the money. THe electrician can also split the circuits (if all of the receptacles are on one or two circuits), and then add additional outlets off of each one. It also depends on whether you have spare breakers or breaker positions in the panel.
You can typically have eight receptacles on a 15A circuit, and 10 on a 20A circuit (provided no other devices are on these circuits, like lighting for example). |
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bkjohnson
Premium
join:2002-05-22
Birmingham, AL
| reply to pckcchief
The house that I grew up in had plaster and lath walls which had at least 4" baseboards. It was an old 2 wire system, and the outlets were mounted horizontally in the baseboards. I wonder if there's any advantage to mounting outlets in the baseboards when there is plaster and lath construction and if it's even permissible to do so with current codes. |
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bobrk
You kids get offa my lawn
Premium
join:2000-02-02
San Jose, CA | I have exactly the same kind of house now, and that's the only way I would have it done. |
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garys_2k
join:2004-05-07
Farmington, MI | Don't depend on a simple outlet tester to tell if a plug is properly grounded. They'll show "all clear" even if the installer jumped the ground to the neutral. |
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pckcchief
Premium
join:2000-11-21
Ponca City, OK
clubs:
·PHONE POWER
| reply to pckcchief
Ok, some more info on the house:
1: The house is a single story house, all rooms on ground level.
2: The house does have a Attic, but has a VERY small opening that I can not fit through to get in the Attic, also I fight with having mice issues in the Attic over our bedroom (where the opening to the Attic is) every year.
3: The house does not have a basement, but does have a crawl space that has good room under most of the house, pluming is ran under the house. I know some wiring for one 220V outlet for the drier is ran under the house.
4: It would be great if some of the outlets that are on the same circuit could be split up as I have 2.5 rooms on one circuit breaker right now.
5: All the outlets are in the wall except for one 220V for the drier that comes up from the floor, none of them are in the baseboard.
6: I will get a tester and check for ground on all the outlets and also have the electrician check that out.
Thanks,
Mike |
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Jan Janowski
join:2000-06-18
Skokie, IL | reply to pckcchief
Radio Shack sells a 3 wire plug tester that works very good, and is not fooled by any wiring errors.
--
Looking for 1939 Indian Motocycle |
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whizkid3
Premium,MVM
join:2002-02-21
Queens, NY
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
| reply to pckcchief
So, the electrician will have to work in the crawl space to add new receptacles and circuits; and split circuits that you would like split. The contractor will (typically) not have to rip open any walls to do so, except to cut openings where you would like the receptacles. I suggest that you ask the electrician to bring the house up to code with regard to quantity and wall spacing of receptacles in every room; as well as replace any two-prong receptacles, and correction to any improperly wired 3-prong receptacles.
Regarding the 3-prong receptacle testers, they work great, and detect many errors, but not all. They will not detect the one error that garys_2K mentioned (neutral shorted to ground at the receptacle). They will only detect mis-wires and ungrounded receptacles. They will not detect shoddy wiring to the receptacles. If you are going all the way, I suggest that in addition to replacing the 2-prong receptacles, you also ask the electrician to open all 3-prong receptacles and inspect them for improper and shoddy wiring. |
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stromi
join:2000-06-11
Englishtown, NJ
clubs:
| Following up on this message, I tested one of the grounded outlets I have in the same room as an ungrounded outlet. Turns out its not grounded.
Wiring in is BX, 2 conductor. Short of a new pull from the breaker box, is there another method of fixing this? Can I tie the outlet ground screw to the box (which is presumably grounded to the bx sheath) |
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whizkid3
Premium,MVM
join:2002-02-21
Queens, NY
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
| said by stromi :Wiring in is BX, 2 conductor. Short of a new pull from the breaker box, is there another method of fixing this? Can I tie the outlet ground screw to the box (which is presumably grounded to the bx sheath) That is how it is done. Assuming the armored cable is connected to the box using the proper connector, then there are a few ways to go about it.
I recommend using (green) ground screws threaded into the pre-threaded hole in the box that is made for this. (This also assumes the box has a pre-threaded hole. Older ones didn't.) Then, you can buy pre-terminated (green) grounding pigtails, that have a lug on one end and a bare wire on the other. Or you can cut up a length of #14 green THHN wire and use it. Make sure to wrap the wire around the screws in a clockwise fashion, as you are facing the screw, and torque them down tight.
You can also use a grounding clip, which may be necessary if there are no pre-threaded holes in the box. The clip slips over the edge of the box, and has a pigtail wire that gets attached to the grounding screw on the receptacle.
The third, and by far easiest, is to use a self-grounding receptacle. There is no ground wire. One of the screws that holds the receptacle in the box has a captive clip that provides the grounding. This is what is normally done on commercial jobs where armored cable is being used. It also makes the job fast (with new receptacle installations), and less expensive due to the reduction in labor. The receptacles however, are not the cheap 59 cent ones. They will cost a few bucks each. |
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hurfy
Premium
join:2002-08-06
Spokane, WA
| reply to pckcchief
Well, on our house the electrician added some tacky external outlets and wiring. 90% of it is behind furniture, etc so not as bad as we thought. The main room that needed more could not have been done in wall anyway without getting totally absurd, no crawl space and a solid brick wall 
Not the prettiest but at least i have some real power circuits to work with and it was pretty cheap that way. Same intial setup with lathe and plaster and multiple rooms per 2-wire circuit, etc. Most old plugs were in the floor! Disconnected most of the old stuff. |
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