AuthorI have 22 years experience as a handyman, and have worked under many licensed electricians, plumbers, and other tradesmen in that time. ArchivesCategories |
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The Electric Lawn Mower Has Arrived5/27/2022 When I was a kid, I was one of six, and our dad wasn't particularly mechanical. He said that he didn't like the idea of a gas powered lawn mower, because it was unsafe to have gasoline sitting around on the property, with six small kids. And that's valid enough. But... he probably also had no idea how to maintain one, or even get one started, bless his heart! So, for Dad, it was the electric mower all the way! In theory, they were just as effective. An electric motor has just as much power as an internal combustion engine, for something like mowing the grass... and there's no pollutive exhaust So why not? Well... back in the 1970s, the problem was... they required a two-hundred foot extension cord! So, for Dad, mowing the lawn required a lot of bobbing & weaving. Lots of tripping over the cord. The cord getting caught on stuff. Gathering up the slack. It dictated the path he could take. He had no freedom to roam, but had to stick to a very rigid, back to front routine. This was no way for a REAL man to live! And he was looked on with great pity by his more mechanically macho neighbors, who had the muscle and pure freedom of gas powered mowers. Sure, when they mowed their lawns, everybody in a five block radius could hear it, and smell the carbon monoxide fumes, but that was normal! -------------------------------- By the early 2000s, the first battery powered electric mowers hit the market. But they were a flop, because the battery itself... at least one with any hope of making it through a single lawn mow... was as expensive as a cheep gas mower! And those batteries could only get the lawn in one go, under ideal conditions. If the grass was extremely thick and wet... which it tends to be, early in the spring... then they'd die halfway through. Recharging took a day... and they were only good for so many recharges... meaning most were dead and useless by the end of a single summer. And so, it seemed that electric lawn mowers were just never going to be practical. -------------------------------- But twenty years later... I'm here to tell you that battery powered lawn mowers have arrived! And they're being produced by power tool companies, like DeWalt, Milwaukee, Makita, etc. Such companies have put a lot of R&D into battery tech over the past thirty years, and have all developed reliable, high density, higher voltage (20V 40V & 60V) batteries that can deliver a lot of power for extended periods, and can be fully recharged over and over for several years. But even with such high tech batteries, a practical lawn mower remained a big challenge... which was resolved by making the machine itself, smarter and more efficient... like any other modern power tool. The result is a mower that has sensors that will allow it to run at a low power setting, until it detects resistance from thicker and/or wetter grass, and only then, will it kick into a higher speed. As soon as it detects that the resistance has subsided, it goes back into the low power mode... thus conserving as much battery power as possible, while still getting the job done. The sensors will also shut the mower off the millisecond the blades hit a solid obstacle, like a large rock, or a tree stump... and also if it detects the mower is just getting bogged down with gooky grass glop. Giving you a chance to reposition, or clear it out, before restarting... with minimal to no damage. The blades are lighter weight than gas mower blades, which makes them easier to spin, and thus saves on battery life. Yet, the housings over the blades are aerodynamically designed to give those blades superior suction, meaning they can cut and mulch as efficiently as the heavier blades in bulkier gas mowers. The one drawback to such systems is that the thin blades can get bent more easily, if the impact with a rock or tree stump is too much, even for the kill sensors to mitigate. In that case, with a bent blade, the system is no longer aerodynamic, which means the whole mower will vibrate... kicking it into permanent high power mode, and the batteries die in half the time. But, because the blades are lighter, they're also cheaper to replace. On the order of 20.00. It's a fair trade off for the performance you get the other 99% of the time! -------------------------------- For a reasonably flat lawn, of less than half an acre... there is no longer a good reason to be using a gas powered mower! Battery mowers are not self propelled (at least not the cost efficient ones), but they're also much lighter weight, so, if you've got no steep hills to mow, they're perfectly fine. And in normal conditions, you should have no problem mowing the whole lawn on a single charge, with juice to spare. Yes, in early spring, an exceptionally thick and wet lawn could kill those batteries before you're done. But that's typically only the first two mows of the season. And the idea here is... because this mower is part of a line of other power tools that you probably own... you likely have a few more compatible batteries you can throw into that mower, to get the job done. But aside from those few extreme situations... which can be dealt with easily enough... modern electric mowers do every bit as good a job as gas mowers at mulching and mowing. And they do it a lot more quietly... with a lot less overall maintenance... a lot less expensively... and with zero air pollution! If you're worried about a carbon footprint for the electricity, you can put your battery chargers on a timer... that only kicks on after, say 1AM, and kicks off at 4AM... then you're only drawing off the grid at the most off-peak hours, when power is the cheapest, and power plant emissions are also the lowest. Three hours may not be enough time to fully charge a pair of typical 10 Amp Hour batteries in one go... but you've got a week. And over the course of two or three nights, they'll be back to 100% and ready for the next mow. -------------------------------- Especially now, when gasoline is up to $5.00 a gallon, it no longer makes sense to continue with a gas powered mower... if you've got a relatively flat lawn that's under half an acre. That's a lot of noise pollution, air pollution, hassle, and money to be spending, just to protect the image of your masculinity. The modern electric mower is around $300.00 including the machine, two 10AH batteries, and two chargers. A spare blade is about $20.00. And a timer for the chargers is about $10.00 And you can fold them up and stack them on their end, meaning they'll fit in even the smallest storage space! So, if you're in the market for a new push mower... I would highly recommend the one your power tool company of choice has put out there in the home improvement stores this summer. Their time has arrived! And I'm predicting that within ten years, there will be no more residential gas mowers. =================================== DISCLAIMER: information provided does not constitute professional advice. Pat's My Guy is not a licensed tradesman. Always research DIY projects before undertaking work, and take safety precautions while working.
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Suburban Biomes4/24/2022 ,2022 04 25
Since the early days of westward expansion, the way towns and cities have grown is by occupying lots that were previously farmland. That was true in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it's still true in the 21st. This is why brand new subdivisions are always devoid of trees. It began as acres of farm with a monoculture of some cash crop, like corn or soybeans... and then it was paved with streets, populated with houses, and all the new lawns are a single species of grass. But the first thing homeowners tend to do, is plant trees... to provide shade, and break up the monotony. And something happens over the timeline of several decades, which is hard for individuals to appreciate... especially if they've sold the house and moved on. Large trees work together to create new local biomes, that not only benefit themselves... but each other... and all kinds of other flora and fauna. If you've never heard of the, "wood-wide-web," look it up! But what's going on, under the soil is that the root systems of all the largest trees (called, mother trees) are sharing resources with one another, and with smaller trees via a network of symbiotic fungi. Rather than competing with one another for sunlight... which was the old school view of trees, they use their subterranean network to help out saplings that are growing in the shade. And they're even helping out the underground root systems of trees you've cut down... to send up new shoots out of the stump, and start over. Meanwhile, above the ground, trees obviously attract wildlife... from insects, to birds, and mammals, such as squirrels... who all help the new biome further thrive, by pollinating flowers, opening buds, and planting new seeds, either inadvertently (through pooping) or deliberately, like squirrels are fond of doing. And this is all very nice!.. life is thriving! The neighborhood is alive with birdsong, and amusing little creatures running around. But this is also why the idea of a, "perfect lawn," is such a folly. Perfect Lawn Culture, was born in the 1950s when the ubiquity of the car, and the rise of the middle class, lead to a huge boom in suburban development. But of course, back then... all suburbs were equally new, and equally devoid of any established biomes. They were all farmland last week. So now, they were all... mostly grass! What happens in a well developed suburban biome, is that large trees always create some amount of shade where the grass you started with, simply can't grow. There's just not enough sunlight. And when that original monoculture of grass begins to fade out in those spots, the habitat is taken over by other species of ground cover that can handle life in the shade. And there are also a lot of plant species such as dandelions, that simply flower before there IS too much shade, early in the spring, when the tree canopy lets through a lot more light. Many of the other so-called, wild flowers, we often see in the spring, such as blue bells, and stars of Bethlehem, which is also called, onion grass, employ this strategy of getting started early, before the season's shade is fully established. But almost all of the non-grass ground cover that finds its way into your yard, is not truly wild. Most of them are feral, meaning, they were introduced by the earliest settlers of your neighborhood, in their gardens. Most of these species are harmless, and if you're trying to eradicate them from your lawn, you're fighting a pointless, uphill battle. The one species I can think of that's truly detrimental is woodbine. A woody vine that can take over whole blocks, by sending down roots, and giving rise to more vines, in a nefarious network that can climb trees and strangle them... while also climbing up your foundation, getting behind the siding, and providing avenues for ants to find their way into your house. Woodbine is a sneaky plant. It's hard to see the woody vines twisting up around tree trunks. And elsewhere, underground, it will send up leafy shoots that tend to blend in with bushes and other foliage near the ground. Another species that's a pet peeve of mine, is wild rose bushes. They don't harm other plants, but they also never actually flower with roses. Instead, they just grow like random, thorny bramble... often near foundations, and fence lines... which can act as a strong deterrent from you being able to see, or manage other problems in those areas... because you don't want to tangle with them and start bleeding. And the last problem in suburban biomes that can become a HUGE hassle if you're not on top of things, is simply... out of control sapling growth!.. This latter issue is thanks to the fact that your neighborhood biome is so good at helping new saplings get planted, pollinated, and have access to the nutrients needed to grow. Any area that you're not paying attention to, is a great place for an unwanted sapling to take hold. And even if you do discover one and cut it down, the stump will still send out new shoots the next spring and try again!... and again... and again... For the above three problems; woodbine, thorny bramble, and unwanted saplings, the best solution is a chemical created by DOW, called Tordon RTU. It's used by professional landscapers, but it IS available on the market for you to buy. And it's very affordable. With Tordon, you simply need to apply a bit of the blue liquid to the fresh cut surface of whatever you've just cut down. If it's a tree, then cover the whole stump-top. If it's a bush, then you have to dab a bit on every small branch. If it's woodbine... you have to apply it to both sides of every single cut where you've found it surfacing out of the ground. But Tordon works it's way into the root system, and kills it from the inside... making sure the offending plant never comes back. There is, however a downside!.. and this is why it's important to stay on top of overgrowth. Because if you have to do extensive cutting all over the yard to get it all back, after years of neglect... that extensive amount of Tordon will find its way into the roots of the healthy trees that you want to stick around. It won't kill them, but it can make them ill, and you could watch your favorite tree start losing a lot of leaves over that first summer. But they'll rebound the next year and be fine. As for everything else... the lawnmower is your nice friend! Just remember that it's not normal, to have a monocultural lawn. Variation in ground cover is inevitable as different volunteers come in to specialize in different patches where normal grass can't hack it. From dandelions and creeping-Charlie, to clover, and so-called onion grass (stars of Bethlehem) and myriad other flowering and non flowering plants. But the lawn mower keeps them all down to the same height... and can even help spread seeds around to keep the diversity mixed up, so that no one species becomes too dominant in any one spot. The neighborhood biome is important to wildlife, and the environment... with plentiful large trees providing more oxygen, and moisture to the local troposphere. Allowing such biomes to thrive, brings urban and suburban areas far closer to the original conditions of the land, before it was cleared for farming, during that westward expansion of the 1800s, and 1900s. As I said, it's not identical to the original conditions, because so many plant and animal species are feral (including worms!) but it still makes for a thriving ecosystem that can survive in harmony with, and benefit human settlement. =================================== DISCLAIMER: information provided does not constitute professional advice. Pat's My Guy is not a licensed tradesman. Always research DIY projects before undertaking work, and take safety precautions while working.
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FLEX DRAINS4/8/2022 2022 04 08
It's April and an average spring rain moves through. The USGS reports that 0.5 inches of rain fell in your area, as the result. Your modest house has a roof 30 feet wide, by 50 feet long, or 150 square feet. The amount of rain water that your roof collected into it's gutters and drained off, was 467.25 gallons... enough to fill nine, fifty-gallon barrels. In 2021, the total rainfall in Chicagoland was 20.15 inches... meaning that your same 150 square foot roof funneled 18,800 gallons of water... somewhere on your property! But where? If your downspouts terminate right next to the house, then those eighteen-thousand gallons last year, and those 470 gallons yesterday, all went down into the soil right next to your foundation walls. And that's not good! Water... known as, "the universal solvent," because it's bi-polar molecular structure is so good at bonding to other molecules and pulling them apart... is GREAT at eating away concrete, limestone, and any other foundation materials. And that rain water isn't just eating away at the outside of your foundation, but, pooling underground as it may do for hours and days, and putting pressure on those walls... pushing in on them... which can cause cracks to form on the inside over time, as well. Lastly, water has the magical power to expand when it's frozen, meaning in late fall and early spring, any water freezing overnight, into those tiny underground cracks and grooves that it's eaten away from the foundation walls... can freeze there, expand, and make the cracks bigger! This is the same process that dug the Grand Canyon! Eventually, after enough of this pushing, eroding, and expanding, a crack is gonna make it all the way through, and start letting water into your basement or crawl space. And by that time... it's an existential threat to your home, and will be very costly to repair. ---///--- All new installs of aluminum gutter systems include four to six foot extensions off the ends of the downspouts, to move the water away from the foundation. However, those rigid extensions almost always vanish after a few years of being tripped over, stepped on, bumped by the lawn mower, and repeatedly falling off. People see them as a hassle and get rid of them, leaving the downspouts to dump thousands of gallons of water right outside the foundation walls. However, an inexpensive solution, is to use flex landscape drain tubing. The plastic tubing is lightweight, with ribs to make it flexible and expandable, yet sturdy. And it costs less than a dollar per foot. You can buy a 25 foot length of it for 20.00 on Amazon. Adapters, to connect the flex drains to your downspouts are about 7.00 a piece, and are made to fit all sizes and types of gutter drains. Once you've attached your flex drains, you'll probably want to trench them into the ground, so they're out of the way. I would recommend buying a 30.00 trenching shovel. It's a lot less hassle than renting a trenching machine, which can be expensive, difficult to locate (many stores don't even let you rent one unless you're a contractor), difficult to transport (requires a trailer), and cumbersome to operate. Trenching shovels don't require much muscle power. With a long, narrow blade that has a pointed tip, and a broad foot rest, all the work is done by your legs and the leverage of the long handle. Just stomp it down into the ground, pull back, and pop the dirt out! Start shallow, and trench a little deeper as you go, so that the flex line will have a slight downward slope as it lays along the bottom. Tree roots can be in the way, so you'll need a good pair of sheers, or a saws-all to cut them out, but doing so doesn't damage the tree any more than pruning it's above ground branches would. Where the flex drain terminates, dig out a larger area to put gravel below, around, and above the end of the drain. This will allow the water to drain faster, but prevent the end of the tube from clogging up. I personally don't recommend perforated tubes, because they just get roots growing up into them, which clogs them up and defeats the purpose. After you're done, bury the tube, and sprinkle grass seed over the trench. Cover the seed in a bit of soil to keep the birds from eating it, and water the area with a garden watering can a few times a week until the grass sprouts. The trenching job described above should only take an hour or two, per downspout. To do four downspouts, twenty feet per run, with four adapters, eight 40lb bags of gravel, and the trenching shovel, the project would run you about 385.00... with the majority of that cost being the gravel. If you've already got a suitable pile of old brick fragments, rocks, or other masonry debris to use instead, then the cost of the above job is only 143.00! Either way, the time and money spent could save you thousands of dollars down the road, and untold grief! Just always remember to call JULIE before digging, to find out where underground utility lines are located. =================================== DISCLAIMER: information provided does not constitute professional advice. Pat's My Guy is not a licensed tradesman. Always research DIY projects before undertaking work, and take safety precautions while working.
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Low Voltage Lighting4/6/2022 Whenever I'm walking the dog around the neighborhood, I'm always kinda sad to see all the solar garden lights people have in their front yards.
We've all been down that road... you walk into the garden section of a store in the spring, and there they are, on sale! And they seem like such a great idea!.. little self contained LED lamps with built-in solar panels and photo-sensing switches on the top, with a stake at the bottom. Five or ten bucks a pop! Put them anywhere, and forget about it! Hassle free garden lighting that powers itself, and turns itself on and off! Yay! Of course the main problem with them, especially here in the north, is that come fall and winter, the daylight hours are so short that the solar lights don't get enough juice. They either light up very dimly for an hour or two... or they just don't light up at all! And haven't you noticed that, the following spring and summer, they just never light up again? The reason for that is, the rechargeable batteries inside their housing. Solar calculators, for example, don't use batteries. They run directly off the energy hitting the solar panel at the time of use. But other solar devices, such as solar keyboards (never buy one!) and solar garden lights run off a battery that gets recharged by the solar panel. The problem is, if that battery ever drops down to zero percent charge... that's it! You're done! Even if the solar panel and the photo sensor are working great... which they usually are, because there's nothing in them to break... that battery will never charge again. Why? Because the signal that tells it to start charging, relies on... battery power! And since the days are so short in, say, November, and the nights are so long, what happens is, the battery only gets charged to about 30% on a November day, and then, after dark, drops completely to zero, LONG before the sun rises again the next morning. And that's the end of your solar garden light. Even if they had smart batteries (which they don't) that could shut off the power when they're down to 10%, so that they can still charge up the next day... it wouldn't help much, because the other thing batteries can't deal with, is extreme cold. And even in the mildest winters, there's always that one night, where it hits ten below zero... which is enough to give that little battery wings and a halo, and send it up to Heaven. At any rate, what always happens... and what makes me so sad... is that the solar garden lights, that no longer work, get forgotten about, and sit out by the front bushes for two more years, doing nothing, while their stakes slowly rise up out of the ground, and they start banking over at random angles... all covered in dust and dirt. And then, when they finally get thrown away... they're hazardous waste! Technically, you should never being throwing circuit boards or batteries in the garbage, much less hard plastic, but people throw all that in the garbage when they dispose of these solar lights... and then go back to the garden section of the store, and start the cycle of sadness all over again! ---///--- But, before you start tearing up, there is hope for your garden!.. Low voltage LED landscape lighting! The lights themselves are 9.00 to 12.00 a pop, but the investment is worth it because they'll last you five to ten years, giving off bright light all night long, all year round!.. and they're not much hassle to install. Low voltage means 9V, 12V, or, occasionally 14V. Plenty of voltage to light up an LED as bright as you like, but nowhere near enough to give you even a slight shock. At 3W to 10W per lamp, depending on the color and brightness, the difference to your electric bill will be on the order of a few pennies per month. The lights are wired together with low voltage landscape wire, that you simply bury a few inches under the soil. And If everything is close to the house, you could leave it sitting on the surface if you wanted. At every lamp, you simply cut and strip the wire, twist it together with the wires from the lamp, and use special gel-filled wire nuts to secure the connection. 100 feet of landscape wire will run you about 55.00, and a 50 pack of the wire nuts, which is more than you'll ever need, is 20.00. The wire nuts are filled with a hydro-phobic gel that stays pliable at low temperatures. And they have rubber grommets at their openings to further protect against snow, rain, bugs and moisture. All you need is a spot to run the wire into the house, which you likely already have at places where TV cable, or old telephone wire have been run in the past. If not, you can always drill a small hole in the frame of a basement window, and caulk it with all weather caulk or window glaze after the install. Inside the house, the wire hooks up to a small transformer box that plugs into an outlet, and voila! Higher end versions of these low voltage landscape lights will have their own photo sensors to turn themselves on and off with the setting and rising sun. But if you want to save a few bucks, you can buy lamps that don't have sensors, and simply plug the transformer into a plug-in timer at the outlet, and set that timer to turn on at, say 4:30PM, and off at 7:30AM... if you never want to hassle with changing it as the seasons change. Another option is to install one free-standing photo sensor somewhere outside, that's wired into the system just after the transformer... to keep your lights in step with the rising and setting sun. That solution would be cheaper than buying the lights with their own sensors built in, but it does require a slight bit more wiring savvy, and you do have to mount that photo sensor outside somewhere. ---///--- A system with twelve lamps, using 100 feet of wire, with the wire nuts, transformer, and a plug-in timer, will run you about 230.00. But once you've made that investment, all you'll ever need to replace again are the lamps themselves, every three to seven years as they fail... at ten bucks a pop... roughly the same price as the solar lights. Money well spent, to escape the cycle of disappointment and sadness that we know as solar garden lights... dying one October... then radiating only failure the next year as, lifeless, they rise up out of the soil and topple over on their sides. You don't have to be that person! You can be an inspiration to the pedestrians who travel the walks of your block, and bring happiness into the world, all year long, year after year. =================================== DISCLAIMER: information provided does not constitute professional advice. Pat's My Guy is not a licensed tradesman. Always research DIY projects before undertaking work, and take safety precautions while working.
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ACTIVE KNOB & TUBE4/4/2022 2022 04 04
Knob and tube wiring was the industry standard from the 1920s through the early 1940s, and if you have an old house built before 1950, you may be surprised to find out some of your active electrical circuits are still untouched knob and tube, inside the walls, and in the attics. Down in the basement, you may see only modern electrical conduit, or flex conduit, going to a modern breaker box and think... Hey! The knob & tube must've been replaced years ago! But in reality, all they did, back in the 60s, or whenever, was take the old K&T wires from the point where they entered the basement, and stuffed them into modern conduits down there, hooking it straight up to the new breaker box... leaving the rest of it up in the house, exactly as it was installed, back in the roaring 20s! For those who don't know, it's called, knob & tube, because of the hefty ceramic knobs used to suspend the wire (away from the studs, because ceramic was an insulator), and the thick rubber tubing that shields the wire. If you've ever seen such wires where they terminate in a junction box, you'll only have seen their most fundamental coating, of a doped cloth. But those cloth covered wires are further jacketed by thick rubber tubing where you can't see them, inside the walls. Knob & tube that's been undisturbed by mice, squirrels, or the elements... as it may be, behind the lath of an old plaster wall, or up inside an attic that's never been compromised, can still be relatively safe, 100 years later... so long it STAYS undisturbed. The biggest danger with active knob & tube in the 2020s, is with that doped cloth, which by now, is brittle as the candy coating on an M&M, thanks to a century of heating, as those wires have conducted power to run current-gobbling incandescent bulbs, hair dryers, and mid century tube TVs. Typically, knob & tube wires are 12 Gauge, solid copper, which in one way is good, because such a heavy gauge of solid-core can handle 20 Amps all day long without overheating. And since residential electric circuits are designed to carry only 15 Amps, max, the copper itself (copper is an element, remember, and doesn't rust or degrade) can handle heavy loads, especially when both hot and common are separately jacketed in rubber, and suspended by ceramic knobs so thick they could heat-shield a space shuttle re-entry from orbit. But back in the good old days of fuse boxes, when a whole house might have only had four to six circuits, and all the appliances drew a lot more current, people would routinely swap out their 15A fuses with 20A fuses, to eliminate the nuisance of fuses blowing all the time. It was a risky practice, but as I said, the K&T could take it... albeit not without warming up quite a bit! Not warm enough to start a fire, but PLENTY warm enough to cook that primary layer of doped cloth over the many decades, into a crispy, candy coating. That's not a problem behind the walls, where the wires, stretched taught, will never move, and couldn't touch each other if they wanted to. But it is a problem at the junction boxes, where the wires connect to your outlets and switches. Inside the junction box, that doped cloth is the only insulation on the wires, and in 2022 it WILL crack, or even flake off, if you have to jostle those wires to replace a switch or an outlet. And you WILL have to replace those switches and outlets, because they too degrade from heat stress... which can lead to arcing... which is a big fire hazard. Switches and outlets are, in fact, the weakest link in the chain... even in modern homes. But if you still have an old two prong outlet... it's not just inconvenient... it's damn dangerous. ---///--- Now, if you do have an old house with active K&T, the best thing, clearly is to rewire with a modern system... which can be quite costly. But before you panic, there are many things you can do to make active K&T safer, while you save up;
CIRCUIT MAPPING: Every old house, by now, has SOME modern wiring... simply because in the old days they only gave you four to six circuits, and people have had to add new circuits over the decades to keep up with modern usage. Mapping is simply, cutting power to one circuit at a time down at the breaker box, or fuse box, and then going around the house to take note of what's down. A plug-in outlet tester is a cheep and easy way to verify which outlets have no power, and of course, the lights should be obvious. This is necessary because, with K&T, you might have half of one room, and half of another room on the same circuit, with one light in the basement, and one other outlet in the back. And then the other half of one room might be connected with one outlet upstairs, and a lamp in the stairwell. It's impossible to guess, because it makes no sense. And then you might find one lone outlet that has a whole circuit to itself... which typically means it's more modern, and was brought in for a special purpose like a fridge, or an electric stove. Once you have your list of what outlets and switches are on what circuits, you can work out a strategy to balance the load. Never plugging in or using too many things on one circuit at the same time. So that you're never overtaxing one circuit more than the rest... which helps to keep those wires nice and cool. AMP LIMITING: If you've got a modern breaker box, this isn't much of an issue. All the breakers should be 15A, which means they will trip long before any active K&T hooked up to them even gets warm. But if you still have a fuse box, and you might, especially in old farm houses... then you want to make sure all the fuses are 15A Time-Delay fuses. It was the momentary spike of compressors kicking on, from, fridges and the like, that used to blow old 15A fuses, leading many to replace them with 20A fuses. But Time-Delays can handle that spike without blowing... while still limiting the overall amp draw from the circuit to a safe level. I've been surprised to see even 30A fuses in old fuse boxes, that are decades old, put in by somebody at some point who was blowing even 20A fuses. And those can be quite dangerous if you think it's a 15A down there, but it's actually a 30A. It can lead you to thinking it's okay to have mini-fridge A, space heater B, and cookie oven C, all plugged in where they are, because you've never blown a fuse, even when you've run them all at the same time! When in reality, they were all on the same circuit, overheating to the point where the wires are glowing inside the walls on cookie night. The other aspect of amp limiting is to use up-to-date power strips with their own built-in breakers, in places like a computer office, where you may need to plug in a monitor, speakers, a PC, and a phone charger to a single outlet. Power strips can offer a bit of extra protection, but never daisy chain them together, or you're defeating the purpose. DEVICE UPGRADING: This is about upgrading outlets and switches. It can be a bit pricey if you try to do the whole house at once, but a room by room approach can be affordable, one paycheck at a time. The same is true for light bulbs, which should also be upgraded to LED if they aren't already. Incandescent and even CFL bulbs draw a lot more amps per lumen than LEDs. An old 70W incandescent pulled... seventy watts! These days, seventy LED bulbs combined, barely pull seven watts! As for the switches and outlets, care must be taken, when swapping them out, to shrink wrap around the exposed dope-cloth insulation. Even if you don't think you've cracked it, there could be micro-cracks that can allow the wires to short against one another or the box after it's all shoved back in and powered on. Wire-for-wire swapping is also the best practice, keeping the one that went to the gold colored lead on the old outlet connected to the gold lead on the new one, and the same for the silver lead. The practice of having the hot side be gold and the common side be silver, on outlet contacts, goes back to the early days. Most K&T install techs from the 1920s were good about maintaining the polarity to outlets (by voltage testing the pairs as they went). But a plug-in tester can tell you after the fact, if the polarity is indeed correct. If it's not, you will have to switch wires around on the incorrect outlets, but... best practice is to start with wire-for-wire, and correct only if necessary. Light switches, however, were a different story! The K&T install techs of old weren't as good with polarity... often switching the common wire, rather than the hot, for reasons having to do with how they bundled wires together at switch locations and often couldn't tell which was which. "Neutral-switching," has the same effect of cutting power to a light socket as hot-switching, and even modern LED bulbs still don't care enough about polarity to be bothered by it. But neutral-switching means that even if you have the switch off, the hot is still live to the socket, and can shock you! This is why it's always important to disconnect the fuse or breaker before doing any electrical work, but especially with 100 year old light switches and fixtures. Killing a switch might kill the bulb, but the socket could still be hot, and it would take a volt meter or wand to detect that. GROUNDING: Contrary to popular belief, most K&T systems were/are grounded. There normally is a ground wire, hiding behind the wall, that connects all the metal junction boxes together and goes back to the ground source. And in many cases, that wire is actually coated with green cloth! The problem is... it doesn't come out into the open. It's all behind the wall. Modern outlets and switches all have a deep-green ground screw. So when swapping them into a K&T circuit, you must use a length of wire to connect that ground screw to the box itself... by hooking it around a mounting screw for the outlet or switch if there's no better way. Again, you can verify whether or not the outlet is truly grounded with a plug-in tester, when you're done. If, for some reason, the junction boxes aren't grounded, aren't metal, or aren't there (sometimes a past homeowner will just throw in a free floating, ungrounded outlet that looks for all the world like it's legit) then go to your local church, light a votive candle, and pray for your house and children. And never use that outlet again, and call an electrician. But, normally you can ground things with K&T, by connecting to the junction box. GFCI PROTECTING: Presuming you have mapped your K&T circuits, and are balancing the loads you're asking of each one... have limited them all to 15 amps max... have safely upgraded all the outlets and switches wire for wire with shrink tube... and have properly grounded everything... The one final safety measure you can take is to install GFCI receptacles. GFCI stands for Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter, and it's a type of outlet that is designed to trip within a tenth of a second after it detects the slightest ground fault... otherwise known as a short. One GFCI outlet, at the start of a circuit, will protect everything downstream of itself, from short circuits, created by water or other problems... which is why modern codes require GFCI's to be present in kitchens, bathrooms, garages, and basements. They are bulkier than regular outlets, and can be difficult to fit into older, smaller junction boxes. And even when installed safely, that can introduce some heat dissipation issues. But... if installed safely, even in a smaller junction box... having a GFCI on a circuit is still far safer than going without one. ---///--- The oldest knob and tube systems were installed 100 years ago, and even the youngest are turning eighty. They've all been put through the wringer over the 20th century, when appliances were far less efficient and drew far more amperage than their modern counterparts, including the ordinary light bulb. And that has left even the best preserved of them... the ones that avoided the mice and squirrels for a century... at, or past, their design life. Still, because the visible parts of these systems have been retro-engineered into more modern conduit, alongside more modern wires, it's all too easy to assume they were phased out, in any given house, until you finally do open a wall, or get up into a closed attic or crawl space to discover the shocking truth. "Active knob and tube," is, for modern engineers, contractors, and inspectors... the stuff of legend, and the theme of their nightmares. But it's far more common in America than, I think, anybody suspects. Still, that's not a reason to panic. The steps listed above will make any home, no matter how it's wired, or what patchwork of old and new it's using, as safe as it CAN be... right now. And taking the above steps is an affordable way to safeguard things as best as possible over the short term... while looking for ways phase out the K&T completely... room by room... as funds are available. Most cities do have programs to upgrade electrical systems for retired homeowners at no expense to themselves. That may not help you if you just inherited your grandmother's farm house, but it is helpful to Silents and Boomers who've been living in a house that wasn't so out of date back when they bought it 50 years ago. At any rate, knob and tube is not dead... and if you own an older house, the more you know, the safer you can be, and the better you can plan for your upgrades. =================================== DISCLAIMER: information provided does not constitute professional advice. Pat's My Guy is not a licensed tradesman. Always research DIY projects before undertaking work, and take safety precautions while working.
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Often a repair or other job can be difficult to describe, and in person consultations are necessary. This month, I'm offering free in-person evaluations, by appointment. But Pat's My Guy always offers free estimates over the phone. |