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That 'simple' three-way switch swap in a 1970s house...
Everyone says it's a quick job, but the wiring in this old place was a mess of cloth covered wire and someone had tied the neutral to the switch loop. I spent a full afternoon just tracing everything out with my meter. What should have been an hour took me over four. Has anyone else run into that kind of hidden trouble in an old house rewire?
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kim9631mo ago
Tell me about it. That cloth wire crumbles if you look at it wrong. Found a junction box in my place that was just a nest of black tape and hope. You can't trust any of the old work, you have to check every single wire yourself. It's the only way to not burn the place down.
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Oh man, that's the classic old house bait and switch. They lure you in with a "simple" job and then you're three hours deep in a spider-filled crawl space trying to figure out which wire does what. At this point I just assume every project will take four times longer and involve finding something truly cursed, like a wire nut made of old chewing gum. It's like the original electricians were just guessing and hoping for the best lol.
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uma_johnson1mo ago
My 1920s place had a whole switch box where the hot and neutral were reversed, just like @julia_lee said. I found a junction that was just wires twisted together and wrapped in newspaper!
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