Wall switches.

[Denis]

I've seen zipcord run in grooves cut in drywall...

Hell, I've done it... But as SPEAKER wire, not as electrical supply line.

I did plenty of that last week. Mrs Denis has a weakness for some guy named Bose who seems to need an awful lot of cable.

[Lokidude]

Christ, and I thought the New York supplemental code just made good sense - armored cable in the walls with metal boxes, with the whole shebang grounded, and a ground wire run to boot. Anything exposed gets run in EMT.

Hehehehehe... Conduit? West of the Mississippi? HAH....

Conduit is used for putting up temporary buildings here, not for running wiring

Conduit, flex, and MC are for commercial installs. Houses are pretty much exclusively Romex.

[evan price]

When I bought my new house (new to me, built in '54) it passed the home inspection. I know now that the guy did a drive-by inspection and pencil-whipped it.

The house as built had a fuse box and a 100-amp service. There had been a coal furnace with a 30-amp 240vac fuse box running the equipment at the back of the attached garage behind the house. At some time there was an electrical fire; since the original "electricians" didn't use wire nuts and just twisted and taped all the connections, heat and time caused the connections to loosen up. I spent an entire summer opening every box and fixture in the house and re-terminating everything. The owners had made a room addition on the side of the house- a bedroom/den, and a dining room, and just added onto existing wires from existing circuits. The neighbor recalled the firemen listening for buzzing in the walls where the wires were overheated. It burnt the roof off the house, and you can still find the blackened roof rafters and the gable end someone had sprayed with thick silver paint in the attic to hide the damage.

At some time they replaced the fise box and added a 150-amp Pushmatic breaker panel that had been a used item when it was installed. They did the usual sloppy work: Splices in the breaker panel, 14-awg wire on 20-a breakers, 240-volt equipment attached to a pair of 120-volt breakers without the trip handles being tied, lack of grounds, misrouted neutrals, tandemed breakers, etc. To make matters worse, they also installed a used 200-amp molded case circuit breaker on the outside of the house at the meter pan because the main panel was too far away from the meter pan. The used MCB was in pretty rough shape but it was "good enough" (aka, cheap) I guess.

Around this time the house had another one of its fires, the neighbor said from overstoking the coal furnace and not properly maintaining the flue. The repairs were moderate to the rear of the house.

They converted the garage to a family room, made the coal furnace into a log-burning fireplace, and used that 4-hole fusebox to run the room addition. They junked the coal furnace and switched over to central heat and a/c. This system was a heat pump, central A/C, and auxiliary electric heat all in the attic. They cut the main service-entrance cable in the attic, spliced it inside a 6" box, and now could feed the 150-amp Pushmatic central panel and an auxiliary 100-amp main-lug (Means no panel breaker for the whole panel) Sq.D panel in the attic for the heating system- all off of the original 2/0 service entry cable, spliced, with no overcurrent protection. The heat pump system came from the factory with two 60-amp 240-v breakers, which they fed with two 50-amp 240-v breakers off of an unprotected 2/0 service cable spliced to the incoming 2/0 service cable on a 200-amp breaker. The 150-amp main Pushmatic was also fed off of the other piece of 2/0 service entrance, spliced to the 2/0 incoming cable... NICE!!! To make it even worse, the Pushmatic was a main lug style box with four 240-volt breakers (40s, 50s, and 30s) on the main bus, with another 60-amp breaker that fed down to the 120-volt bus. So in theory you could pull 250-amps without tripping any breaker in the panel. PLUS, the 100-amp panel in the attic, so in theory a 300-amp load on 2/0 service cable was entirely possible. NIIICE!!!!

I guess they found this system unsuitable so they "upgraded" to a 200-amp system. The "electrician" used 4/0 service entry cable and a new meter pan. He ran the new 4/0 cable into the attic to that 6" splice box, removed the original length of cable, and tied that 4/0 into the existing 2/0 service entrance cables- with no overcurrent protection other than that old crusty 200-amp MCB on the outside of the house (which I later discovered to be nonfunctional due to rust). Since the power company saw good stuff on the outside of the house they signed off and reconnected the house. However they kept all the rest of the junk- the Pushmatic, the splices, the hoky wiring, and main lug Sq-D in the attic.

This was how I got the place in 1998.

After a few years I had flickering lights, breaker trips, lots of other stuff. I'd already re-torqued all the screws in the breaker panel, reworked all the terminations, replaced a lot of really junky fixtures and appliances, rewired most of the kitchen and bathroom and utility room, added GFIs in the wet locations, etc. and we still had sizzling lights.

I found that the S/E cable to the SqD panel in the attic had overheated and crumbled. The insulation was literally burning off the wires. It had melted the lugs in the box that connected to the bus bars. I cut the wire back to good and reterminated it by backfeeding a 100-amp breaker I had already purchased. That solved the problem of tripping breakers when the A/C or heat kicked in.

Still trying to find the cause of flickering lights, I took my clamp VOM and started measuring every wire I could find. Could not find the problem. Went outside, it was getting dark, and took the cover off of the outside disconnect. While checking the wires, I could hear a sizzling. My face was right at the edge of the meter panel. Then I noticed bright blue arcing visible around the seam of the meter pan. I could see a blackened discloration around the edges of the panel.

I cut the seal, popped off the pan cover and saw a nightmare.

What it turned out to be was, that used 200-amp molded case circuit breaker had been very used. I found (when I tried to fix the problem) the allen-head terminal lugs the cable attached to going down from the meter pan had rusted and the allen wrench just spun in the heads. So the "electrician" had just re-used the old crusty wires already rusted into the lugs and they were just a little bit too short. So he bent and pulled and managed to just barely get them to the meter-pan lugs. They only went halfway into the lugs in the pan. So the screw that was supposed to compress the wire into the lug was instead cocking as it screwed in at an angle, and was pushing the wire out of the lug, and barely holding on.

Normal expansion and contraction had caused the wires to move and not be more than push-fit into the lugs in the meter pan. The arcing and fire in the meter pan had melted the meter base, the pan interior, and the bus bars themselves. ALL of the insulation of the old wire in the meter pan had burnt away right down to the piece of conduit between the pan and the breaker box. It was arcing to the conduit shell and the box itself. The wires were about 50% melted through from arcing.

This abomination was screwed to the outside wall right behind the bunk beds in my kids' room!

What could I do? I pulled the meter. Next morning I got a new meter pan, a new 200-amp molded case circuit breaker. I already had in stock a spool of 4/0-4/0-4/0 service entry cable, a Square D- "QO" series 200-amp main breaker panel, a new Square D- "QO" series 100-amp main lug panel, a Square D- "QO" series 60-amp main lug panel, two crates of "QO" series breakers, rolls of Romex, fittings, BX cable, ground bars, etc. I had worked as an industrial automation engineer and I knew these would be needed someday so I had been buying stuff on sale, contract job leftovers, and at Home Quarters and Builder's Square going out of business sales.

I tore out every inch of the feed side electricals, the service panels, the old fuse box, the old service entry cables, and put in the new panels, cables, breakers, etc. Took me most of the day. Had the power company inspect, seal, and reterminate the drop the next day.

Best investment I ever made. Now I have a real 200-amp service panel and service and it won't burn down the house. Lots of room for expansion.