Rant: A simple panel swap in an old house turned into a full rewire nightmare

Last Thursday, I went to a 1920s house in the Riverside area for what the homeowner said was a panel upgrade. The old fuse box was a mess, but I figured a day, maybe two. Once I opened the walls to run new home runs, I found knob and tube spliced with cloth Romex, then that spliced with modern NM. It was a fire waiting to happen. I spent the next four days tracing and replacing every single circuit back to the panel. The homeowner was shocked, but grateful we caught it. Has anyone else had a 'simple' job blow up like that in an old building?

3 comments

3 Comments

joseph9321mo ago

But honestly I gotta disagree with the general take here. @gibson.mark said it's not a surprise but I think people lean way too hard on the "old houses are always a disaster" excuse. Yeah sure knob and tube is old but not every 1920s house is a death trap. I've done plenty of panel swaps in prewar places where the wiring was actually neat and well maintained. The problem isn't the house's age, it's that owners and previous hacks did shoddy work over the decades. You could find the same nightmare in a 1980s house if some DIY guy was in there with twist connectors and tape. Calling every old house a fire hazard just lets the real culprits off the hook.

olivia_park1mo ago

Oh man, that Riverside story hits home. I opened up a wall in a 1940s bungalow last month to add an outlet and found three different generations of wire all twisted together with electrical tape. What was supposed to be a two hour fix turned into a whole weekend pulling new wire through plaster and lath. The owner had no idea.

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gibson.mark1mo ago

But is that really a surprise? Old houses always have hidden surprises, and owners rarely know the full history of DIY fixes. Honestly, I'd expect to find something like that in any place built before modern codes.