Rolling in the deep

Over the weekend when I went to tear out the knob and tube wiring and the one random bx power line that I found buried behind the walls, I tested them with a light bulb socket just to make sure that they were dead before I cut them. But they were all live. This was not good. This meant that at some point in the history of this house, someone left live wires sealed behind the plaster and lath walls. And to make matters worse, they sprayed insulation into the wall and ceiling cavities, surrounding the live wires with insulation. In a knob and tube system, the knobs and tubes keep the power wires away from the wooden beams that make up the house because power lines get hot. But when you spray insulation around the wires, it defeats the point of the knobs and tubes and creates a fire hazard. I had no choice but to trace the circuit and turn it off. The good news is that one circuit in the basement cut power to all of the knob and tube wiring buried in this room so I could cut the wires out. The bad news is that the living room ceiling fan lost power. That was unexpected since the living room is not even close to the work room- it’s on another floor and two rooms over. So I spent the past three nights tracing the power line in the basement and disconnecting it from the circuit box, then running a new power line to the ceiling fan in the living room and installing a new circuit for the ceiling fan. In the process, I discovered that the outlets in the living room were hooked up to the circuit for the furnace, so I disconnected those wires (giving the furnace its own circuit) and connected them to the circuit I just installed (giving the living room its own circuit). Now it’s Wednesday and I’m mentally exhausted for the week even though I spent the last three nights in the basement and haven’t set foot in the work room since Saturday. But on the bright side, I installed a light over my ironing board in the basement so that makes my life a little easier.