Crossed 10,000 feet of wire pulled in a single house and my brain broke a little

I was doing a full rewire on a big old place in Seattle, a real mansion from the 1920s. I was just logging materials for the invoice, adding up all the Romex spools, when the total hit 10,200 feet. That's almost two miles of wire, just in the walls of one home (not counting the service entrance or the yard lights, just the branch circuits). It really hit me how much the demand for power has changed. This house originally had maybe six circuits total for knob and tube. Now it needed dedicated lines for the kitchen, the home theater, the office, the workshop, the electric car charger... the list goes on. It's not just about more gadgets, it's a whole different way of living wired into the bones of these old places. Has anyone else had a job where the sheer scale of the materials made you stop and think?

2 comments

2 Comments

jennifer_fisher3d ago

Honestly, @blair_dixon, that's a cool way to picture it, but the wire's already copper before it gets smashed and drawn. Still, the amount is crazy.

blair_dixon3d ago

Ever think about how much copper that actually is? Like, picture a solid copper bar two miles long and then smash it flat into all that wire. That house is holding a small mine's worth of metal just to run the coffee maker and charge a phone. It's wild when you realize we're basically building low grade ore veins into the walls now.