Saw a house built in 1972 with knob and tube still live in the attic

I was doing a panel swap in an old neighborhood outside Pittsburgh last week and found live knob and tube just dangling in the attic, not even capped. The homeowner said they 'figured it was dead' since they didn't use those outlets anymore. Anyone else run into this kind of time bomb hiding up there?

2 comments

2 Comments

kai_stone991mo ago

Holy crap, that's terrifying. My buddy in Philly had the same thing happen when he was rewiring his grandma's place. He found a live wire just hanging loose behind a wall, not even taped off or anything. The old insulation was so cracked you could see the copper. He almost grabbed it with his bare hand, lucky he was using a non-contact voltage tester first. That stuff is basically a fire waiting to happen, especially with the old cloth wiring.

amy_reed791mo ago

Yeah but here's what I don't get - how does something like that even happen in the first place? Was it just some old work a handyman did and forgot about, or was it like an abandoned circuit nobody knew was still live? I mean, I get that old houses have weird wiring, but leaving a bare hot wire inside a wall with nothing to stop it from touching something seems almost deliberate. Did your buddy ever figure out what that wire was supposed to be hooked up to, or was it just some random thing left over from a previous renovation? That's the part that would really freak me out, not knowing where it came from or what it was doing there.