As a second grader I was into electricity and radio. I recall climbing a tree to install an antenna for a radio I had in my bedroom. The radio was an AC/DC model which means it did not have a transformer in the power supply and thus the circuits were not isolated from the AC power. Anyway at one point I stuck my knife into the tree while holding the antenna lead and thus grounded myself. I got quite a shock as luck would have it I did not fall out of the tree or suffer any ill effects.
In general from that experience on I worked hard to educate myself and not be shocked again – without success I might add, I’ve been shocked a number of times.
Which brings us to the house. Our house was originally build in 1940 with a room and bathroom added in 1960. Many of the wall outlets were original from 1940 and were falling apart. There was a mix of 2 prong and 3 prong outlets and no GFCI outlets. So for me one of the first tasks was to inspect and replace the outlets and upgrade to GFCI in the bathroom, laundry and kitchen.
It turns out that the kitchen was easy. There was a remodel at some point and all 3 circuits were 3 wire (hot, neutral, protective ground). Installing GFCI outlets was just a matter of removing the existing outlets and wiring in the GFCI. No fuss no muss and now the kitchen is good and we have a map of which outlets go to which breaker. That was the end of easy.
Going room by room each of the old outlets were removed and new installed. Talk about suffering succotash. Every one of the outlets was wired with the hot and neutral reversed. Most of the 3 prong outlets did not have a protective ground and most had the lead wire cut short so even removing the outlet became a pain in the patootie.
Clearly they were wired backwards on purpose throughout the house. Perhaps it was the standard in 1940 or just POS (prior owners stuff). Anyway it was dangerous and had to be corrected. And how do you know a 2 wire circuit has the hot and neutral reversed? Out comes an extension cord a multimeter. Plug the extension cord into an outlet with a known good protective ground and then measure the voltage from the protective ground (on the extension cord) to the wires in the outlet. Hot has the voltage.
I will say that at least in all the outlets the black wire was hot and the white was neutral. Even if black was wired to the silver (and not brass) screw that was the only place where hot and neutral were reversed. It would have been sad if the white wire was wired hot in the breaker panel.
Ditto in the light sockets. The screw base shell was wired to hot and to boot the on-off switch was in the neutral wire. I guess we were saving wire. At least I was able to move the hot to the center pin in the socket.
This is getting to be a long post but there are at least 2 more (of many) electrical item to make note of.
There was a 3 prong socket in the laundry. Only 2 wires (hot and neutral reversed of course) wired to the outlet and a protective ground wire from the washing machine chasses to a clamp on the cold water pipe. Not an ideal ground but hey better than nothing. The cold water pipe eventually does go underground…
That outlet got upgraded to a GFCI with the cold water pipe wired to the protective ground terminal in the GFCI. Testing the functionality of the GFCI shows it will trip with the test button on the GFCI as well as with the test function on a plugin GFCI tester.
The bathroom was an addition to the house. Originally it only had an outhouse. The only outlet there was a 2 prong one that is part of the light over the medicine cabinet. Hot wired to the light socket shell and the shell was falling apart. So the socket got replaced and wired properly.
The bonus in the bathroom was that there was a radiant heat fixture in the ceiling. This thing was old and rusty and insulation (more on that in another post) was falling out around the edges. What to do? We would never use the heater and did not trust it to start with. So out came the heater and the circuit jumpered there. The switch for the heater was removed and a GFCI put in its place. Because the bathroom was an add-on the wiring to it was all 3 conductor. To our good fortune we were able to install a GFCI without much problem.
As a side note the house has a D-Square 140 amp main panel and the house was wired with 12 gauge solid copper wire and 20 amp breakers. At least that matches.
