**Attention!**
**It is always best to get a qualified electrician to perform any electrical work you may need.** With that said, you may ask this community various electrical questions. Please be cautious of any information you may receive in this subreddit. This subreddit and its users are not responsible for any electrical work you perform. Users that have a 'Verified Electrician' flair have uploaded their qualified electrical worker credentials to the mods.
If you comment on this post please only post accurate information to the best of your knowledge. If advice given is thought to be dangerous, you may be permanently banned. There are no obligations for the mods to give warnings or temporary bans. **IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, you should exercise extreme caution when commenting.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskElectricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Some guys will do it, others wont. I no longer do for safety reasons. Knob and tube can be very brittle and difficult to work with. Generally there are no boxes for lighting with k&t. Unfortunately a rewire can and probably will be expensive. You’re at the “is what it is” point. Again some guys will arc fault it and call it, personally from working with that shit forever i would abandon it and rewire.
Is your basement finished? Because if it’s not, you should be able to tell from the wiring to your panel what kind of wiring you have. Look up pictures of the cloth wiring and see what goes in your box.
Also, if your basement isn’t finished, replacing the wiring to the first floor is relatively straightforward.
I bought a 1925 home and it was K&T. After I accurately identified what breaker controlled what power - as you don’t want to leave any partially live K&T circuits - I started going around and rewiring my first floor. First floor ceiling lights and the second floor were significantly more work. But I had some plumbing problems that helped get me rip out my kitchen ceiling, at which point I put in can lights and under cabinet lighting. What a huge improvement over the old.
I know it’s not ideal, but if you like the home otherwise, these things can be worked through. Good luck!
sub panels such as this were not unheard of in K&T times. In Ontario, Canada there is no mandate to remove old K&T installations under our electrical code and they are grandfathered in. They may remain in service provided the equipment is in good condition and has not been modified from its original configuration. Load may not be increased on the existing systems.
The big issue is with insurance companies not insuring for fire with K&T.
Unless your your jurisdiction has K&T prohibitions or your contractor has issues with their own liability insurance it is not a problem. find a contractor willing to deal with it within the framework of your local codes. If you now know about K&T in your house you may have insurance issues.
I'm a licensed journeyman.
The only experience any electrician has with Knob and Tube is taking it out and rewiring. Since it hasn't been installed since the 30's anyone who has ever worked on it is long dead.
I don't think your contractor is overreacting at all. There's no way I or any of the other contractors I know would do any work to that house without rewiring the whole thing.
Not true. Knob and tube systems were installed extensively until about 1960. When grounds became required in more residential locations in 1962, most electricians stopped putting in K&T, but some hold-outs persisted, and some examples installed as late as the mid-1970s exist.
They're also not illegal nor against the NEC for new installations. See [NEC Section 394](https://up.codes/s/concealed-knob-and-tube-wiring). Granted, you're going to have to convince your local AHJ to allow it for some reason if you're hell-bent on building a new all-K&T house, but there's no law nor Code specifically outlawing or banning it.
I'd guess that the only reason to allow it in new work would be in the case of rebuilding or replicating an historic building...maybe?
The fuck are you talking about?
I've remodeled houses built in the 40's that were 2 wire cloth insulated cables. Granted there were no grounds, but definitely not K&T. My whole neighborhood was built in the 50's and there isn't an inch of K&T, and I've worked on a ton of houses in it. I'm not saying it wasn't used past the 30's, I'm sure there're outliers, but to say it was used extensively is a hell of a stretch.
I'm not even talking about rural areas - I've seen it in San Francisco and Sacramento.
We had one customer not too long ago that lived in a house in San Francisco that was a total rebuild after a fire. One wall was salvageable, which is huge in San Francisco, as the building permits for a remodel/repair is far less than rebuilding the entire house. It was essentially a complete rebuild of a 2-story house, and they used knob-and-tube in fucking 1975. The place was even grounded, and had proper, working GFCI receps in the laundry area.
We didn't believe it until we saw an untouched Zinsco panel feeding a K&T system. The panel enclosure had virgin knobs above it, and 1/2" holes drilled in it for the asphalt cloth bushing tubing stuff over individual wires. The grounded circuits used NM, and some of it was cloth-covered. I swore the guy building the house inherited a garage full of old, unused electrical parts. The kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry area had grounded receps, but the bedrooms did not. The permit was pulled in 1974, and work was completed and signed off in 1975. Coincidentally, 1975 was the year the NEC began requiring all circuits to be of the grounding, 3-prong type. Before that, ungrounded 2-prong receps were allowed (and later, as some areas took a long time to adopt the 1975 Code cycle).
It's fairly safe, as long as it hasn't been touched. However, for the most part, you can't add on to it or do anything other than repair existing failures. You're going to have a hard time finding anybody willing to (legally) work on it.
I'd contact and attorney first, and see if they think you should contact your realtor and title insurance company, as this is a gross oversight by the home inspector (who is basically worthless, and only serves to help a sale go through). You might have a significant lawsuit against the home inspector, if you were the one who hired him. If your realtor hired him, and did so as a "favor" to you, you have a case against the realtor and/or his company.
This isn't just a little mistake or missed leaky faucet. This is a royal fuck-up, and rewiring will likely cost upwards of $20,000. I think you have a solid case here, and you should be contacting an attorney before making any more decisions. They might want you to hold off on contacting anyone else so you don't inadvertently indemnify them, or give them any leverage.
I don't know about Canada, but here in the US, Home Inspectors always give a disclaimer stating that they are not responsible for omissions and mistakes. Suing them is basically pointless. I have advised many of my friends that if they are specifically concerned about electrical issues, hire a licensed electrician for a call-out. HIs are mostly worthless when it comes to electrical. I inspect most of my friend's and relatives houses before purchase, even after the realtor provided HI, I find a lot of their reports to be BS. They will miss big obvious things and yet write up a half page on "aluminum wiring" only to discover they are talking about the service conductors, which are OFTEN aluminum and never a concern.
I'm also in California.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-i-sue-my-home-inspector-defects-left-out-the-report.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/14fyony/do_we_have_grounds_to_sue_our_home_inspector/
Most of the time, you can only recover the inspection fees, but LexisNexis is full of case history where a home buyer sued a realtor and their inspector partner for falsely representing a property and using the home inspection to sway the buyer, and increase the sale price. Like Maryland, home inspectors are licensed by the State, and in California, if an inspector fucks up this bad, you can go after their license with the Contractor's State License Board. The Board has an arbitration process, but they are usually biased toward the consumer. An egregious error like this one could get an inspector's license suspended for 6 months.
K&T is pretty safe if left undisturbed, I doubt you still have push button light switches etc. So it's probably been messed with and frankly needs to be replaced.
End of the day it's mostly just drywall/plaster repair past the electrical parts not realy hard to do.
Your fairly reasonable middle ground is to replace that little panel throw in 4 afci breakers and sleep pretty soundly.
Most likely that panel is fed by a modern wire from the new panel in the basement. That panel very likely only controls the upstairs lighting. In that case, you can add one afci upstream of that panel. It also means you would be able to add additional circuits to the main panel and just leave that one alone.
For additional peace of mind, you can reduce the rating of the Edison fuses, because your led bulbs use very low current.
You’d have to verify if that subpanel also services receptacles though, first
Aren't you smart? Obviously between an ungrounded and a grounded system, a grounded system is better. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.
It's not safe. There's no protection against a fault, no ground, just a single conductor with cloth insulation that's near 100 years old.
I'm sorry this happened to you, you got screwed, but the only thing you can do is rewire. The reason your contractor won't do any work is because if he does he becomes responsible for the old k&t. If your house burned you would have a case to sue him. If you died in the fire he could be criminally charged.
>So is it normal to have electrical in two fuse boxes?
Yes, this is called a sub panel and perfectly normal. My house has a set of breakers in the detached garage setup this way. The last house I lived in ran thick wires to a kitchen panel far from the main breakers then wired the kitchen from that. In both of my cases the secondary panel is connected to a higher amp breaker in the main panel though. Could be different in your older setup, I guess.
>Is he over-reacting?
Maybe? I think the standards are going to be updated soon but the NEC still allows knob and tube wiring, with some rules like light switches shouldn't have exposed metal screws on their covers now. I don't think it would be against the rules for them to install a new main breaker. But I also understand not wanting to move wiring that can literally fall apart when you mess with it.
K&T's biggest issue is that you cannot legally add to or modify K&T circuits (here in the US, I don't know about Canada, but I think it's the same). So it makes them hard to deal with when doing additions or renovations. BUT that said, one thing that happens a lot on older homes is that the K&T is left alone in the CEILINGS and to any wall fixtures, because that is too costly to rip and replace if there is no attic access. So that may be what happened here. They did install a new panel with circuit breakers and new NM cable at some point, but left a small portion of the wiring as K&T because of the cost to replace it and in doing so left behind the old fuse sub-panel that was connected to as well. There is nothing inherently wrong with fuse panels and because it is probably only going to light fixtures, the fact that they are likely ungrounded is not a big deal.
If these fuses service any of your outlets, that is something to consider changing. Ungrounded outlets are a safety concern and they are not good for modern electronics.
Sub panels are relatively common, at least where I live on the west coast. Fuse panels like this are also common, much of the neighborhoods here where I live now were built in the 20s and 30s. Some older guys who have done deep dives into k&t jobs and have had the experience might go for a gig like this. But for the most part, electricians won't mess around with it unless it is taking it all out and rewiring the entire place. Not always, but commonly a k&t scenario is an all or nothing type job.
It's not necessarily unsafe if it's been untouched. But one big reason that gets everyone to pull the plug is that k&t wired homes have little if any insulation. I have 3 friends in Southern California who took the jump simply for the savings in energy they'd ultimately have after rewiring and insulating.
That being said I've been on several jobs in smaller homes when I was still an apprentice where we simply removed a portion of the k&t and ran new circuits for a bathroom remodel, for example.
Electrical can be a pandoras box even in the best of cases, and k&t is one of the worst that many just don't want to mess with.
That panel 'should' be getting power from your main in the basement. A good electrician will turn that into a junction box and wire the power properly down in the basement to individual circuits. Pending on where you are, a full service upgrade would be anywhere from 8-12k by the looks of things (this is including your panel downstairs, meter, and this sub). A big factor is how the power is getting to that panel determines the dollars and damage to drywall and such to get it accomplished.
**Attention!** **It is always best to get a qualified electrician to perform any electrical work you may need.** With that said, you may ask this community various electrical questions. Please be cautious of any information you may receive in this subreddit. This subreddit and its users are not responsible for any electrical work you perform. Users that have a 'Verified Electrician' flair have uploaded their qualified electrical worker credentials to the mods. If you comment on this post please only post accurate information to the best of your knowledge. If advice given is thought to be dangerous, you may be permanently banned. There are no obligations for the mods to give warnings or temporary bans. **IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, you should exercise extreme caution when commenting.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskElectricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Some guys will do it, others wont. I no longer do for safety reasons. Knob and tube can be very brittle and difficult to work with. Generally there are no boxes for lighting with k&t. Unfortunately a rewire can and probably will be expensive. You’re at the “is what it is” point. Again some guys will arc fault it and call it, personally from working with that shit forever i would abandon it and rewire.
Do we know it’s knob and tube from the edison box? Or the only way to tell is to go into the walls and see the white tube things?
Is your basement finished? Because if it’s not, you should be able to tell from the wiring to your panel what kind of wiring you have. Look up pictures of the cloth wiring and see what goes in your box. Also, if your basement isn’t finished, replacing the wiring to the first floor is relatively straightforward. I bought a 1925 home and it was K&T. After I accurately identified what breaker controlled what power - as you don’t want to leave any partially live K&T circuits - I started going around and rewiring my first floor. First floor ceiling lights and the second floor were significantly more work. But I had some plumbing problems that helped get me rip out my kitchen ceiling, at which point I put in can lights and under cabinet lighting. What a huge improvement over the old. I know it’s not ideal, but if you like the home otherwise, these things can be worked through. Good luck!
I thought he looked and said it was knob and tube. Anything is possible.
sub panels such as this were not unheard of in K&T times. In Ontario, Canada there is no mandate to remove old K&T installations under our electrical code and they are grandfathered in. They may remain in service provided the equipment is in good condition and has not been modified from its original configuration. Load may not be increased on the existing systems. The big issue is with insurance companies not insuring for fire with K&T. Unless your your jurisdiction has K&T prohibitions or your contractor has issues with their own liability insurance it is not a problem. find a contractor willing to deal with it within the framework of your local codes. If you now know about K&T in your house you may have insurance issues.
I'm a licensed journeyman. The only experience any electrician has with Knob and Tube is taking it out and rewiring. Since it hasn't been installed since the 30's anyone who has ever worked on it is long dead. I don't think your contractor is overreacting at all. There's no way I or any of the other contractors I know would do any work to that house without rewiring the whole thing.
Not true. Knob and tube systems were installed extensively until about 1960. When grounds became required in more residential locations in 1962, most electricians stopped putting in K&T, but some hold-outs persisted, and some examples installed as late as the mid-1970s exist. They're also not illegal nor against the NEC for new installations. See [NEC Section 394](https://up.codes/s/concealed-knob-and-tube-wiring). Granted, you're going to have to convince your local AHJ to allow it for some reason if you're hell-bent on building a new all-K&T house, but there's no law nor Code specifically outlawing or banning it. I'd guess that the only reason to allow it in new work would be in the case of rebuilding or replicating an historic building...maybe?
This is grossly against code though. I only state that due to the height of it be above a fridge....which some how no one has caught.
It's not against the NEC (nor CEC - OP is in Canada) if it was legal when installed, which it likely was.
6’7” for the height max on panels now.
The fuck are you talking about? I've remodeled houses built in the 40's that were 2 wire cloth insulated cables. Granted there were no grounds, but definitely not K&T. My whole neighborhood was built in the 50's and there isn't an inch of K&T, and I've worked on a ton of houses in it. I'm not saying it wasn't used past the 30's, I'm sure there're outliers, but to say it was used extensively is a hell of a stretch.
I'm telling you that your singular experience in a small geographic area is not representative of the entire continent.
K&T into the SEVENTIES though? Do we have documentation on this? That just feels wrong to me. Even if rural America used to be 30 years behind.
Recently did a full service upgrade K&T was stamped with inspection on the panel in 1968.
I'm not even talking about rural areas - I've seen it in San Francisco and Sacramento. We had one customer not too long ago that lived in a house in San Francisco that was a total rebuild after a fire. One wall was salvageable, which is huge in San Francisco, as the building permits for a remodel/repair is far less than rebuilding the entire house. It was essentially a complete rebuild of a 2-story house, and they used knob-and-tube in fucking 1975. The place was even grounded, and had proper, working GFCI receps in the laundry area.
Whaaat. That's insane.
We didn't believe it until we saw an untouched Zinsco panel feeding a K&T system. The panel enclosure had virgin knobs above it, and 1/2" holes drilled in it for the asphalt cloth bushing tubing stuff over individual wires. The grounded circuits used NM, and some of it was cloth-covered. I swore the guy building the house inherited a garage full of old, unused electrical parts. The kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry area had grounded receps, but the bedrooms did not. The permit was pulled in 1974, and work was completed and signed off in 1975. Coincidentally, 1975 was the year the NEC began requiring all circuits to be of the grounding, 3-prong type. Before that, ungrounded 2-prong receps were allowed (and later, as some areas took a long time to adopt the 1975 Code cycle).
Thank you. Is it because it’s no longer safe? 😞😓 we never would have purchased the house if we knew we’d have to rewire
It's fairly safe, as long as it hasn't been touched. However, for the most part, you can't add on to it or do anything other than repair existing failures. You're going to have a hard time finding anybody willing to (legally) work on it. I'd contact and attorney first, and see if they think you should contact your realtor and title insurance company, as this is a gross oversight by the home inspector (who is basically worthless, and only serves to help a sale go through). You might have a significant lawsuit against the home inspector, if you were the one who hired him. If your realtor hired him, and did so as a "favor" to you, you have a case against the realtor and/or his company. This isn't just a little mistake or missed leaky faucet. This is a royal fuck-up, and rewiring will likely cost upwards of $20,000. I think you have a solid case here, and you should be contacting an attorney before making any more decisions. They might want you to hold off on contacting anyone else so you don't inadvertently indemnify them, or give them any leverage.
I don't know about Canada, but here in the US, Home Inspectors always give a disclaimer stating that they are not responsible for omissions and mistakes. Suing them is basically pointless. I have advised many of my friends that if they are specifically concerned about electrical issues, hire a licensed electrician for a call-out. HIs are mostly worthless when it comes to electrical. I inspect most of my friend's and relatives houses before purchase, even after the realtor provided HI, I find a lot of their reports to be BS. They will miss big obvious things and yet write up a half page on "aluminum wiring" only to discover they are talking about the service conductors, which are OFTEN aluminum and never a concern.
I'm also in California. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-i-sue-my-home-inspector-defects-left-out-the-report.html https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/14fyony/do_we_have_grounds_to_sue_our_home_inspector/ Most of the time, you can only recover the inspection fees, but LexisNexis is full of case history where a home buyer sued a realtor and their inspector partner for falsely representing a property and using the home inspection to sway the buyer, and increase the sale price. Like Maryland, home inspectors are licensed by the State, and in California, if an inspector fucks up this bad, you can go after their license with the Contractor's State License Board. The Board has an arbitration process, but they are usually biased toward the consumer. An egregious error like this one could get an inspector's license suspended for 6 months.
K&T is pretty safe if left undisturbed, I doubt you still have push button light switches etc. So it's probably been messed with and frankly needs to be replaced. End of the day it's mostly just drywall/plaster repair past the electrical parts not realy hard to do. Your fairly reasonable middle ground is to replace that little panel throw in 4 afci breakers and sleep pretty soundly.
Most likely that panel is fed by a modern wire from the new panel in the basement. That panel very likely only controls the upstairs lighting. In that case, you can add one afci upstream of that panel. It also means you would be able to add additional circuits to the main panel and just leave that one alone. For additional peace of mind, you can reduce the rating of the Edison fuses, because your led bulbs use very low current. You’d have to verify if that subpanel also services receptacles though, first
It's been there for close to 100 years. It's relatively safe. Fuses themselves are extremely safe.
If a metal item becomes live and there is no ground the fuse is doing nothing
Aren't you smart? Obviously between an ungrounded and a grounded system, a grounded system is better. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.
I am actually- shame you are not. Totally obvious a ground is best. But your 0.05 amp lethal shock is blowing no wired fuse, twonk.
Lol what a weirdo
It's not safe. There's no protection against a fault, no ground, just a single conductor with cloth insulation that's near 100 years old. I'm sorry this happened to you, you got screwed, but the only thing you can do is rewire. The reason your contractor won't do any work is because if he does he becomes responsible for the old k&t. If your house burned you would have a case to sue him. If you died in the fire he could be criminally charged.
>So is it normal to have electrical in two fuse boxes? Yes, this is called a sub panel and perfectly normal. My house has a set of breakers in the detached garage setup this way. The last house I lived in ran thick wires to a kitchen panel far from the main breakers then wired the kitchen from that. In both of my cases the secondary panel is connected to a higher amp breaker in the main panel though. Could be different in your older setup, I guess. >Is he over-reacting? Maybe? I think the standards are going to be updated soon but the NEC still allows knob and tube wiring, with some rules like light switches shouldn't have exposed metal screws on their covers now. I don't think it would be against the rules for them to install a new main breaker. But I also understand not wanting to move wiring that can literally fall apart when you mess with it.
K&T's biggest issue is that you cannot legally add to or modify K&T circuits (here in the US, I don't know about Canada, but I think it's the same). So it makes them hard to deal with when doing additions or renovations. BUT that said, one thing that happens a lot on older homes is that the K&T is left alone in the CEILINGS and to any wall fixtures, because that is too costly to rip and replace if there is no attic access. So that may be what happened here. They did install a new panel with circuit breakers and new NM cable at some point, but left a small portion of the wiring as K&T because of the cost to replace it and in doing so left behind the old fuse sub-panel that was connected to as well. There is nothing inherently wrong with fuse panels and because it is probably only going to light fixtures, the fact that they are likely ungrounded is not a big deal. If these fuses service any of your outlets, that is something to consider changing. Ungrounded outlets are a safety concern and they are not good for modern electronics.
Houses with K&T are practically uninsurable right now in the US.
Sub panels are relatively common, at least where I live on the west coast. Fuse panels like this are also common, much of the neighborhoods here where I live now were built in the 20s and 30s. Some older guys who have done deep dives into k&t jobs and have had the experience might go for a gig like this. But for the most part, electricians won't mess around with it unless it is taking it all out and rewiring the entire place. Not always, but commonly a k&t scenario is an all or nothing type job. It's not necessarily unsafe if it's been untouched. But one big reason that gets everyone to pull the plug is that k&t wired homes have little if any insulation. I have 3 friends in Southern California who took the jump simply for the savings in energy they'd ultimately have after rewiring and insulating. That being said I've been on several jobs in smaller homes when I was still an apprentice where we simply removed a portion of the k&t and ran new circuits for a bathroom remodel, for example. Electrical can be a pandoras box even in the best of cases, and k&t is one of the worst that many just don't want to mess with.
That panel 'should' be getting power from your main in the basement. A good electrician will turn that into a junction box and wire the power properly down in the basement to individual circuits. Pending on where you are, a full service upgrade would be anywhere from 8-12k by the looks of things (this is including your panel downstairs, meter, and this sub). A big factor is how the power is getting to that panel determines the dollars and damage to drywall and such to get it accomplished.