Posted by Clint Dixon on Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 18:37:40 :
In Reply to: Re: Horror stories posted by MoparNorm on Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 17:41:54 :
My Dad’s house is a doublewide mobile home that was bought new and set up on a concrete block foundation with basement in 1964. At least it is not one of those that came with aluminum wiring, but it did have a nasty quirk immediately after the contractor turned the keys over to Dad. It seems that each time someone would walk up and touch the aluminum storm door or siding, they would get a jolt. It was determined that someone must have driven a siding nail through a wire sometime during attaching the two halves of the house together and trimming everything out. The contractor’s answer was to reverse the hot and neutral wires on one particular circuit at the fuse box.
My first encounter with this neat fix came one day when I was installing a new chandelier in the dining room. I had turned off the wall switch and had verified that all the lights and appliances were without power and there were no other wires in the ceiling box. I nearly got knocked off of the ladder when I touched what I thought was the safe white neutral and the ground with my fingers.
Two lessons learned that day. Don’t work by turning off only the wall switch, and don’t trust what you think you see.
Nearly 35 years after the house was put up, I found the problem while tearing into the floor to build a spiral staircase to the basement. A short loop of Romex got pinched between the I-beams in the floors of the two halves of the house when they were married together. I used the opportunity to run new wire and reroute the circuit. I never could pull a remaining short section of the old wire out though.
Junior
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