Old House Handyman: Inspection of house's wiring leads to shocking find

During a recent blitz to knock out a long list of to-do items, I came to an outlet in Daughter #2’s new-to-her old house that sent shivers up my spine and triggered nightmares of two similarly scary outlets.

While on a routine reconnaissance mission for things to fix or clean up, I stared into a half-bath at the back of her century-old house. Looking for nothing in particular, I was scanning the small space when I spied wire like that on most table lamps. It rose from behind an outlet cover plate and slithered upward across the 1970s paneling and along a window frame before climbing to the top of the wall and disappearing behind molding at the top of the wall.

“What the heck?” I wondered.

I went upstairs to check out the room above that space. There, I found a four-plug outlet directly above the spot where the lamp wire disappeared into the wall.

Flashback time. After my bride and I bought our first house – an 1876 Italianate beauty with 2-foot-thick brick walls, arched windows, a front and back staircase, and decorative woodwork – we spent seven years restoring it. Along the way, we occasionally opened a portion of a wall or some floorboards to find – you guessed it! – wiring that looked like it came from an old lamp.

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And that’s when I started saying something that I’ve said many times since then, especially when looking over old electrical systems: “It’s a miracle this house is still standing.”

In our Old House #1, the scariest outlet was in an upstairs hallway. There was no electricity in the house when it was built. It was lit with natural gas lamps. We know this because we found small gas lines in walls and ceilings that fueled the lamps. I also found, under a floorboard, a tag that had been on the wiring that was installed in the 1920s.

But the outlet that had been installed in the upstairs hallway was an add-on – just like the one in our daughter’s house. It was in the floor, which bugged me because I figured it would be a good place for dust and dirt to collect in receptacles where dirt and electricity shouldn’t mix. And that particular floorboard was loose, so I pulled it up to find a horrifying scene:

An extension cord wire!

Someone had tapped into the electrical system to add an outlet. And they used extension cord wire – decades before this discovery in mid-1980s. The black cord was brittle and cracked. I shudder at the thought of what might have happened if someone had plugged in something that drew a lot of electricity – a heater, for example.

“It’s a miracle this house is still standing!” I shrieked.

Years later, we moved into Old House #2, which was built in 1870, and is not near as elegant or fancy as Old House #1, but it has been our home for 30 years now and we love it.

While preparing for contractors to remodel the kitchen, I opened up a wall. I can’t remember why, but when I did, guess what I found.

Extension cord wire connecting an add-on outlet to the main electrical system.

What the heck?!

“It’s a miracle this house is still standing!” I shrieked again.

Fast-forward 20-some years, and I’m looking at the wire in my daughter’s house. It’s snaking up the wall, and I’m having a really bad feeling.

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After finding the outlets upstairs, I figured the easiest way to test where that lamp cord went was to disconnect it and test the outlets upstairs.

Sure enough, I removed the lamp cord from the downstairs outlet, and I found no sign of electricity in the upstairs outlets.

And once again, I muttered: “It’s a miracle this house is still standing.”

In each case, we disconnected the offending wires to preserve our safety and a bit of local history in these old houses.

Alan D. Miller is a former Dispatch editor who teaches journalism at Denison University and writes about old house repair and historic preservation based on personal experiences and questions from readers.

youroldhouse1@gmail.com

@youroldhouse

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Old House Handyman finds scary wires in daughter's house