In this episode, John Maher interviews Joe Malone, a master electrician with Cape Cod Heat Pumps and Electrical, about essential aspects of electrical wiring and rewiring. Joe explains how modern codes improve safety and outlines various wiring types found in older homes, from knob and tube to the latest Romex wiring. They discuss when to consider rewiring, common issues like rodent damage, and safety measures for running wires in homes and businesses. For more information, visit Cape Cod Heat Pumps and Electrical.
John Maher: Hi. I’m John Maher and I’m here today with Joe Malone, Master Electrician with Cape Cod Heat Pumps and Electrical, an HVAC and electrical contractor in Marstons Mills, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, focused on detail, quality and professionalism. Today, our topic is electrical wiring and rewiring. Welcome, Joe.
Joe Malone: Hey, John. How are you?
Maher: Good, thanks. How are you doing?
Malone: Good.
Electrical Wiring Code Requirements
Maher: So, Joe, how do you ensure electrical wiring meets code requirements in a home or business?
Malone: So, these days, there’s a lot of brand new codes that have come up. The last four to eight years in our trade has really grown with a lot of requirements. There’s a lot of protection for people, seems to be the major focus and trying to prevent people from causing accidents that they don’t necessarily know that they could be causing with using extension cords where they shouldn’t be, or using the wrong size wiring.
There’s a lot of folks that will do their own handyman wiring and we get called in to fix it quite often, which it’s fine. But as far as making sure it meets the current code, again, there’s just significant continuing education that we have to go through. Every so often, they come out with a brand new version of the Electrical Code Book that we have to follow to a T by the law.
And Massachusetts here actually amends the code to be even tougher and more strict. So we sit through multiple hours of a class, go through everything, and there’s a lot of, again, continuing ed with electrical inspectors, local chapters, and other electricians. We have to just make sure that everything’s up to the current safety.
Different Types of Wiring
Maher: What are the different types of wiring, if there are different types, used in homes and businesses? Or talk a little bit maybe about what you see in some of the older homes in the area.
Malone: Yeah, Cape Cod’s a fun one because the homes, especially here in New England, have been around since the beginning of the country. In the beginning of electrification of homes was old knob and tube wiring. You may hear that a lot with home inspections and a lot of the older homes is individual porcelain holders, really, that just sit nailed into the structural framing of a home.
And then there’s individual wires that are run along it that are tapped onto and soldered onto, and then it goes all over the place. If any of that’s found these days, the majority of homeowners insurance companies are requiring them to get fixed, or else they will just not insure the home because of the risk of fire.
Again, technologies changed so we’ve updated that. There’s different levels of what’s called BX wiring. There’s an older metal wrapped wiring that had two cloth wrapped pieces of aluminum that were just run through it and those were tapped off of. And then the next round of wiring was something called armored cable, which then included a ground wire because they started realizing they needed to give a safe path for the electricity to get back to Earth where it wants to go. And then everything was updated.
Romex is one of the name brands of a wire that was invented. It’s more of what you see these days with white wire, and yellow wire, and orange wire for the different thicknesses of wire, which is a much safer and more modern way of wiring a home. Excuse me. And a lot of the older homes have stuff that was wrapped in cloth and just was different iterations from the 40s, the 50s, the 60s.
And the current stuff we see now really came about in the 90s when it got more streamlined, more popular, more UL certified under better laboratories. They do a lot of fireproof testing because that’s the main concern with any of the electrical, is fire. They don’t want any fumes to spread. They don’t want things to overheat and cause fires, so the current wiring now is more adept at not burning up as quick.
New Types of Electrical Wiring
Maher: And those are those wires that we typically see that are somewhat flat. Maybe they’re wrapped in a yellow rubbery plastic or something like that, right?
Malone: Yep, that’s the stuff you’ll see these days. Any newer home that was built or had any work done to it since the early 90s, you’ll see a lot of the wiring, it’s more of a flattened cable with a plastic coating on it that we run based on the need on the opposite end.
When to Rewire a Building
Maher: So, you mentioned with the old knob and tube wiring, if you encounter that, you’re required to replace that. Are there other situations where you might need to rewire a building or a home?
Malone: Yeah. Some of it’s for convenience. When people are doing any work on their home, if the walls are open, that’s the perfect time, perfect time to just run a couple of new wires, bring it up to the current status. And when the houses were originally built, there might’ve been one outlet in every room, one light in every room if you were lucky because that’s all that was needed because back then, they didn’t have a lot of electrical heavy appliances.
You may have had a lamp, maybe, if you were lucky back in the 60s, but now everything we have is electric. Everybody has some form of a phone, or a laptop, or an alarm clock, or vacuums, and every single thing is possible. Every appliance we have these days just needs a plug.
So, the other time we get any kind of requirement is if there’s any sort of damage. Sometimes you have wiring in the walls that it can overheat over time. Older wiring just wears out. It wasn’t meant to carry the amount of demand that we’re drawing on these days because everything is such heavy on electrification and everything we have needs to plug in and charge.
Common Wiring Problems
Maher: Just, are there any common situations where you find wiring problems and how do you go ahead and address those?
Malone: So, one of the things we’ll run into, it’s not as bad now, especially with the change of seasons, we’ll start to see it more, is there’s a lot of damaged wires from rodents. Mice will get in the walls, squirrels. We’ve even had snakes in some places before. They like to find the wire because it’s nice and warm and its plastic, so they’ll chew on it to make their nests and then that becomes a damaged wire, which then may potentially trip a circuit breaker, or just things will stop working because they chewed through a wire.
People can damage it through. Sometimes when you have new siding put on, the carpenters will be nailing all the shingles up and they’ll send a nail right through a wire. It happens. It’s accidents. People are hanging shelves, you can send a screw right through. You put up a piece of artwork, you can drill right into a wire. It’s usually damage like that that’ll end up causing the problems.
Safety Precautions when Rewiring a Home or Business
Maher: And what sort of safety precautions do you take when you’re doing wiring and rewiring projects?
Malone: So, when we have everything clean and clear and wide open, there’s a lot of newer regulations that have come around because of finding damage to things that were done in the past. So, we have to have a certain clearance from the edge of a stud to where we staple our wires to keep them secure so they’re not flopping around in a wall. There’s certain pathways you’re allowed to take, and if you cross over somewhere with a wire or holes too close to the edge of something, you have to put metal guards on them so people can’t accidentally drill through them, or think they’re screwing into a stud and they end up actually screwing into your wire.
There’s certain places you’re allowed to run wires in a basement. So, if you run them in the wrong place, people will tend to put clothes hangers on them and hang an old jacket or a pair of mittens or something off of one of your wires, which causes stress and strain on it and can again create a hotspot or a pinched wire.
Maher: All right. Well, that’s really great information, Joe. Thanks again for speaking with me today.
Malone: Thanks for having me.
Information About Cape Cod Heat Pumps and Electrical
Maher: And for more information, you can visit the Cape Cod Heat Pumps and Electrical website at ccheatpumps.com, or call 508-833-HVAC. That’s 508-833-4822.
