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Yup, definitely! Last Saturday I was invited to a party at a boat house near Vienna. Actually it was quite large (club house of a canoe club) and all wood construction, around 1920. It is a miracle in every regard that the house is still standing! Electrical: the wiring was a wild mix of modern (read: 1970s) cable, 1950s cable and cloth wire in conduit...
Gas: the pipes are probably very old, the appliances are 1970s and earlier. The kitchen has a vent-free (vents into the room air) gas water heater, the area of plank wall above the heater is lioned with asbestos panels...
Structural: a roof rafter is completely rotted through, the remaining section is jacked up with a tiny hydraulic car jack against the floor...
Let me put it this way: sitting up there on the second floor didn't feel comfortable!

My parent's house (built 1927) back in Cedar Rapids was done by two guys my grandfather hired to do, you guessed it, carp work. Somewhere in there they re-did the wiring in most of the house (mind you, the house is >3k sf). I took a look at it recently, and the wiring is the current reason why I don't visit very often. There is a 50A breaker feeding a 25A self-fused furnce AND a general recept. circuit... There are too many unlabeled breakers to count... Most of the house has ungrounded but three-prong outlets (with ground conductor in the box)... From that I'm worried they never installed a ground rod for the house (I had no license, so I never went into the panel)... I found box after box overstuffed and missing covers in a ceiling-less basement (didn't even need to count wires)... Instead of drilling into the wall to install phone lines- they drilled into the floor, _ran them under the carpet_ and then to the wall jack ~3" AFF. Best of all (non-electric, though) is they installed a sump pump... on a house with a floating foundation. The whole house leans now...

Sorry for the long rant

-Edit for clarification-
-Edit for another violation

-tj

[This message has been edited by trobb (edited 07-15-2006).]