Hey fellow sparktarians, my wife and I are moving into a new home, our first together. What is best and worst findings in the wiring in your new place? The worse for me was in this place thus far is the panel over the bathroom stool. My previous house was counter top receptacles were fed from the pigtail that was made up and plugged into the 50 stove receptacle behind the gas stove

A light wired with doorbell wire.

Worst?

All of the splices installed by the previous homeowner twisted and taped. No covers on the boxes in the attic and they were buried in blow in cellulose insulation.
I ended up abandoning every circuit that was run in "new" romex and rewiring all of them.
The dryer was on 12ga romex.
... that sort of thing.

I'd say an outlet wired with 0.5mm2 wire (20 AWG) on a 16A breaker was pretty classy. They also embedded conduit singles (single layer of PVC isolation) in masonry/plaster on that run. I didn't really like the totally frayed cloth wires outdoors either (there were covers on the junction boxes, but by no means weatherproof, the exposed copper was black and green with corrosion. Some Al thrown in there too for good measure.

Well, this isn't really 'fair,' since the house was built in 1957 .... but, here goes:

Found, in the past year, as remodelling progresses:
1) TO CODE, original: NO way to shut off power at the service. First opportunity after the meter is 20+ ft. inside house, as the panel;

2) REPAIR: attic fire damaged branch circuits, but somehow failed to damage the service. Branch circuits repaired with new wire and 'flying splices;'

3) Laundry room addition had extension cord disappear into the floor; under floor this was flying-spliced to some Romex, which fed an outdoor, handy-box receptacle;

4) Kitchen range circuit failed megger;

5) Added air conditioner circuit was Romex uside of flex where exposed; just Romex laying in the dirt of the crawl space for most of the run;

6) Air conditioner feed and dryer feed were triple-lugged onto the meter base;

7) For some unknown reason, virtually every receptacle had the drywall around it broken away, so that the faceplates did not cover the holes. Every (ungrounded) circuit had 3-prong receptacles; and,

8) No ground rod, and water bond missing (wire under house removed).

Previous owner had 'problems' with earth [ground] leaks tripping the supply, so he snipped through all the silly little green wires! That fixed it! Argghhh!

...upon investigation, my oldest son found the only earth [ground] wire in the house was actually....the telephone line coming in!

My ground electrode was compromised too. The first night I was here I lit myself up on the electric cook top, standing barefoot on the terrazzo floor.

I found the ground rod clamp corroded almost off. I fixed it that night with a <YIKES> hose clamp and the next day I bought another rod a clamp and some 6ga wire.
I tightened up all the lugs and basically went over the whole service. That was when I noticed the separate service conductors were coming in their own 1/2" romex connector in the side of the panel.

A few weeks ago I read about a German guy who moved into a new flat. He set everything up and it seemed to work. After a while he wanted to move the coax to the TV and unplugged it. When he did, the TV lost power.

Upon closer investigation he discovered that the socket was earthed to the neutral (legal in Germany until 1973) but the previous tenant had managed to disconnect the neutral upstream of the socket (the feed was looped across the ceiling and when somebody took the ceiling light down, they broke the neutral connection). This had gone unnoticed, because the neutral terminal was connected to the earth terminal, and the earth wire from the plug was connected to the screen of the coax inside the TV (large class 1 plasma TV).

Range hood powered with zip cord scratched into the drywall and plastered over.

Front porch lights powered through a piece of bell wire.

I'm not an installer, but as an engineer have sometimes been involved in investigating "odd" faults. Once found a house where one end of a (UK) ringmain ran from the intended 32amp breaker but the other end was terminated in the 16amp intended for the water heater. The water heater cable went into the ring main breaker. The consequence, (un-noticed for several years), was that neither circuit could be switched off until both breakers were off.

From my house, a flying splice wrapped in duct tape and plastered over, zip cord in conduit feeding some lights, a circuit fed at both ends from two different breakers. In a friend's basement, turning off the lights and seeing the dull red glow of some old corroded BX feeding the stove and using the armor as one phase conductor.
/mike

I had the zip cord in drywall method in a bathroom, partially buried behind tile. Originally, the bathroom only had a wall light above the sink and somebody wanted a ceiling light pronto.

Back in the 50s and 60s, grossly undersized wiring was extremely common for quickly added sockets in Austria. People clipped all sorts of flex to the wall, including 0.5mm2 low-voltage zip cord with nails driven through the centre, sometimes accidentally hitting the conductor itself.

Isn't that Ok as long as the nail "only contacts one conductor"?

Well, there's no short, but unless the nail goes through the neutral, I'd consider it a serious isolation fault <In one case, the extension wasn't even ahrdwired but connected with an old non-earthed plug, which means there was no means to ensure polarity. Depending on how the plug was inserted, the nails could have ended up either in the live or in the neutral.

In my dad's house (built in 2000) a whole bedroom wall with no outlets. The entire wall on the opposite side of washer/dryer space in the laundry room with no outlets. Some switches in unexpected places, like laundry room light out in the hall by the door to the laundry room. One of 2 kitchen light switches out in the hall next to doorway to kitchen. A couple places in the living room and music room are beyond 6 feet from an outlet.

My dad just thinks the electrician was a cheapskate.

An electrician will do it right. That's a hack job

For some reason, in Florida the switch for a light was out in the hall until sometime in the 70s. In the condo I had in Treasure Island, the switch for the overhead light in the kitchen was in the living room.

Let's face it - some so-called electricians ARE hacks and destroy the reputation of the entire trade. In Vienna there seems to be a shockingly large number of them. Recently I had to walk a journeyman with 30+ years of job experience through wiring an RCD like a kindergarten kid!

He seriously didn't get it why the RCD would trip if the phases were connected to the RCD and the neutral taken from elsewhere. An identical situation would be a GFI or GFI breaker in the US. Even an apprentice should know that if you are downstream of a GFI outlet you can't just "borrow" a neutral from an unprotected circuit! He'd also happily connect the line side to the screw shell of an Edison fuse holder (Neozed fuse).

My house, built in 2005.. First owner.. Plug anything into a master bedroom outlet and the AFCI trips. Found a backwired outlet where the installer had stripped about 2" more insulation than necessary on the neutral and the bare ground was making contact.

A problem that crept up about a year later was the lighting circuit for the east side of the house would trip if you took a shower in the guest bathroom... Turns out that a wire was pinched in the bathroom light fixture and condensate was finishing the connection to the metal fixture base..

Light fixture in the toilet area of the master bath was being held by one wood screw (They put the box too close to the HVAC vent to mount it correctly.

Other than that just replacing the cheap outlets as they wear out.

My grandparents house had a Bulldog panel where the whole 3bd/2ba ran off 3 circuits since someone broke the screws off all the other breaker positions in the buss..

My house I built from scratch so no problems here, but when my son bought a house it was so bad that I had to rip out all drywall and start from scratch again. The usual problems like, no connectors on RX and BX wire. Open splice boxes, BX wire in plastic boxes. No wire nuts, etc.

My parents' house, we've lived here six years as of last week. 60 year old tract house in Levittown, previous owners were the family of a deceased handyman who used to own it and three neighboring houses... It never ends!!!

Handyman the estate owner's hired cut in new GFCI's in the bathrooms, ran 14/2 back to the panel then spliced it with the existing lighting circuit that the old switch/receptacle was tied to. Fixed in five minutes with another 15amp breaker.

Old fireplace had fans with a switch in the wall. There were two new receptacles on either side of the wall wired through the garage to the panel with 14/2. The guy who put the fireplace in used the original receptacle's ungrounded 14/2 spliced in the wall to feed the fan switch. I still haven't fixed that one since its buried behind brick on the house side and drywall in the garage.

Dryer circuit ran on the wall until it dipped into the wall next to the panel in the garage. Only problem, the wire on the wall was old cloth 10/3 and the cable coming into the panel was new orange 10/3. I ran a new 10/3 on the surface until I had a chance to rip the wall down. When I did I found the flying splice and still have it sitting in the garage. Now it's all run through the wall.

We pulled the range out to replace it and found the receptacle was buried in the wall behind a piece of paneling. It's screwed to the 2x3 stud. The cord goes through a hole cut in the paneling. I still need to fix that.

Now a few months ago I decided to tackle the switch at the top of the stairs that never worked. I replaced the switch and it turns out it controlled the receptacle in the back of my room. Only problem is, the receptacle box has the old cloth 14/2 while the switch leg in the switch box is newer white 14/2.

Not to mention all the wainscoting that was put on the lower half of the walls, none of the boxes were extended and some of the receptacles have nails holding them in the wall. And some of them are partially buried behind trim so I can't replace them without a chisel. There's also a few ceiling fixtures hacked onto old recessed fixtures. I need to take new pictures and submit them.

I've told my parents if they ever sell me this house they better kiss the interior goodbye because its getting gutted.

I forgot one, though this isn't so much a hack as it is time taking its toll. The lights started blinking throughout the house whenever the A/C or boiler would kick on. Peco wouldn't believe that the neutral was bad until the cable boxes smoked and the Comcast service to the house burned up since it became the new neutral! And why didn't the neutral just find its way to ground via the service ground? The original 1955 #10 aluminum wire water ground burned itself off the water line. They came out and replaced the taps at the house with ones that don't date to the 50s.