I love seeing pics like that of old services and installs. I have recently been re-wiring a house in the UK with some very old wiring. Similar to that wooden channelling in your pic, except the whole house was wired with it, even under the floors and loft space. I guess it was our equivalent to K&T. The house in question was wired around 1910 for a D.C. generator supply, before getting connected to the mains around 1930. All the wiring has been in use until now as I am taking it out. It has been a wonderful glimpse of "how it used to be done". Talking of fuseboards with glass doors - I have one of those in my home, from a 1926 installation. I now use it for a 12volt D.C. from my water-powered supply.

Water powered supply? Way to be resourceful. That's cool.

I was once in an old church that was wired entirely like this. There were 18 hanging light fixtures, each home run to one of those old potentionmeter type dimmers. The work was immaculate.

There's an abandoned house a mile from my home that had 120v service. the cables were run ALONG the side of the house on brown porcelain wireholder insulators, one wire hangs off the 2nd insulator, the other wire continues onto a third single insulator on the front of the porch. My guess is the pole used to be in front of the house. (there isn't one there now).

Imagine if someone swapped the hot and the neutral feed before the meter (say at the main fuses) and elsewhere in the house someone placed a load from the now hot neutral to a grounded water pipe, it wouldn't show on the meter? Normally connected loads would still show on the meter, so the power company would think the customer is using his usual amount of power...

My grandma's house had a service that looked like this. No, she didn't cheat on the electric bill... She had 15 amp fuses for the main and 30 amp fuses on the branch circuits...

[This message has been edited by wa2ise (edited 07-26-2006).]

I saw a similarly old service in an abandoned house in Austria recently.
I guess the feed was underground until the house was abandoned, since that area had underground power at least since after WWII, probably much earlier. In the kitchen, close to the ceiling there was a wooden board for the meter (about 1/3 wider and lower than post WWII meter boards). Above, there was what I can only imagine to be the only rewireable fuses I've ever seen in Austria.

A wooden board with four porcelaine cylinders, consisting of a base and a top, screwed together with a long rusty bolt sticking out in the center.

An outdoor light was wired with what looked exactly like US knob & tube but run exposed on the stucco facade!

Interesting that the mains fuses before the meter are not is some form of sealed enclosure.
Couple of alligator clips could yield in free power tapped off.

Swapping line and neutral on the service happens from time to time by the utility when running a new drop to an old installation because the two are likely not identified (or look identical after 60+ years in the weather). If the neutral is grounded in the building something will burn. Hopefully it will burn clear or be caught before the building goes.

"I was once in an old church that was wired entirely like this. There were 18 hanging light fixtures, each home run to one of those old potentionmeter type dimmers. The work was immaculate."

If you wired a church, would you do any less?

Remember, one day, you'll have to face the "immaculate inspection."

First fire I ever investigated was a 120 V two wire system in a vacant house.
The neutral leg was grounded inside the house. It was all piped in old black iron rigid pipe. The service drop went to a Tee condulet with one leg to the meter and back and the other to the panel. The insulation failed at the Tee and energized the pipe all the way through the house. Chared every stud it was attached to. Fire Dept. was called when the drop melted and fell into the yard causing sparks and arcs.
Fire Dept claimed the arcing in the yard caused the house to burn. Meter had been pulled for six months. After I detailed how it really happened they started calling me to help them with fire investigations.
Only good news was that on all two wire services after that the utility would pull the meter and cut it at the pole.
Alan--
"Only thing I don't understand about electricity is why more people don't die each year." Hogan, Chief Inspector, City of Chicago 1982, IAEI meeting.

Notice how that meter is wired.

120V A-base meters have one current coil, connected between the two outside terminals. The neutral may run across the two inside terminals, or it may be pigtailed. It doesn't really matter, since these terminals need not carry the neutral current.

But here, it looks like the hot(?) goes across both line terminals, and the neutral(?) is pigtailed and jumpered across both load terminals. This must be a 240V A-base meter, but I don't really get how it's wired. I know there is a way to hook up a 240V meter to work on a 120V circuit, but I don't know what it is. The 1961 Sangamo manual doesn't mention it. I suppose you could open the test switch; that would allow you to run both current coils in series, while keeping them isolated from the neutral connection to the voltage coil, but then how would you terminate the neutral? There's no lug for that!

The few two-wire services I've seen have had 240V meters, since the meter would have probably been replaced sometime in the last 40 years, when no 120V meters were available.

OK, now that I look at the pic again, the wire that I thought was the hot ends up on the right-hand terminals of the branch-circuit cutouts, where the white wires of those two modern romex runs are terminated. Can we assume that those white wires are connected correctly (at least according to modern practice), as they bypass the fuses? For that matter, can we assume anything, not being able to hold a voltmeter to a photo?

(One thing that we can see is not connected correctly is that 12/3 homerun. The red and black are connected to separate fuseholders. This is a multi-wire branch circuit, fed from a 120V service!)

I have run a 240V meter on 120V before, and it seemed to register 20% less than the actual demand. It was for a public display, so accuracy wasn't an issue. It just had to turn visibly.

yaktx,the 120 volt meters have a jumper on the second & third terminal. one of the potential coils leads hooks to the first screw on the left then the other to the jumper. on the 120 volt meter yu have only one current coil.the 240 volt meter has two current coils,the potiental coils leads are hooked to the first two screws.the current coils are arranged so that one of each is hooked on the first two screws,then ends on the last two.you are correct about a 240 volt meter being slow on 120, but usually this is not a problem for some people.the meter in this thread is hard to say looks to be a 240 volt unit possibly. most A base meters are lie on the left & load on the right.but there are a few exceptions with some of the old westinghouse meters.

Thanks, Circuit Man.

I figured that out after posting this.
I was wrong about the Sangamo manual; the method of connecting a 240V meter for 120V is on page 50. You open the test switch and hook the neutral to it with a fork terminal, then the hot goes across both current coils in series. So you would see a jumper between terminals 3 & 4, and the neutral pigtail is actually terminated separately. That appears to be what we're seeing in this pic.

Interesting that the mains fuses before the meter are not is some form of sealed enclosure.
Couple of alligator clips could yield in free power tapped off.

No doubt this practice was very widespread, especially since these meters were almost always inside the house. When the meter reader knocks, scramble downstairs and remove the jumper first...

See page 52 of Hard Times by Studs Terkel (paperback edition).

I seem to remember us having a discussion about double-pole fusing and when the NEC disallowed it. I can't rememebr what the answer was though -- Late 1920s/early 1930s?

I seem to remember us having a discussion about double-pole fusing and when the NEC disallowed it. I can't rememebr what the answer was though -- Late 1920s/early 1930s?

It was illegal to fuse neutrals of multiwire systems by 1923, possibly several years earlier.

As for single-pole branch circuits, or two-wire services such as this one, at some point it was thrown to the AHJ to decide. Many of us have had the experience of ordering a disconnect and having to specify that it come with a "solid" neutral (like, what other kind is there?). This is because, in the '30s, there were two types of equipment, those with solid neutrals, and those with fused.

I have every NEC from 1940 to the present, and I also have a Terrell Croft volume containing the entire text of the 1923 NEC (sort of an early "Handbook"). The '23 NEC clearly disallowed fused neutrals for multiwire systems but allowed them for two-wire circuits.

From 1940 to 1953, this is the AHJ's call.

The 1956 NEC contains language similar to today, i.e. 240.22 in the 2002 NEC.

My sense is that fused neutrals became markedly less common after the mid-30s. I still have one of those 2-circuit, 4-fuseholder porcelain cutouts. I found it in a long-abandoned barn in Connecticut ten years ago. It was enclosed in a manufactured cutout box, and the wiring was all Type AC cable, I wanna say TW insulation although I can't remember. If it were TW, that means probably 1948 or later. The neutral fuseholders puzzled me to no end!

A similar move to solid neutrals occurred here in Britain, although I'm not sure which edition of our Regs. finally "outlawed" the practice. It may have been as late as the 12th edition (1950) or 13th edition (1955). There were certainly still a good many pre-war double-pole fuseboxes in use, particularly on lighting circuits, as late as the 1970s.

In Austria all that happened A LOT later. I think that fused neutrals are even still allowed today, even though they aren't as common as they used to be, since breakers that fuse the hot and switch the neutral are very common by now.