Our family lives in an 1913 appartment building that belongs to my father and my uncle (9 appartments, approx. 1000 sq. ft each) "Solid" plastered brick walls on the exterior (mud used as mortar and also as plaster, which means for example the walls separating 2 appartments are so weak that when you start to channel for wiring or let alone 1" gas line the bricks come out on the back side) interior walls 2" solid gypsum ( some predecessor of drywall)
When our neighbour (an old lady of 80) died, we made one big appartment out of the entire 2nd floor. I did a complete rewire. The first wiring I could date dated from 1913 when the house was built.(cloth-and-rubber covered wires in conduit made of asphalted cardboard) Apart from this I found about every possible wiring method and violation.Romex with old color coding, with new color coding, zip cord, pvc sheathed wires in flex and rigid pvc conduit,...
The ceilings were plaster and lath. The lathes were nailed onto the joists, then straw mats were nailed onto the lathes. Finally the plaster was applied. The wiring was just cloth covered single wires laying around loosely between the joists. All connections were twisted and taped, one started arcing and nearly burnt the whole thing down. Once I got bit when I was stripping the 4 layers of wallpaper because the wet walls were too conductive. At this point I decided to screw out the fuse before doing anything with water again. The floors were sagging nearly 2".
I finally ended up doing a complete rewire starting at the meter feeder fuses in the staircase. New meter feeder, relocating meter, have electrician to hook up the meter (200 Euro for 4 hours of labour!) new panel with breakers and whole appartment gfi instead of cartridge fuses, dedicated 16 ampere circuits for washing mashine and dishwasher, everything wired pvc sheathed wire in pvc flex conduit. Now we're in progress of redoing the floors (reawakening lost techniques, no one would do these old oak wood fishbone pattern floors any more, 4 companies suggested using new wood, which looks not nearly as godd as the old)
I'll try to post pics of some of the old work and the after pics.
