a live, uncapped wire in the wall, for starters

11 years ago

We have an old home, had it completely rewired (from K&T and previous owner's sketchy wiring "upgrades") four years ago when we bought it. We were not impressed with electrician's work ethic (slow, messy even though they guaranteed a clean job site, multiple unnecessary holes in our plaster) but it all passed the first inspection (which then allowed us to cover open walls). They never finished their work, in part because we did not have light fixtures for some areas at the time so we agreed we'd have them come back to complete later. Well, later came, and they ignored our calls and emails. Decided we didn't want them back in our house anyway. Never did get a final inspection done as other electricians of course don't want to pull a permit for someone else's work.

Now we are gutting two rooms and a hallway where the plaster is in terrible condition, and some of the things we've found have us swearing at the electricians. But I wanted to ask if these things are truly as egregious as they seem to us, or within acceptable range for rewiring an old house.

The worst, to me, was a live, uncapped wire loose in the wall. Just -- there. No idea what it was intended for, if they just lost track of it or what. Assume based on its location that it comes from the panel.

Other oddities -- a switch that doesn't connect to anything. It's live, but controls nothing. It's meant to control the hall light above it, but the box for that light is only wired to the smoke detector (!). We never did put up a light fixture, so we never had any way to know the wiring was not done right. It seems really odd to us that they would wire a light fixture off of a smoke detector -- isn't it? There's another switch in our kitchen that we think might be meant to control that hall light too, but again, it doesn't seem to connect to it so we have no idea where it actually goes. We're wondering if the switch is wired to the smoke detector, actually -- need to investigate that when we get a chance.

So -- how bad are these things, on a scale from "even the best electrician can miss something like that in the confusion of rewiring an old house" to "holy crap, even a monkey could have done a better job"?

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Comments (3)

Ron Natalie
11 years ago
If it is connected to a life circuit some where, it needs to terminate in a box. It's possible it's some abandoned piece of wire (in which case it's just sloppy but OK), but if it runs to power (even a shut off breaker) it should have been properly terminated.

The mystery switch isn't a code issue, just indicative of leaving the job half done. As long as the smoke is not connected to a switched circuit, there's not particularly anything wrong with using lighting circuit/box to power it.
J M
Original Author
11 years ago
Thanks for the input. Further investigation showed that the light fixture is not wired through the smoke detector after all, but is properly wired to two switches (incl. mystery switch). Given that another light fixture in the house is wired to an outlet rather than a switch, it is only mildly reassuring that this turned out to be OK.

The mystery live wire turns out to be coming from another smoke detector. Seems they thought they would be wiring one more in the series and then they forgot or decided not to but never went back to remove and/or terminate the wire.

We will pull it (because it's too short to be of any use) and take the opportunity while the walls are open and holes already exist for the wiring to add one more smoke detector in a spot we think could use it (hallway just outside living room which has a wood burning fireplace).

I still want to know how mad I should be at the electrician.
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pharkus
11 years ago
I wouldn't call the same electrician back for future work, but by the sound it doesn't seem he wants you to call him back anyway. I'd say simply not calling him for future work is a perfectly even and amicable solution for both parties.

Your complaints are a miswired light that turned out not to be miswired at all, and a single wire that was likely an incomplete portion of a job that was terminated prematurely knowing that it was incomplete. If you stop someone before they are done, they are not going to be done.

"Slow" can only be relative to other jobs and we don't know how your house is constructed or the scope or complexity of the job. It may have been more difficult than you knew or the electrician originally expected, and thus may have been taking longer than others. The same is true about the extraneous holes in your plaster. Actually, I hate plaster with a passion for exactly this reason. If your house is old enough that you're dealing with plaster everywhere, I'd say with relative certainty that the job was not the easiest.

So, on your proposed scale, I think I would place this all the way down below the lowest level, and label it "things were abandoned, not missed, and as much of the job as was completed was completed effectively.