David Carter is the owner of Handy Man Repairs, Inc. in Philadelphia, Mississippi. He has more than 50 years of experience in the construction business, and earned his BS in Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1969. In this piece, he explains how rewiring an older home could save you money and make your environment safer.
The biggest benefit to rewiring an older home is safety. A faulty or old wiring system is a fire hazard. You get some of these homes that were built when electric first came out, and some of them even have the old gas pipes in for the gas lamps. Anything like that could really cause a safety problem that homeowners need to be aware of.
Older wiring systems can be fragile, and the insulation can even break off. That makes for a dangerous situation, especially considering these are the homes that we live and sleep in.
In addition to safety, homeowners have to think about how much electricity they are using today compared to how much homeowners were using 50 years ago. Back when many of these older homes were first built and wired, we did not have TVs and computers—all the things that we use electricity for today. So nowadays a lot more load is on our circuits, which homeowners need to be aware of.
Even the wiring code has changed since a lot of these older homes were built. In fact, wiring code changes slightly every single year. So even if your home isn’t, say, 100 years old, you still may want to call in a handyman to take a look and make sure everything is up to code.
All too often I have homeowners who call in asking for more electrical outlets. In fact, in just the past month, I have had three calls from people who wanted additional outlets put in behind their TV because they have got the game box, they have got the satellite, they have got the recorder, and the home entertainment system. These homeowners are smart enough to know that they can’t just add extra octopus outlets, but what I still try to explain to them is that even if I add extra outlets they are still, in most cases, going to need another wire runner or circuit breaker, as well. You can’t just keep doubling up on outlets without adding a circuit breaker to your home electrical system. If you just keep adding outlets, then you are just doing the same thing that you would be doing by using multiple octopus plug-ins.
The safe way to do it in these situations, where homeowners need more electrical outlets for their television and home entertainment systems, is to run another separate wire all the way back from the breaker box and put in another breaker. Of course, doing something like this is not a quick thing, and rewiring an older home is a big project. Oftentimes, the price that a homeowner is quoted for a rewiring project is based on time and on materials that are going to be needed.
Usually, a project like that is going to run $50 to $60 an hour, but the copper prices are really what has gone up. Copper prices are outrageous these days, so that is where a good bulk of the costs will to come from.
To give an example, the type of wire that goes to an electric stove—say it is 100 to 125 feet long—is going to be over $100 just for the cable itself. Copper prices have gone up so much, in fact, that people are even stealing it now. Pipes, wires, anything thieves can get their hands on is being stolen and salvaged.
Despite the price of copper, though, I will not use aluminum wiring and I cannot recommend it to people, either. Aluminum wires are a fire hazard, so even if they are cheaper, they are still not worth it.
If you are a homeowner who is contemplating rewiring his home, a good rule of thumb is to expect that it is going to take three guys about three days (definitely less than a week) to completely rewire a 2,000-square-foot home.
In older homes it can be tough to access the area where you are drilling holes, and I have even seen guys who will put conduit in as an alternative. But when I do a job like that, I make sure that the rewiring is done in a way that adds safety and efficiency to your house, and also looks aesthetically pleasing.
