This Old House: Knob and Tube Wiring

After a brief hiatus from the blogosphere, in what I will call blogger’s block, I am back with a new collection of posts named This Old House. While the moniker obviously comes from the well known fix-it magazine, I have chosen it to dedicate posts that show my passion for old houses—selling them (or wanting to), living in them, and just generally appreciating their existence. From the gas cook-tops and the worn wood floors to the wood-burning fireplaces and the wavy glass of the original wood windows, I just love old houses. One day, I will fix one up myself. But for now…

It has been one year since my husband Chad and I put an offer on the place we now call home. How time flies. The house was built in 1920, but someone--Leonard Rutan we later found out--put some real TLC into our old new home, adding granite countertops, recessed lights, a built-in speaker system and plantation shutters, among other modern amenities. [Leonard Rutan owns a women's clothing store in the River Oaks area.] The house is charming, yet still very functional, almost 90 years later.

What we didn’t know when we fell in love with what we saw was that some of the internal aspects of the house were not as updated as the external ones. Our house had an unidentifiable amount of still-active old wiring, called Knob and Tube, which was common in houses built before 1930. While there are houses that still fully operate with this type of electrical system and minds that think the system is--in some ways--superior to current ones, the powers that be say it’s just not safe.

One of my go-to inspection companies, introduced to me by the late, great Realtor Warren Strauss, is Fox Inspection Group. Here’s what inspector Mark Chalmers of Fox has to say about Knob and Tube: “When electrical wiring gets old, the insulation can become brittle and fall off. If that uninsulated area comes in contact with something flammable, it can start a fire. For this reason, homeowners insurance is difficult to obtain and is priced higher than it is for newer homes.”

While Chalmers says he would live in a home with active Knob and Tube--depending on its condition, what my husband and I found out was that it was more than difficult to obtain the required homeowners insurance on a home with active K&T wiring--whatever its condition. If it’s active, it’s a no-go.

Due to time, heat and possibly hungry critters, a home inspector on oldhouseweb.com says, “This [K&T] system is rarely intact after 80 or so years of use.”

While Steve Hartwig of John R. Ray & Sons worked tirelessly to find us insurance to cover it, after hearing “no” from about nine companies to finally hear “yes” from one, we questioned its safety ourselves.

Though it was not cheap to do (about $6/square-foot), we had our entire new old house rewired by a licensed electrician and his team before moving in. They had to get permits from the City of Houston, and their work had to be inspected. It was a week-long project, but the headache was worth it. We feel comfortable living in an old house with all new wiring that stands up to 2009 code.

As a Realtor, my reader is probably questioning why I didn’t know more about Knob & Tube than I did. Our inspection report (not performed by Fox) briefly mentioned it, but did not call great attention to it. As Realtors, we are not experts on electricity or home building. We are experts in negotiation, the real estate market and servicing our clients. We learn with experience about the other things, but will direct a buyer or seller to the appropriate expert.

So with the above in mind, I plan to send this post to the Texas Real Estate Commission in hopes that they will add “Presence of Active Knob & Tube Wiring” to the Seller’s Disclosure form, just as “Previous Use of Premises for Manufacture of Methamphetamine” was added in 2007. I have no doubt that this would help all parties involved in a real estate transaction of an old house.

Photo: OldHouseWeb.com