• gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 days ago

    Lol, my current house’s wiring is a bunch of DIY bullshit that even an ex-electrician spent an hour trying to figure out before telling me to pay for someone to take the time to get it fixed

    They turned one of the light switches by the “front” door into a dummy plate, wired it and the fan to 2 switches in what used to be a spot for a plug, and managed to tie that whole system to the kitchen light and the outside porch light

    Cannot find a consistent path with a multimeter to save our fucking lives, I gave up and we just don’t have our kitchen light working for like 1.5 years

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      I bought a house last year and I was somewhat mystified by why the two light switches next to the door were horizontal instead of the normal vertical arrangement. Turns out they had tried to turn a single box into a double by basically just gouging a bigger hole in the cinderblock wall and filling it with a softball-sized lump of caulk into which they stuffed the two switches; somehow they could only get this whole mess to stay in place by putting the switches horizontally. For bonus points, one of the switches did nothing except producing a distant humming noise and then tripping one of the breakers after a few seconds.

      • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        8 days ago

        Oh, hey, this guy lived at the same house as me!

        The plug-turned-switch at my place is also 2 switches sideways where they don’t really fit!

        Distant humming and tripping the breaker sounds like arcing in the walls, beautiful and safe <3

        • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          arcing in the walls

          Yeah, when I rebuilt the kitchen/living room wall, I found the stud that had held one of the original outlets and it was scorched black where the box had been. Kind of amazing the house was still standing.

          I did reuse the scorched stud. 2x4s are fucking expensive and these ones from the 1940s were perfectly straight and completely knot-free.

    • Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 days ago

      My 5’x4’ bathroom has 3 seperate circuits feeding it. There is one circuit for the lights, one for the fan, and one for the single outlet in there. Those are the only things on those 3 circuits.

      My basement has fully wired electrical outlets in the walls that were just sheetrocked over when the previous owner “finished the basement”.

      My basement has an electrical outlet on every other stud throughout the whole thing; they are all on the same 15A breaker.

      The the upstairs bedrooms are on seperate circuits except for one outlet on the north wall of each bedroom which both share the same seperate circuit.

      I think my house was wired by M.C. Escher.