Knob and Tube Pulled Out of a Vancouver, WA Kitchen Rewire

Knob and tube does not usually announce itself. It sits above the ceiling and behind the plaster in an older house, doing its job most of the time, until a remodel opens a wall and there it is. On this home in north Vancouver the kitchen rewire was the moment to get the last of it out, and Newman Electric took the panel with it.

Why knob and tube has to go, not just get worked around

Knob and tube was the standard for decades and plenty of it is still energized. The problem is not that it was bad work. It is that the system was designed for a house that no longer exists:

• No ground conductor. Every modern appliance, every GFCI, every surge path assumes an equipment ground that knob and tube simply does not have.
• It cannot be buried in insulation. The wiring relies on air around the conductors to shed heat, and a century of retrofit insulation has been packed around it in most houses that still have it.
• The insulation on the conductors is at the end of its life. Rubber and cloth do not stay flexible for a hundred years.
• Splices are often open. Original splices were soldered and taped in free air, not in a box.

Insurers know all of this, which is why knob and tube wiring replacement shows up as a condition on policies and as a lender requirement at sale. Our longer piece on why knob and tube has to come out covers what inspectors look for.

The kitchen is the right place to start

You rarely rewire an old house all at once. You do it where the walls are already open, and a kitchen remodel is the best opportunity you will get:

1. The cabinets are off the walls, so the runs that are hardest to reach are briefly reachable.
2. The kitchen has the highest load density in the house, so it is the room where old wiring is under the most strain.
3. Kitchen circuits have the strictest requirements, which means the new work has to be done properly anyway.

Doing the kitchen removes the worst of it and leaves the rest of the house on a known footing rather than an unknown one.

Moving the panel while it is being replaced

The panel was replaced and relocated in the same visit, which is a change worth making at exactly this moment and almost never worth making on its own.

A panel that has been in an awkward spot for sixty years, buried in a closet or behind a door that no longer opens fully, costs nothing extra to reposition when it is coming off the wall regardless. Doing it later means paying for the whole disconnect and re-landing a second time.

What went back in

The finished kitchen got six recessed cans, under-cabinet lighting along the counter run, a fan and light combo, and the outlets and switches the room actually needed rather than the two the original layout allowed.

Under-cabinet lighting in particular is one of those additions that only makes sense during a rewire. Fishing it into a finished kitchen is real work. Running it while the walls are open is almost free.

Older home in Vancouver with cloth wiring, no grounds, or a kitchen you are about to open up? Call 360-828-7143 or get the knob and tube quoted before the cabinets go back.