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Spent 3 hours on a 3-way switch that should have taken 20 minutes
I was doing a simple 3-way swap in a house built in 1972 over in Arlington... and it turned into a whole afternoon. The old cloth wiring was so brittle that when I touched the first switch, the insulation just crumbled off in my hands. Ended up having to pull new 14/3 through the walls because the travelers were shot in two spots. Took me about 3 hours total, and my back still hurts from crawling around that attic. Has anyone else run into old cloth wiring that just disintegrates when you breathe on it?
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ellis.susan22d ago
I had to learn this exact same lesson the hard way last year. @harpery47 is right about budgeting extra time, but I used to think people were just being dramatic about old cloth wiring until I ran into it myself. That stuff is like handling dried out tape, one wrong move and it's gone. I was swapping a switch in a 1965 house and the insulation just flaked off the second I touched it. After that I stopped assuming I could do quick swaps and started planning for surprises. Three hours sounds about right for what you went through, especially with those attic crawls. I still use half hour estimates for new builds, but anything from the 70s or older gets a full afternoon blocked off now.
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Should have taken 20 minutes" - gotta push back on that a little. In my experience, any time you're working with wiring from the 70s or earlier, you gotta double or triple your time estimate right from the start. Especially cloth stuff, yeah it's brittle but it's not like it just falls apart from looking at it. I've messed with plenty of that old Romex in houses around here and sure, it's finicky, but if you're careful and work slow you can usually get the swap done without pulling new wire. Sounds like you maybe got a little too aggressive with the first switch. Not saying you're wrong, just that three hours for a 3-way in an old house doesn't sound crazy to me. Your mileage may vary but I'd say take it as a lesson to always budget extra time for old homes.
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the_miles21d ago
Should have taken 20 minutes" reminds me of what my buddy said after he spent four hours on a single outlet in his grandma's house... turned out the whole run had cloth wiring that just crumbled when he touched the box.
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