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TIL the hard way not to trust old wire color coding on a rewire last Tuesday

I was swapping out a panel in a 1950s house in Portland and assumed the black wire was hot like usual. Turns out someone had used black for the neutral on a branch circuit and I got a nasty surprise when I touched it. Has anyone else run into reversed color codes in older homes and what do you check first?
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3 Comments
dianaanderson
Check everything with a meter first, always.
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michael_jenkins39
Check everything with a meter" is the only way to go. Learned that the hard way after chasing a ghost on a 70s house for three hours.
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uma_taylor47
Yeah I'd trust the meter way more than the paint on those old jobs.
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