Hi all. I screwed up last weekend, literally. I’m renovating my 200 year old farmhouse in MA and I pulled out some ugly #2 pine boards that were nailed to the wall to simulate the old wainscot. There was a single section of the old stuff still in the room and it was 1 board about 22″ wide. Nice. I found some wide white pine boards at a salvage dealer – 1 is 16′ long by 22″ wide. The room is 18′ long so I had to piece it on 1 wall but that’s another story.
When I installed it I tried to use the existing nail holes as much as possible rather than make more holes in the board. There were few holes along the centerline. I found 1 or 2 that lined up over my studs. While fitting it all together and making my scarf joint at the seam I used deck screws to hold the board in place.
The wiring was installed by some previous homeowner (I don’t think any electrician would have done it this way). Rather than drill the studs and fish the wires through the holes, someone notched the studs, laid the wires in the notches and covered them with steel plates.
What are the odds??!! One of the nail holes in over 4,000 square inches of surface area, made by some carpenter probably 200 years ago, in some other house, in some other town, just happened to line up on top of my wires exactly 1/16″ from the edge of the steel plate (missing the stud but finding the wires). Oy.
On top of all that bad news, the person who wired the room laid 2 wires into that particular notch and of course my screw went through both.
Above the chair rail the wall is newly plastered.
My question is this: is there any acceptable way to repair this without pulling new wires and without cutting another box into my wainscot board? Is there some way to use heat shrink tubing or magic tape or double secret epoxy? Or do I have to bite the bullet and replace the wires? Whatever the repair, I want it to be legal and above all safe.
Thanks for your help.
Bob
Replies
Replace the wires. You can't bury a splice of any kind legally.
Not really. If you splice, you must do it in a box, and the box must remain accessible. Or, you replace the wire.
I know, there are all sorts of other approaches that "work." Little tricks, etc. That doesn't make them right, though.
The wire should have been either set at least 1 1/4" into the wall cavity - out of reach of most screws - or protected by steel plates. Sounds like someone cut some corners, and you get to pay the price.
Thanks for the responses. I guess I'll bite the bullet and call my electrician to pull new wires.
Put an outlet there in a box. call it a design feature. and plug in a light or fish tank.
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
The secret to a long life is knowing when its time to go. M. Shocked
tempting but nah ... After going to all this trouble to find that wide board I really don't want to cut more holes in it. Thanks for the response though.
> What are the odds??!!
Darn near 100%, in my experience.
Ayeap, if there is a totally hidden, absolutely inaccessable wire or pipe hidden someplace completely unsuspectable, I'll find 'er! Just gimmee a fastener.SamT
So much of the success of a company is not determined by degrees but temperature. gb93433 83537.46
Yeah, I learned this when redoing our downstairs bath. Before covering any wires (OR PLUMBING!!!), always check for anything closer than an inch or an inch and a half to the face of the stud. Cover the suspects with nail plates, and also make notations on the ceiling above or wherever works.Especially important for wires or pipes that are tight in a hole and won't be able to "scoot" out of the way.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. --T.S. Eliot
Guaranteed. <G>You, me, and Sam ought to never start a remodeling company together. <G>I don't even want to go into how badly we mangled a non-compliant wiring installation. We were re-plastering a hippie-built POS that was wired by someone who didn't understand the need for codes.Suffice it to say I finally killed the power to those rooms and wired a 12 volt light and a buzzer to that leg so an alarm would sound every time we hit a wire. Sad (and slightly whacked) but true.
If it makes you feel better, a buddy of mine (really, not me, though I was there), while drilling through a wall, put the bit right through a subpanel on the otherside and into the busbar. He got lucky, if you want to look at it that way, because he was just holding the plastic part of the drill. The bit was toast. 60 amps will do that.
Yikes. That DOES make me feel better.
Seems like that could hurt just a little bit.
Yeah, when I was in college some guys were hammer-drilling through a concrete roof to install HVAC for a campus TV studio. They found a conduit that wasn't supposed to be there. Made a few sparks and knocked out power to part of the building, but luckily nothing worse.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. --T.S. Eliot
Got a call for a kitchen remodel yrs. ago. house was maybe 6 yrs. old. kitchen floor in front of the sink was rotted, cabinets around the sink showed all kinds of water damage.
Man of the house showed us the damage and blamed it in the DW, continued doing so while she stood there just taking his abuse.
Rip everything out, Boss goes to lunch , Man of the house (who worked swing shift) gets up and starts takes a shower (which is located back to back with the kitchen sink area), shower over and I, sitting in the kitchen, start to hear a dripping sound. Trace it to the center of the wall behind the kitchen sink, soon a very,very tiny puddle appears at the base of the wall. Hmm.. says I... dripping stops.
Man of the house heads off to work
We open up the dry wall above the kitchen sink and reveal that a drywall nail had penetrated the copper riser to the shower head, just enough to cause a pin hole leak..leaked only when the shower was being used.
DW happens along and we explain what we found .. her only comment was SHE never took showers and that that SOB was going to be paying when he got home .
Believe me the Man of the house was real quiet for the rest of the job, even agreed to her upgraded counters without a peep. LOL!
There was an article not long ago in either FHB or This old House about Modular construction and building things off site. They showed a connector that is used to connect the wiring in these walls when the whole thing is assembled. The article clearly started "approved for in wall splices". Cant remember anything other than that, but it caught my eye. That might be an option.
What you're thinking about is a T-splice module, which can also be used for an in-line splice. The UL listing is for use without a box, but, and this is a big but, the splice must remain accessible in conventional construction. I don't know about manufactured housing, maybe it's listed for inaccessible use in that case.
The unit (made by AMP, if memory serves) is an insulation displacement connector for 12/2wg or 14/2wg, with a snap-together plastic cover. If the thing could be used for a repair or to tap off a cable and be buried (inaccessible) in a wall or ceiling, it'd be a real problem-solver. So much so that I contacted AMP just to make sure that I had it right. Yep, it has to remain accessible. Nuts.
Clif
ohwell, worth a try.
they have to be acessable somehow...Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming<!----><!----><!---->
WOW!!! What a Ride!Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!
What, you're thinking a petard...?
Or maybe one of these?
View Image
(the "truckman" personal FF axe...about 17" long. Nice little tool. The butt end is real good at opening drywall, or folding back the roof of a car--just like an old-fashioned can opener).
But seriously, accessible in the NEC means "accessible without disturbing the finish surface of the building". So, a petard (a shaped charge), although very effective at rendering a box accessible, doesn't fit the bill. Then there's the issue of whether you could find much of the box after the dust cleared...
But you knew that...
Cliff
yur plan has more merit than crawling in a rattler infested crawlspace....
I like it...
think we can get the HO to accept it...Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming<!----><!----><!---->
WOW!!! What a Ride!Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!
CAP and Clif, thanks. This sounds exactly like what I was hoping to find. I don't want to make any more holes in my wainscot though so that leaves me back with an inaccessible splice.
That connector has been mentioned several times. The consensus seems to be that you'd have to convince the AHJ that it's allowable, and get the inspector's signoff.It does seem to me that it should be possible to develop a "buriable" splice mechanism -- something that sufficiently safe and reliable that it can be safely and legally covered after inspection. I'm guessing that the connector folks simply don't see enough money in it to outweigh the liability issues.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. --T.S. Eliot
I agree. Maybe the same kind of connector that locks together with a couple of screws or something.
I would say that since 95% of the time I mark for a cut there's a knot i'd say the odds would be pretty good that the wire would line up perfectly.
Reminds me of a thread I started awhile back about the inability of a ladder and a extension cord to coexist in the same room without being on top of each other.
Bite the bullet, install an outlet or pull new wires.
Unless of course its your own house.:>)
whats on the other side of the wall ?
you could put the access point on the other side if that works better
(and you have enough slack )
Skip,
Now that's using the old noodle!
A milkbone for ya!
Cliff
p.s. Usually, there's not enough slack in the cable to make a splice inside a single-gang box...I've had some luck using a two-gang using the long dimension, or a 4" square box, which allows me to get enough of the orginal cable inside the box to get a wirenut on, then I use a short length of new wire to jumper between the old ends. But to stay strictly Code-compliant, you have to have 3" or more of wire outside the box. So it's usually time to put in two new boxes and run a short piece of cable tween 'em.
If there is just enough slack in the original cable and you want to use only one SG box, it's easier to make a splice with a WAGO 'walnut' or the Ideal version (in-sure) than a wirenut. I usually use walnuts only for splicing lighting whips or fixture wires, or for extending grounding conductors that are impossible to get a wirenut on. But a lot of guys are using them everywhere instead of wirenuts. They do provide a lot better connection than the crummy poke-in backwire connections on switches and receptacles.
Cliff
Great thought but it's an outside wall. I suppose I could install a weatherproof exterior outlet. Come to think of it we could really use one right about there. It seems weird to have it on that 15A circuit for the den and the powder room though. Would that be legal? It is GFCI protected.