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Jed54

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First of all I hope I can explain this correctly.. If not.. I tried.. Here we go.. My cousins home lost power to the second floor.. The second floor still has all knob and tube.. Going upstairs there is a section of 12/2 wired nutted to three knob & tube wires.. One to black, one to white, and one to the ground.. This one line feeds the entire second floor.. or did... I went downstairs to basement and found this 12/2, and discovered that this was spliced and taped to the knob & tube. But the ground wire is not coming from this section of 12/2. Its cut cleanly from the sheathing.. Back upstairs to first floor there is a duplex near to the 2nd floor stairway which I took a meter, and put probe into the neutral side of outlet, and checked the power coming from 12/2 upstairs, and it showed 120 volts on one line, and 80 volts on second. Meter test cables were just long enough.. Which then showed there is voltage present, but somewhere a neutral is dropped.... This also killed the power to the first floor ceiling fan in dining room..Anyway.. I know this description is goofy, but any insight would be appreciated..... Thanks everyone.. ;)
 

Lakee911

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If you have a digital multimeter, you may be reading induced an voltage (80V) and there isn't any current on the wire. A small lightbulb might be better to test with. You should get 120V between hot and ground and hot and neutral and zero volts between ground and neutral.

Personally, I've never seen K&T wiring with a ground.

You'll need to map out the whole K&T run and deduce where things are going. It's usually pretty tough, especially with three way lights and fly-away splices leaving different places and meeting up somewhere else. After you have a map, then you can troubleshoot.

Personally, I'd use this oppurtunity to upgrade the wiring to meet todays code.

I do not know the proper way to splice nm/thhn to the ruibber coated K&T, but I would think it would be wire nuts and not just tape. K&T to itself is actually soldered and taped, not just taped.
 
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Jed54

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If you have a digital multimeter, you may be reading induced an voltage (80V) and there isn't any current on the wire. A small light bulb might be better to test with. You should get 120V between hot and ground and hot and neutral and zero volts between ground and neutral.

To clarify quote, you say I could be reading induced voltage 80volts? As far as K&T with a ground I cannot understand that either.... But why this third wire is wired nutted to a ground on the 12/2 is beyond me...and is not continued in basement area is confusing.......
 
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