I was adding an outlet in my living room and found a nest of old, tangled wires that look like spaghetti. How do you figure out where they all go?

3 comments

3 Comments

Yikes! That sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen. Have you checked if any of those wires are still live with a voltage tester? Because if they are, you might be poking at old circuits that could shock you. What kind of wires are we talking about here, like phone lines or actual electrical cables? Tracing them back could mean shutting off breakers one by one to see what loses power. Or you might need to borrow a tone generator to follow the paths through your walls. But honestly, trying to map out that mess feels like solving a puzzle where half the pieces are missing.

hugo_sullivan251mo ago

Actually I read this article last week about old knob and tube wiring in houses like mine. It said a ton of those old lines might still be hot even if they're not hooked to anything modern, because past owners just left them in the walls. I mean that's terrifying to think about, poking around and finding something that could still shock you. Idk maybe it's just me but I'd be super careful with any wire you can't identify. The article basically said to treat every unknown wire like it's live until you prove it's not, even if it looks dead. Makes Evan's point about a voltage tester seem pretty important.

river_nelson851mo ago

Yeah, that's a solid point from Hugo, but the article might be mixing terms. A wire that's truly "abandoned in place" should be cut and capped off at its source, so it's not hot. The danger comes when someone does a bad DIY job and just leaves live wires buried in walls. Those old lines aren't magically hot on their own, they have to be connected to something.