One of the most common questions that we receive in our business concerns the safety of knob & tube wiring. This issue usually comes to the fore front of people's lives when they list their house for sale. Many buyers today have a home inspection done and one of the favorite areas that is targeted by the home inspector is the condition of the wiring. This has put some people with older homes in an undesirable spot. As inspections have become more common in the last 10 to 15 years many former buyers are now in the un-envious position of being sellers of a product that no one wants. If they had purchased the house before home inspections became common they may not have known about the presence of knob & tube or if they did it wasn't an issue with them or their insurance company. Upon trying to sell the house with knob & tube they find that this is an issue with the buyer and are usually told one or more of the following, 'That no insurance company will insure houses with Knob & Tube', 'It is no longer legal' or 'It is not safe'. Each one of these statements is true to a certain degree but they do not tell the complete story. Each situation and statement has to be looked at and evaluated individually. As each statement has some element of truth many times it can be used as a negotiating tactic by the buyer to get a reduction in the asking prices as they site huge costs in removing and rewiring houses with knob & tube wiring.

     The people in the selling and buying positions naturally look at the situation differently. The seller feels that it has always been present in the house and never caused any problems, and they have always been able to get insurance. Now they are the ones 'holding the bag'. The buyer, they know what is present and lurking behind the walls and naturally they 'don't want to be left holding the bag' when they go to sell some day. Though these two groups of people have an immediate vested interest in the truth about knob & tube, there remains another group that has their own concerns, though not quite as pressing as the other two. In this group are the home owners that own older homes that have no intention of selling any time soon but hear rumors and statements like those above and want to know what is going on with knob & tube. Are there any issues? Time is on their side but they need to know and evaluate what is present, what to look for and what to do about it.

     This is setting the stage for further discussion and articles about this topic. Next week we will look at the safety issue, and does the Electrical Safety Authority have anything to say about it. In future articles we will tell you some things that you can look for that may indicate that knob & tube may be present in your house and things that can be done to make knob and tube 'safer'.

Wendon