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Got called out for a flickering light in a 70s house and found a melted wire nut
I was in this old split-level in Springfield last Tuesday, checking a dining room light that kept cutting out. When I pulled the fixture down, the wire nut on the black wire was half melted and the copper was all black, probably from a loose connection heating up over time. What's your go-to method for checking connections in old cloth wiring like that, just a visual or do you pull and redo them all?
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felix_jones3d ago
Oh man, that's a classic find. Honestly, with old cloth wiring, I don't trust a visual check at all. If I'm already in there and the place is that old, I just redo every connection I touch. Strip back to fresh wire, use new nuts, and make sure it's tight. It takes an extra minute but saves you a callback when another one lets go next month. That heat damage can travel up the wire under the cloth where you can't see it.
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