Old Forgotten Ways
I am doing research for a chapter in my book titled "Keeping the smoke in" the chapter title is“Old Forgotten Ways,” as suggested last month by @Intplm. with a subtitle "including life hacks and desperate substations." suggested by @109A_5.
I can't think of enough to fill an entire chapter, so I am looking for ideas. Perhaps I will need to open this up to more than just electrical-themed procedures, like for instance the story Dan told about moving orifices in radiator valves on a gravity system when adding a circulator pump (with Dan's permission, of course).
I will give full credit in the text to each credible idea that I receive that gets into the book. Thanks in advance. This was my first thought when I heard that suggestion.
When I was a wee lad and Dad brought me to work on a Saturday, My job was to sweep the yard and empty the trash cans. I was able to meet the different employees and I remember a service technician named Howard Levy (pronounced Lee Vee) who had an index finger that was partially missing. Howard would test the electricity on a control or in a light socket with the index finger stump by touching the metal conductor. If he did not feel the current tingle on his finger, then he would put his finger in his mouth to get it wet for a better connection, and try again.
“Yep the switch is on. Can you go over there and shut the switch off so I can work on this control wiring?”
Well have at it…
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
Comments
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I already have the one about screwing a light bulb into a fuse socket to find a short circuit.
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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This is another old trick the electricians used:
Before the use of Romex wiring, electricians would pull wires through pipes that connected one junction box to another box. If you were pulling wires through that pipe and it was a long run, electricians would often put wax or soap on the wire to allow the wire to slide through the pipe with less friction. Of course, that leads us into the Three Stooges plumbing episode where they figured the water was not flowing through the pipes because all those wires were stuck inside.
…..Click vvv Here…..
Can you old timers think of anything you remember doing that is no longer taught, that the youngsters need to know?
I guess you can tell that I'm probably going to write the book and convert it to AI video. Since this short section only took about 6 minutes to generate a video.
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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electricity rather than hvac but there is the chicago or st louis or whatever city you want to disparage 3 way where they use 2 wires and reverse the polarity of the load to switch it on and off instead of modern travelers and a neutral.
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sweating pipe and caulking cast iron is quickly getting in this category.
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How about a chapter of
Old Forgotten Ways & New Fangled Ideas
Bob "hot rod" Rohr
trainer for Caleffi NA
Living the hydronic dream1 -
Setting up a heat anticipator the old way. Ten wraps around an amp probe meter.
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I’m stunned at the reality of your avatar. 😳
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Also known as a "Carter circuit" according to one of my Dead Men's Books. Someone came up with it to eliminate one wire to save money, as when controlling a light from two different buildings. These were often found on farms.
All Steamed Up, Inc.
Towson, MD, USA
Steam, Vapor & Hot-Water Heating Specialists
Oil & Gas Burner Service
Consulting
4 -
Carter system otherwise known as the "San Francisco 3-way" involves switching neutrals which was commonplace in the old days
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- Buying bags of asbestos and mixing it up to cover pipe fittings. We were told to "toss in some Portland cement" to make it harden better.
- I installed (and painted) a lot of underground oil tanks from 500 gallons to 20,000 gallons. Guess that isn't a thing anymore especially in residential.
- Did a lot of things with ladders that we shouldn't have done before scissors lifts became more popular
- Working on rooftop units with no 120volt outlets on the roof. Stringing out 100s of feet of extension cord to run a vacuum pump. No recovery machines back then. Some people used cheater cords off the 208 or 240 volt ac unit to ground to get 120 volt. I of course never did such a thing.
- Finding water in an oil tank was a common thing with flush fill caps in parking lots that the snow plow sheered off. We would take a piece of 1/2" black pipe and saw the end (with a hacksaw) on a 45 and drop it down in the tank connect it to a pump and pump the "water" down the nearest storm drain
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i'd probably get a cord with a receptacle on one end and some big alligator clips on the other to make 120 between the round and one leg of the 240 or 208 for the rtu.
the electrician that replace the service and panel at my parents' house i the 80's had a 4 square with a piece of romex attached to it that he clamped the hot to one line of the service drop and hooked the neutral over the neutral to run his drill to install the new equipment.
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Since fuse boxes are now rare, explain the dim bulb (incandescent lamp) technique in detail at the 24 VAC level. How repeatedly blowing fuses, transformers and repeatedly tripping Lil Poper type gadgets method of troubleshooting techniques suck and waste time.
Pulling soap is quite common.
National - U.S. Gas Boiler 45+ Years Old
Steam 300 SQ. FT. - EDR 347
One Pipe System
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@mattmia2 I did that many times changing a 60A to 100A service back in the day you had to drill a larger hole to get the service wire in the house and there were no cordless drills back then. I made up a 30 amp disconnect with fuses in it (I was a chicken) and a receptacle mounted to a piece of EMT that I drove in the ground to support it. Then some 12-2 rubber cord attached to the meter socket or to the service drop to get power. Run a cord off it through a cellar window for a drop light to hook the new panel up.
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My old boss used to do the "Wet Finger thing" when checking for power all the time.
We did a job at a college, and he didn't want to shut the campus down to get more power, so he (we) decided to drill the busbars while they were hot.
He had an old Milwaukee 3/8 drill all metal cased. We stood on a piece of plywood and drilled away. Needless to say the third prong on the drill was not attached to ground. Then we had to nut and bolt the lugs to the live busbars. No rubber gloves, no arc flash suits, no nothing
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I'm not fully understanding this post. Using soap or wax is not something that is interesting or that might help on a job site? Have you ever been on a job where you needed something that was not on your service truck, so you wasted time going to the supply house an hour away to get what you need? I know that I have been in that situation.
If that something you needed was Ideal Aqua-Gel II and the homeowner has a surfboard, you could save two hours of time wasted, getting the only stuff you know how to use, as you walk past a box marked surfboard wax on your way to your truck. With this great information, I might be inclined to ask if you could buy a stick of wax from the customer, or borrow a bar of soap from the lady of the house.
But that's just me.
I just remember using soap on the wires we needed to replace on a sign at a gas station we owned in 1980. I think we asked an electrician customer, when the wires we were pulling got stuck about half way in, and we pulled them back out. We asked him how the professional electricians do it and he said "soap".
Thanks for the post though.
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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@EdTheHeaterMan Thread title; " Old Forgotten Ways "
Two items you previously mentioned in your first two comments.
Soap and other wire pulling lubricants may be an old technique. I would not say it is forgotten (see thread title) or even close to being forgotten, it is used every day pulling wires through conduit.
The Dim Bulb technique is as old as the incandescent lamp. It is not totally forgotten, but folks are trying to forget it, ignore it, not understand it for less efficient methods that cause them grief.
National - U.S. Gas Boiler 45+ Years Old
Steam 300 SQ. FT. - EDR 347
One Pipe System1 -
Maybe the thread title should have included life hacks and desperate substitutions (not substations).
National - U.S. Gas Boiler 45+ Years Old
Steam 300 SQ. FT. - EDR 347
One Pipe System1 -
I fixed it …. does the title of this post make more sense now?
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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@EBEBRATT-Ed said "Finding water in an oil tank was a common thing with flush fill caps in parking lots that the snow plow sheered off. We would take a piece of 1/2" black pipe and saw the end (with a hacksaw) on a 45 and drop it down in the tank connect it to a pump and pump the "water" down the nearest storm drain"
This is even better: My father in law operated a one man retail fuel delivery service (not how I met my wife) and we would swap oil delivery war stories (or tall fishing tails) depending on how far you would want to take it.
Anyway… he got a call from a building contractor for a fuel delivery of 150 gallons of fuel at a job site. When he arrived there was no fuel tank anywhere on the site. The customer instructed him to "Spray" the oil on this weed-covered, overgrown hillside in order to stop all vegetation from growing. So he did, and got paid for 150 gallons of oil. Can you imagine how much that fine would be today?
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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if we want to talk about people not understanding how to find a short with a resistor i watched this video where someone who seemed to know something about electronics used the resistor trick to find a shorted bridge rectifier in a power supply on a receiver from the 70's. the actual part was long discontinued but he had a datasheet for it that gave him the current and piv. somehow instead of just buying a different bridge rectifier out of a catalog with greater or equal current and piv specs he builds it out of diodes on a pcb he got from someone else that repairs receivers. that made no sense at all. also he somehow didn't know that the IR with the diode symbol between them was international rectifier's logo.
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Did no one catch my spelling blunder ? With the recent wind storm and power outages I must have the electric grid on my mind.
Maybe the thread title should have included life hacks and desperate substitutions (not substations).
National - U.S. Gas Boiler 45+ Years Old
Steam 300 SQ. FT. - EDR 347
One Pipe System1 -
I like giving you credit for "substations". To tell you the truth I read it as "life hacks and desperate situations"
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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Getting it done… Without the tools
There was an error rendering this rich post.
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are split bus electrical panels still a thing?
then there are the transition things like when i bought my house it had a gravity furnace with a blower cabinet bolted to it but it was clearly installed new that way around 1950. the furnace was rectangular like a modern upflow furnace and the blower cabinet appeared to have been made by a 3rd party. it essentially made it in to a lowboy. that furnace and ductwork was installed as a retrofit to replace a coal floor furnace in the dining room that was in the center of the house. there were the coal boilers that were installed new with oil burners or gas conversion burners in a similar concept at the transition time.
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Insightful, Matt. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, coal-fired boilers and furnaces, were becoming more “modern,” with squared-off metal covers placed over the fiberglass or asbestos insulation. Those squared metal covers often had rounded corners. The U.S. was entering the Art Deco design era, and that influence showed up even in heating equipment.
After World War II, when steel and other material shortages ended and the baby boom began, there was a big push for new heating systems that used oil burners and some gas burners.
Boiler manufacturers didn’t have time to completely redesign their heating boilers or retool their factories to meet the overwhelming demand. Instead, they made minor adjustments to existing boiler designs so they could be installed with new oil or gas burners.
That is why you see so many boilers that look like coal conversions. In many cases they actually were coal designs that had been adapted by the manufacturer. The manufacturer simply provided the boiler with an oil burner and updated the instruction manual.
It wasn’t until the 1950s that completely redesigned atmospheric gas boilers began to appear that were specifically designed for gas heat.
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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the blower cabinet had radiused corners like 30's/40's art deco/streamlined stuff but the furnace was square.
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This is pretty common but frowned upon by inspectors/
While gutting my kitchen in the early 80's I decided to install a ceiling fan / light combo in the adjacent dining room so I removed the old light that got it's power from the kitchen light with a length of BX. That BX was stapled to floor joists but I was able to pull through those with a pair of vice grips. before pulling the wire I tied some twine onto the BX so I could pull the romex back through to where the switch box was. Now I wanted seperate switches for both the light and fan but did not have any 14-3 wire and it was Sunday.
No problem, just use 14-2 and use the ground conductor for the neutral, that fan was 8 ft from any ground so getting a shock was pretty far fetched. I did slide white insulation on the bare copper and mark the white romex conductor with black tape to give the next guy a heads up.
In the army we called this field expediency.
Bob
Smith G8-3 with EZ Gas @ 90,000 BTU, Single pipe steam
Vaporstat with a 12oz cut-out and 4oz cut-in
3PSI gauge2 -
you could have used 2 pieces of romex and it would have been legal.
the only place that is allowed is on pre 1996 range and dryer ckts.
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Ever since my army time i have viewed regulations as strong suggestions that you disobey at your peril but still must keep safety first. Also it was not possible to pull two sets of romex through the existing staples.
Smith G8-3 with EZ Gas @ 90,000 BTU, Single pipe steam
Vaporstat with a 12oz cut-out and 4oz cut-in
3PSI gauge1 -
Not a necessarily old-time specific solution, but still handy in a pinch.
If you've ever got a contactor that can't run down because of dead controls and the control voltage isn't something you can just jump out you can get by in a pinch with a screwdriver pushing in the contacts and then a load of tape holding the screwdriver in to maintain the pressure on the contactor.
In an emergency that can be the difference between a building having domestic water, heating, or cooling, and it will get you by until you can sort out more permanent solution.
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I've been trying to think of old timey solutions around this place… but… we're basically a farm with a two hundred and fifty year old house, two hundred year old barns, 3 tractors with a combined age of 150 years, no car or truck newer than 10 years… (one, the best, is 53)
Dang. If we didn't use old-timey solutions we'd never get anything done!
Br. Jamie, osb
Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England1 -
I've seen a whole facility go down doing stuff like this. It tripped the ground fault on the service entrance equipment. Be careful.
National - U.S. Gas Boiler 45+ Years Old
Steam 300 SQ. FT. - EDR 347
One Pipe System0 -
yea, as with everything like this, It's not something you do lightly and you need to know what you're doing with electrical obviously. but it is a temporary solution when you have dead controls but good pumps. If you don't have an apprentice around to hold the contactor in manually, it frees up your own hands so you can sort out a proper fix or bypass.
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Helps to gave good liability insurance coverage. CYA
8.33 lbs./gal. x 60 min./hr. x 20°ΔT = 10,000 BTU's/hour
Two btu per sq ft for degree difference for a slab0 -
"
Carter system otherwise known as the "San Francisco 3-way" involves switching neutrals which was commonplace in the old days"That used to mean something else here.
8.33 lbs./gal. x 60 min./hr. x 20°ΔT = 10,000 BTU's/hour
Two btu per sq ft for degree difference for a slab2 -
Please elaborate 😈
All Steamed Up, Inc.
Towson, MD, USA
Steam, Vapor & Hot-Water Heating Specialists
Oil & Gas Burner Service
Consulting1 -
Thay also had a "California" or San Francisco 3 way" Just different names for the same thing I think it was the same as a Carter although there were at least 1 variation on the Carter.
Another weird one is GE (and maybe others) had a low voltage switch system with relays where it had some kind of crazy system for switching all your 120 volt house lights.
I never saw one but my cousin ran into one at a friends house
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These two videos explain it, I'm sure there are others.
The Deadly Chicago 3-Way (Only 2 Wires)
https://youtu.be/Ky48x6LxuYATHREE WAYS 3-WAYS CAN BE (3way Switch Wiring - ILLEGAL AND LEGAL METHODS)
https://youtu.be/qjOth4dnMxoclick on the "...more" for a text description.
I believe the Carter 3-way Switch Wiring and the Chicago 3-Way are the same.
National - U.S. Gas Boiler 45+ Years Old
Steam 300 SQ. FT. - EDR 347
One Pipe System0 -
My father-in-laws house had a system like that GE one mentioned, only it was one he had created himself (he was an inventor among other things). It could be wired on a patch panel so any switch could be used to control any light or outlet in the house. Right… the switches weren't labelled. The lights weren't labelled. The outlets weren't labelled. And there was a time delay. It was an absolute nightmare to live with. You neveer knew what any given switch would do — or if it had done it… or if it did nothing at all.
Br. Jamie, osb
Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England1 -
we have a building that was built in 1968 that has that system. a lot of it has been retrofitted or has had parts substituted but one of the auditoria and a few random rooms still have more or less original systems. i have seen it in a few offices here in southeast michigan too.
this web site has some parts for that system
the residential system used a relay that mounted in a knockout. the ones that i have seen use what they are calling the "old style" switch.
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