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Why does nobody talk about the old phone lines in those 1920s houses?
I was crawling under a house in the historic district last week, trying to run a new coax line, and my drill bit hit a solid metal pipe that turned out to be a lead-sheathed phone line from like a hundred years ago. I had to stop everything, call the homeowner, and explain we needed to map the whole crawlspace before I could safely drill another hole. Has anyone else run into this kind of old wiring and found a good way to work around it without damaging anything?
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the_alex1mo ago
Pain to find" is right, but the real issue is they're often still live. I've seen them tied into old alarm systems that nobody knows about. You cut one and suddenly the whole house is beeping.
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emmajackson5d ago
The six live alarm panels I found tied into an old lead line last year was insane. One homeowner had no idea their security system was still running off that 1920s wiring lol. I had to call in a low-voltage guy to trace everything before I could even touch it again. Cutting one of those while it's still active is a nightmare. I nearly hit one myself a few months ago and it gave me such a scare.
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