Are you certain there were wires in the conduit before it was installed? They do sell it empty.

I imagine the reason it's jacketed is because plain MC conduit isn't rated for wet locations, so what's in there is probably UF. But they sell jacketed MC precisely for those situations where the waterproofing layer is on the exterior of the conduit. I've never seen jacketed cable inside MC. Not saying it doesn't exist, but I've never seen it.

Well, now I have.

I'm not positive, that was just my understanding of what was going on.

Couldn't they just pull the wire out completely, feed a fish tape thru and then use the fish tape & lube to pull new wire? Assuming the conduit didn't get smashed.

This is what I have sticking out of the ground to go into the house. So looks like no conduit on this side, just at the pillars or something.
Edit: and a closer look at the pillar that has wires in it

Heh, now I have no idea what to think. If it's buried UF then obviously he didn't pull it, but why did he have a bottle of lube out if he wasn't pulling wire?

Anyway, they're going to have to try (or already have tried) some variation of cap's suggestion, and if that doesn't work go with eeyore's.

Oh, no bottle of lube. Those were bottles of chemicals for the hot tub that I just bought and happened to be there.

Another uncle of mine suggested we take the cap off and see if we can find the wire within the post, and then add like an extension box or something to create more length. Basically eeyores suggestion iirc?

OK, so I've misread everything and have been absolutely no help to you at all tonight. I'll show myself out now.



Coulda sworn that was a bottle of aqua-gel...

From my sister:
I told her I doubt things are ever equal and I don't know what good it does to find out how much something would cost in various parts of the US, but she still wants me to ask, so, here's the floor plan:



If she got this place she'd want to put a closet for the back bedroom where the stairs are now, and move the stairs into one of the front bedrooms. Not sure what she'd do with the two front bedrooms, but we're not worried about that right now, just ballpark cost to take out the stairs and put them somewhere else. Basement is unfinished and only 6' high so stairs just need to be functional, not pretty. Not sure where the beams, mechanical etc are in the basement, but let's assume the stairs can move anywhere.

Seems pretty silly to spend a bunch of money to turn the back bedroom from a 9' 4" x 9' 3" room including closet to a 9' 4" x 9' 3" room + closet, but w/e. Anyone got anything to say to her?

IDK, I guess starting point is $20-30k.

edit - sounds like a total waste of money. Who knows what kind of framing needs to be done, moving electrical, moving plumbing or HVAC. Plans and permits will be a few grand at least.

Yeah, there's a lot of non-obvious structural details around stair openings and that could get real expensive real fast.

Also, idk how things are up your way, but there are minimum bedroom dimensions down here. There may not be enough room to put stairs into one of those bedrooms and still legally call it a bedroom. That's going to be a big deal if she's considering resale value.

Yeah she'd merge what was left into the other bedroom or open it up to the living room.

The handyman friend who looked at it with her told her it'd be $60k-ish in lolCanada money and her realtor thought it'd be about $10k so she wanted another opinion.

I am (slowly?) learning to ask more questions before engaging contractors. But, I can still ask you guys more questions.

he hallway of the house I just bought had a single pendant light fixture in the center.

Over the weekend I had an electrician in to add recessed lights to the hall, and remove the pendant.

The guy seemed pretty good at stuff, but didn't speak english incredibly well and between he and his son they seemed pretty disinterested in having his son help bridge the language gap.

So, at the end, I've got 4 lights that look I think quite good. But I also have a hole currently uncapped where the old fixture used to be. I've got painters coming in tomorrow who are spending at least a day doing prep/drywall/etc. So, I ask the electrician if I can just have them close it in. He basically laughs this off and tries explain that you have to close it in in a way that leaves sort of like a nipple looking thing protruding down from the ceiling. Further questions ran into language problems.

I can get the idea intuitively that you can't just have the wires unenclosed due to fire risk.

What I don't understand is why there'd need to be so much extra space created that there can't be a flat panel there (or an enclosed box that is then put behind drywall). Above the ceiling is unfinished attic. He did say that if we ever build out the attic we could resolve this problem.

So like, what's going on? Should I push back on this at all?

He's going to call me later this week because he said he was going to shop around to try to match the nipple-looking thing that's in my living room from the prior owners. I don't super mind if I've got to wind up with the nipple thing or a flat thing, but don't understand what's going on.

Any thoughts appreciated:

I can't really see what you have there, but they should be able to make a flat cap (blank plate) work instead of whatever nipple thing you're talking about unless it's some weird old fixture that only accepts nipple things. The code issue is that wire splices need to be accessible, so whatever it gets covered with needs to be easily removed. You can't bury it in drywall. If they could have easily pulled the wiring back to one of the new recessed fixtures and made the splice there they probably would have. I'm assuming there isn't an easy way to provide access in the attic either.

Im going to go with "they did the easier thing" reason.

They should have went into the attic and put in a junction box for the new lights.

But that means going up and getting sweaty or itchy insulation on you.

Electricians hate that.

iirc citanul has posted pics of the unfinished attic. Seems like the jbox can go up there.

Crawl spaces >>>>> attics. I've spent some time in attics at probably 140 degrees too.

I just moved a bunch of circuits around in an attic with the extra itchy mid-century insulation, and ****'s no joke. You really can't blame an electrician for doing whatever they can to avoid that. It can be incredibly miserable work.

I missed the 'wires are too short' problem. I'm not totally sure what I'm looking at here, but it looks like liquid tight flexible metal conduit and someone tried to pull romex through it. If so, the first thing is to try to dig out the bit that might be just beyond reach, and maybe you can poke something in there to see how far down it is. If that doesn't work you try to pull the other side all the way out and then fish through stranded wire. If that doesn't work, somebody is effed.

It only took me one job to learn the lesson that you don't just assume you can fish anything through buried conduit.

Apparently at least some liquid tight is allowed to be buried, but I've never done. I always use rigid pvc. I'm not sure there's anything wrong with burying liquid-tight/metallic or not, but the metallic is almost 10x as expensive as pvc.

Why not put one of the can lights where the pendant was and then space your other lights based off of that? Might need to use only 3 or maybe up to 5 lights.

Yeah, I was being modest about "some time". I've probably run the solar circuit through 100 attics. Even when I've had a crew I lead from the front and at least do my share of the hardest work. I've also had two guys step through ceilings, but I've never done that.

I had to go home, take a shower and change my clothes in the middle of the day after making one connection that required laying directly in the insulation with the roof decking only a few inches above my head. I had a rash on my forearms for 3 days.

Thanks, guys. Helpful already.

Here's an example of the nipple-type thing in the other room. Lower res photo here:



I think this guy wasn't trying to do things the easiest possible way, though I could obviously be mistaken. His company is frequently and uniformly reviewed well, and he spent 5+ hours working/struggling with things in the attic this weekend. My guess is that his laugh about whether we could use a flat thing followed by stuff I didn't follow was probably about the inability to pull wires through?

I do have other things I'm confused about:

He used what he described as "new construction" cans behind the lights, as opposed to what he called "renovation" cans that you can see in the other room, where someone else had done the work. However, the end result of this is that since his cans are taller than the ceiling joists, the attic floor can't be put back in exactly as before? I feel like this means he either should have used renovation cans, or he should have explained why they are in some way wrong?

I'll ask him why he can't do flat cap and why he didn't go with the renovation cans tomorrow morning.

Let me know if there's anything I can get a better shot of that might make things clearer.

Edit: Cowboy -- because 3 felt like it would be too little light for a 22 foot hallway, and 5 too many?

I've never noticed anything like that nipple thing in my life, but maybe now I'll start seeing them.

Another possibility with the wires is to kill them. They come from somewhere - possibly a junction box in the attic. If they are disconnected I wouldn't give a rat's ass about sealing them up in the wall - dunno whether that's ok with code or not. Just gotta really be sure they are dead and no one disconnects a neutral or something in the operation.