We have house that was built in 1925, and we adore it. The only problem is that there aren't enough electrical outlets in the rooms. It was originally knob and tube wiring, but some was updated when they upgraded the kitchens and bathrooms.

My question is, is there any way to tell when you pull the electrical socket from the wall, whether it is knob and tube? Most of the outlets are installed in the baseboards.

Then, is there any way to wire a new outlet to that? We don't have any money to hire electricians to do a total re-do, so I'm wondering if I should give up on this dream of having more than one outlet in a room.

Janet what are your needs in these rooms? If you are plugging in a lamp or two what you have may be fine. If you need more outlets for computers and such it would be wise and safer to have an electrician come in and wire some new circuits and outlets for you. A good avenue to explore may be having outlets added one room at a time over a periond of time thus avoiding the cost of one big job at once. I would avoid adding any outlets to the old knob and tube wiring.

Janet-

Usually when you open an outlet box with knob and tube wiring in it the color of the insulation of all the wires are black with no sign of them being in a cable assembly ie Romex, BX.

If you add a receptacle make sure it is a ground fault circuit interrupter type.

As mentioned, as long as the receptacle is used for things like lamps, radios etc. it should be okay.

2 basic options exist, live with the K&T or replace it.

The latter entails much ado, fishing wires, plater and/or woodwork damage, etc, depending on the type/style of construction i.e.- accessability.....

what i ofetn recommend, in lieu of replacement, is to lessen any major loads
{ as you've done in Kitchen & Baths)
, basicaly take the strain off the older wiring.....

next split up the older circuits as much as possible, for instance make 1 all inclusive circuit into 3.

then lessen the circuit breaker or fuse to each down a notch, from 20 to 15, or 15 to 10.

Go to wiremold.com. See if this can solve your problem.

It's a fairly simple task to replace the current boxes & duplex outlets with a double-gang box and 2 duplex outlets, thus giving you 4 receptacles in that same location in the room. This doesn't add any electrical capacity to the room, but it gives you more places to plug things in. If you just have lamps, radios, etc. in the room that should work fine.

I should clarify that it's fairly simple electrically. You still have the mechanical problems of removing the old box, cutting a bigger hole in the baseboard, mounting the new box, etc., and you can often find complications when doing that in an old house.

This post is FIVE YEARS OLD. Do you really think the original poster is still around.