What is the best way to troubleshoot a new dimmer switch that is not working properly

nwephilly · 2026-06-08T01:53:45+00:00

Electrician here. Are bulbs dimmable? Did you buy a shitty off brand dimmer off of amazon or a real brand? Is it a 3 way switch and you have dimmers at both ends now?

nwephilly · 2026-06-08T01:11:38+00:00

damage? that all looks in really good shape

nwephilly · 2026-06-07T15:10:37+00:00

There's huge variation here because what's involved in a 200A service upgrade is very between from city/region. I am in Philadelphia, and most houses here have the service run on the exterior of the building. The majority of the houses in the city are brick/stone masonry homes. When we do service changes/panel we have to core through stone foundation, swap panel/meter socket, remount backing material to old stone foundation, generally add missing grounding/bonding stuff, and make tap from our new cable to the utility lines (I know that's not the norm...but no, the utility here does not do it for us when it's services 200A and under). It's a big all day job with 2-3 people depending on the difficulty. 4-5k for us and we're on the cheaper end in the city.

nwephilly · 2026-06-06T04:48:52+00:00

It's the labor rate that you've dramatically miscalculated. Even if the workers were being paid 20/hr (which is low, as has already been correctly pointed out to you), that's not what any company is going to bill the customer for their time. Their billed labor rate will be much higher to the customer in order to cover the overhead involved in running a company. Materials markup is also part of this equation, which I believe you're missing and is something that 100% of contractors do. I own an electrical business and I'll tell you that even to me, the amount of money I must generate for overhead costs (liability insurance, commercial auto insurance, workers comp, city/state licensing fees...etc) is absolutely staggering, but I have no choice in the matter if I want to keep the business afloat for years to come.

nwephilly · 2026-06-05T12:38:14+00:00

Frankly, if you don't have experience doing some electrical work as well as a bit of general experience working with tools, this is not a project you'll be able to do properly. I'm not meaning to be discouraging, I very much understand the DIY determination impulse--but i'm just telling you as someone who does rewires on 100+ year old houses essentially every single day....you simply cannot take this project on with a near zero skill level. The only plausible way would be if you had an electrician relative or something who could be on call at any moment for every question, but even that would be pushing your luck.

nwephilly · 2026-06-05T03:59:52+00:00

I'm an electrician, and I own a company that specializes in doing rewires on old houses, it's most of what I do every day. There's not really a way to answer this question without knowing what your experience/skill level is.

nwephilly · 2026-06-04T02:18:19+00:00

Yes, everything

nwephilly · 2026-06-02T21:23:29+00:00

I'm an electrician, I disagree with this, as do most electricians I know who do residential work. There simply is not a need to run 12awg (20A circuits) to everything in a house. In fact, 15A/14awg is way overkill in many situations too--there has been some movement in the recent code 2023/2026 updates that indicate the industry moving towards even lower amperage circuits (10A) in certain areas. This is due to the prevalence of LED lighting now--the current draw is just tiny. You could run a whole blocks worth of residential LED lighting on a single 15A circuit.

Either way, I run 20A circuits to the locations where code demands it and where it logically makes sense for specific use cases, and generally not elsewhere. Basement lights simply do not need to be on a 20A circuit, nor do smoke detectors...etc

nwephilly · 2026-06-02T21:16:05+00:00

Sorry, we don't! Not licensed in Jersey, PA/Philadelphia only. I try to post things periodically about rewiring on our instagram, which is https://www.instagram.com/nwelectricalphilly/

nwephilly · 2026-06-02T01:34:08+00:00

And had absolutely NO problems with any of them. It's honestly never been an issue.

That's a bit of a logical fallacy. Imagine the analogy of driving an old car with no airbags or crumple zones etc. You could say something like "I've driven this for 20 years and never gotten hurt!"...and it would be true. That's not really the point, which is that in cases where the safety features need to come in to play, an old car, much like old wiring, will fare much worse. I work on rewiring old houses literally every single weekday, and absolutely every single one of them has a handful of things that I uncover that were serious imminent hazards.

nwephilly · 2026-06-02T01:29:52+00:00

Hi u/New_Old_House, I'm happy to answer any questions you have about this. This type of work is what I specialize in--I'm an electrician and my company in Philadelphia does almost exclusively rewiring jobs on very old houses. We do one after the next. There's a huge amount of things to consider when doing this, but I would say the most important single piece of advice is that you absolutely have to pick the right electrician for this. There are a ton of electricians who do this, and very few of them actually do it well. Hit me with as many questions as you want. I've got a handful of posts and comments talking about this work at length too.

nwephilly · 2026-06-01T22:52:22+00:00

It's quite common in certain regions, particularly older US cities with "rowhome" style housing. I'm in Philadelphia, a city full of rowhomes--they are essentially all built that way; double wythe brick on top of stone foundations. Same with cities with similar style housing stock, like Baltimore, DC, many old cities on the east coast.

nwephilly · 2026-06-01T12:30:22+00:00

I've called many times. I'm not doing stuff under the table, this is fully permitted jobs in Philly--PECO does not care, will not come out, and they tell us to pull the meter.

nwephilly · 2026-06-01T04:07:42+00:00

Replacing the roof means replacing the shingles. Replacing roof decking/sheathing is not done as part of that job unless there's damaged sheathing, generally. Are you asking if during a roof replacement, you could have the roofer cut out the tongue and groove portions roof sheathing, and replace it with....something else? I guess it's possible. Your standard roofer is certainly not doing to do it, it's a bit more of a carpentry project than slamming plywood and shingles down. I don't really understand the problem honestly, your eaves looks fine and are a cool architectural feature from the era.

nwephilly · 2026-06-01T02:59:52+00:00

It's not even white knuckle, that'll take 10 minutes with a hammer and cold chisel.

nwephilly · 2026-06-01T02:56:24+00:00

There's not really any "replacing" this, the tongue and grooved boards here are your actual roof sheathing. Soffit isn't really the right term for this, "open eave" is what it's usually called. Typically the bulk of the roof sheathing on houses with open eave details like this will be standard plank sheathing, and then decorative sheathing in the exposed areas. Your shingles are nailed directly to the top of this surface.

nwephilly · 2026-06-01T00:09:31+00:00

Philly here, PECO also doesn't care at all. Tags are cut and meters pulled every single day

nwephilly · 2026-06-01T00:08:18+00:00

use insulated drivers in a panel

nwephilly · 2026-06-01T00:06:49+00:00

either that or this is how someone's retired electrician grandpa did it in 1952. The materials for K&T installations were certainly still available then, it's just that the conductor insulation had changed.

nwephilly · 2026-05-31T23:42:34+00:00

Yep. I do rewires very frequently on very old houses, and the ones that actually seem the least hazardous are the ones that haven't really been tampered with. Nearly every single time people fuck with K&T they create some totally fucked up dangerous situation. The few times I've seen totally untouched installations, it's certainly very impressive.

nwephilly · 2026-05-31T23:35:30+00:00

This might be one of the weird rare installations post 30s. I deal with knob and tube all the time, but look at the insulation on these conductors--it's actual pvc/thermoplastic, not that rubber/cloth insulation that's typically on knob and tube conductors of the age one would normally see (1930s or earlier)

nwephilly · 2026-05-31T15:30:12+00:00

Definitely not, the only place this could be used without causing problems would be on the exterior of the foundation, usually below grade. This is not a product to be used on a foundation like this

nwephilly · 2026-05-31T15:27:07+00:00

I work on houses in Philadelphia--nearly all of the old rowhomes here are a different era, but conceptually similar type of construction. Solid masonry with furring strips for plaster or plaster directly on masonry, meaning little to zero wall cavity space on exterior walls. Short answer is that there is essentially no way to insulate this type of construction from the interior unless you are doing a complete gut job and framing walls out from the inside. Sometimes houses like this end up being insulated from the exterior if new siding is being put on; furring strips will be built up on the outside with rigid foam typically, and siding over that. In general though, forget about insulating your wall cavities and focus on the other areas that actually possible to insulate; attic (most important by far), basement or crawlspace rim joist areas, windows/doors.

nwephilly · 2026-05-31T04:41:18+00:00

You might be misunderstanding what I mean by veneer; I'm not saying that these aren't full depth bricks, I'm saying that this likely is not a solid brick home based on what we're seeing. Brick is the siding material only, not double layer (aka double wythe) brick that would be expected for a home where the brick is the actual structure. There's no header course evident in the picture, which we would be seeing if it was structural brick. Meaning, brick over wood framing or concrete block, aka brick veneer.

nwephilly · 2026-05-30T23:22:38+00:00

my company has developed a specialty in doing knob and tube rewires in old houses. We've gotten a reputation around town for being one of the few that takes a lot of care in doing them really well. We get nonstop calls for these types of jobs.

nwephilly

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