Flipping, Budgets and Electrical

[Jay Coolidge]

I bought my first flip home.  The home was built in 1920's.  I am currently in the initial stages of cleaning the property and getting quotes on the work that is needed.  Plan on putting in new HVAC, flooring, windows and redoing the bathrooms and kitchens.  One "behind the walls" improvement needed is wiring.  There is some knob and tube on the property.  The breaker box was updated in 2017 to 100 amp and all the wiring the kitchen was updated but because the knob and tube wiring to the rest of the house was left in the walls with updated wiring in the basement to the breaker box and all "new" from the breaker box to the knob and tube wires seems to be connected with a junction boxes.  I am not an electrician but getting a crash course in all this.

I've had 2 very different electrical quotes and plan to get more.  What was originally a smaller project could be much larger.  So here's my question, for those of you doing flips have you kept the existing knob and tube wiring in houses or do you generally rip it out and upgrade to new wiring?  

I was not planning on doing a full rewire. This will be a budget killer, but from what I read knob and tube can be safe under certain conditions and it also can be dangerous.  Since this is a flip and the house has not been regularly maintained for years I wonder how well the original wiring is holding up.  So that's my dilemma, let me know what you think- thank you!

[Jim K.]

@Jay Coolidge

If you follow half of these suggestions, you're going to end up so far in the hole financially you'll never get out on this flip. Your plan to put in new HVAC. If it's more than just replacing a furnace, that looks like your biggest-ticket item overall. My suggestion on this property is that you not add to your problems if you can avoid it.

Now I'm going to teach you something about your house. Ready? This is not a "Craftsman-style house." This was called a Foursquare back in the day. Read up on Foursquares and see if I'm wrong.

Your wrote of the outlets that: "...about 5-6 come up as "open ground" - none come up as "open ground..." well, which is it? Easy trick to relax over this: replace questionable open grounds with GFCI outlets. Nobody will get hurt that way.

It's common practice here in Pittsburgh to rewire the basement and not touch any of the knob and tube in the walls on the higher floors except in extensive kitchen and bath remodels, where you would run dedicated wiring. That's what's been done here in the basement and kitchen already, apparently. Incidentally, if this place was really built in 1920 it has later-type cloth insulation on the K-and-T wires that holds up better than early-type rubber insulation.

The 100-amp panel went in circa 2017. Don't change it. Would putting in a 150/200 make the house more useful? Sure. Will most buyers looking at something like this care? No. This house will probably sell under $200K, right? You're looking at a first-time buyer pool that knows or cares squat about electrical service.

Get it done as cheaply as possible. Will it be good? No. But God's honest truth is that the only way to make a flipped house from 1920 bulletproof is to lose money on the flip. It's a dirty business when you get into this kind of lower-end, hundred-year-old property flip, and this is why.