If you have electrical questions you’d like answered in a future edition of this column, send them to the Editor at northshorejournal@gmail.com, or email John directly at john@clovervalleyelectric.com.
Watch for These Household Hazards as Summer Projects Get Underway
Memorial Day is the unofficial start to summer. On the North Shore, this tends to mean that both vacation and project season are here. We’ve had a few good questions come in along these lines, including one from Dan O. about the proper handling and disposal of old wiring with potential asbestos insulation. Whether you do it yourself or hire it out, the long history of many homes and cabins along the North Shore tends to hold a few decades of potential hazards often hiding in plain sight.
A couple of weeks ago, we were adding a sub panel in a Duluth basement and noticed the old boiler piping was wrapped in white insulation with an old sticker suggesting it might contain asbestos. Rather than push ahead, we adjusted the layout to limit the risk that our new work would vibrate or contact that pipe. That’s a common situation with asbestos-containing materials — the danger comes from disturbing them, not from leaving them undisturbed.
Asbestos turns up in more places than most homeowners would guess. Around here, you’ll find it most often on old heating and plumbing — wrapped around boiler pipes and ductwork — but it also hides in old 9×9 floor tiles, in plaster and joint compound, and, to get back to Dan’s question, in the insulation on some older wiring. Some older cloth-covered wiring has asbestos woven into the braid/ wrapped around the conductor. The catch is you cannot tell the asbestos-bearing kind from the harmless cloth kind by looking, and even the commercial testing labs say a visual inspection isn’t enough. Intact and undisturbed, it generally isn’t harming anyone, but when brittle old insulation gets cut, scraped, or torn out, it could send fibers into the air. So if you find something suspect where you want to work, whether pipe wrap or old wiring, the best course is to leave it in place. If it has to be removed, have a qualified professional review it and recommend lab testing first, and if it tests positive, that’s a job best left for a licensed abatement professional. In most cases, any wiring with asbestos can be abandoned in place and concealed again behind the new wall surfaces.
Lead paint is another hazard, and any home built or painted before 1978 may have it inside and out. What catches people off guard is not the paint itself, but the dust from sanding, scraping, cutting, or demolishing a painted surface. The CDC is clear there’s no safe level of lead exposure, especially for young children and pregnant women, and even drilling holes for electrical boxes or cutting access points for fishing wire through a painted wall can stir it up. Paid contractors must be lead-safe certified on pre-1978 homes under the EPA’s Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule for jobs disturbing more than six square feet of paint in a room. That rule generally doesn’t cover a homeowner working on their own house, but the EPA still recommends the same practices of sealing off the area, keeping dust down, and cleaning up thoroughly. When you don’t know whether paint contains lead, simple tests from the big box stores and local hardware stores can provide a quick answer. Also, don’t pour out or trash old half-cans of lead paint. Lake County takes household hazardous waste at its Two Harbors facility on Wednesdays, 9 am to 3 pm (as of this writing), and leftover paint can also go to PaintCare partners at several hardware stores up the shore.
Aluminum wiring is the one hazard that most folks are not looking for when doing projects, and it’s different because it isn’t a health hazard like asbestos and lead. A fair number of homes wired in the 1960s and ‘70s used aluminum wiring on branch circuits, and there’s a good bit still in service along the shore. Aluminum as a metal expands, contracts, and oxidizes differently from copper and can cause connections to loosen. The dissimilar metals of aluminum and copper can also oxidize and cause high resistance connections – which generate heat when in use. There are special wire nuts and devices like switches and outlets rated for use on aluminum wiring. If you’ve got aluminum and you’re adding or changing circuits, that’s the moment to have somebody take a careful look.
None of this is meant to talk anybody out of a good DIY project. The North Shore’s stock of older homes, cabins, and commercial buildings is a big part of what gives this area its character, and folks remodel them successfully every year. It is just important to know what might be waiting in the walls as you open them up.
John Christensen is a licensed Master Electrician in Minnesota and has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota – Duluth. If you have electrical questions you’d like answered in a future edition of this column, send them to the editor, or email John directly at john@clovervalleyelectric.com
The advice provided in this column is intended for general informational purposes only. If you have specific concerns or a situation requiring professional assistance, you should consult with a qualified professional for advice or service tailored to your individual circumstances. The author, this newspaper, and publisher are not responsible for the outcomes or results of following any advice from this column. You are solely responsible for your actions.
