1935 GE Model A-53 AM/SW Tombstone Radio

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

I've only seen 2 conductor Romex in use once. The old family cabin used black plastic 2 wire Romex to connect the outhouse (2 light sockets and an outlet) to the main building....the Romex was strung overhead from tree to tree. This was done sometime in the mid 60s-mid 70's when electricity became available there.

OK I figured out what is in my house, its first generation Non-Metallic Sheathed Wiring, aka Romex like I was stating before, the stuff in my place uses a rubberized cloth outer sheathing and rubber insulated solid copper conductors, from what I was reading that kind of wiring only had a 25 year life expectancy and should be updated, unfortunately whenever I've pointed that out to my landlord he brushes it off.

Anyways the way this house is currently wired up, they have a mixture of original wirirng and modern wiring (where they spliced modern wiring into old wiring to extend or add to a circuit) and they installed modern grounded outlets and switches without any actual ground wires to speak of to hook to the aforementioned grounded outlets and switches, they even have several 10 amp breakers running 2 rooms worth of outlets which makes it difficult to run anything like a vacuum without popping a breaker.

That's just to give you an idea of what i have to work with in my house, wiring wise, unfortunately its not my place, I'm just a renter so I can't do anything about the wiring in the house.

See pictures below.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by vortalexfan

OK I figured out what is in my house, its first generation Non-Metallic Sheathed Wiring, aka Romex like I was stating before, the stuff in my place uses a rubberized cloth outer sheathing and rubber insulated solid copper conductors, from what I was reading that kind of wiring only had a 25 year life expectancy and should be updated, unfortunately whenever I've pointed that out to my landlord he brushes it off.

Anyways the way this house is currently wired up, they have a mixture of original wirirng and modern wiring (where they spliced modern wiring into old wiring to extend or add to a circuit) and they installed modern grounded outlets and switches without any actual ground wires to speak of to hook to the aforementioned grounded outlets and switches, they even have several 10 amp breakers running 2 rooms worth of outlets which makes it difficult to run anything like a vacuum without popping a breaker.

That's just to give you an idea of what i have to work with in my house, wiring wise, unfortunately its not my place, I'm just a renter so I can't do anything about the wiring in the house.

See pictures below.

Not too much pride in workmanship shown there!
Pex water lines, mixed with rigid plastic lines.
If the owner decides to sell this home later, a home inspector is going to cite all the faults.
Are you sure about the breaker rating? 15 amp is the smallest rating for a #14 wire.

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

Not too much pride in workmanship shown there!
Pex water lines, mixed with rigid plastic lines.
If the owner decides to sell this home later, a home inspector is going to cite all the faults.
Are you sure about the breaker rating? 15 amp is the smallest rating for a #14 wire.

Yes, I'm sure, I know what I saw.

I was running some space heaters (oil filled radiators) one winter because my side of the house which used to be the garage that the previous owners of the place had converted it into additional living space, and so when they did it, they didn't do it correctly including the HVAC runs and insulation.

So my side of the house even with the heat cranked up wouldn't get above 55 degrees in the winter without the use of a space heater or two.

Unfortunately the breaker blew whenever I had the spaceheater(s) set on high and when I looked at the breaker that controlled the outlets that were in my office and bedroom (one half of my bedroom and one half of my office) I saw that the breaker was only rated for 10 amps.

When I pointed it out to my landlord he had an electrician come over and the electrician said that the 10 amp breaker was all that could be used on that circuit because of the size of wire that was being used (18AWG) which is the size of wire you would normally use to wire up a table lamp or an old radio but not to wire up several sets of outlets...

The odd thing is that the rest of the breakers in the house that are associated with several runs of outlets are 20 amp breakers.

Also another odd thing is that the only place where there's GFCI Outlets are in the bathrooms, they don't have any GFCIs in the Kitchen anywhere, which AFAIK NEC calls for GFCIs wherever you have outlets near a water source (e.g. a sink) that includes the kitchen.

So unfortunately there were lots of corners cut in this house, and part of the reason for that is because my landlord (my housemate's dad) is a cheapskate and always tries to get things done as cheaply as possible even if it means using repair guys that have questionable credentials in order to save a few bucks.

[vortalexfan]

OK so a little update on this Radio, I think I may have figured out where the hum is coming from in this radio... The original speaker is where the hum is coming from, because the guy I bought this radio originally had a second radio just like this that he gave me to use for parts to get the one I bought from him up and running, and when I used the speaker from the parts unit on the radio, there was no hum to be heard, but as soon as I hooked it back up to the speaker, the hum came back!

So I'm wondering if the filter choke (L15) which is the coil that is in the back of the speaker assembly (see picture below) is bad?

Would a bad filter choke cause the kind of hum that I've been describing that I've been having issues with on this radio?