Knob-and-tube is not a curiosity in Pittsburgh. It is still live, still carrying load, and still hiding behind plaster in a large share of the housing built before about 1930 — which in this city means whole neighbourhoods at a time. The Electric Guys locate it, assess honestly whether it needs to come out, and replace it when it does, across the city and roughly thirty-three miles around.
The first thing worth saying is that "you have knob-and-tube" is a finding, not a verdict. Original, undisturbed knob-and-tube running through an open ceiling void, with its ceramic spacers intact and nothing spliced into it, is a very different object from knob-and-tube that has been extended with lamp cord, buried under blown-in insulation, or tied into a modern circuit by somebody's brother-in-law in 1984. Both are common on the same street. They do not deserve the same quote.
Why choose The Electric Guys
- We look before we price. A blanket "whole house, immediately" number handed out over the phone tells you nothing about your house. What is in the attic, what is behind the kitchen and what has been added to over ninety years all change the answer.
- Staged work is a real option. Where it is safe to, doing the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms first and the rest over a couple of years is a legitimate plan, not a fudge. We will tell you if yours is a candidate.
- We know what the insurer will ask. Knob-and-tube is one of the standard questions on a policy renewal and a common condition on a mortgage. Knowing exactly what has been replaced, and having it documented, matters when that conversation comes.
- Plaster is treated as part of the job. Not as somebody else's problem discovered after the ceiling is open.
Our knob-and-tube process
- Find the extent of it. Attic, basement, accessible voids and every device box — plenty of houses are part-rewired already and nobody told the current owner which parts.
- Assess condition. Insulation integrity, splices, contact with thermal insulation, and whether anything has been added to the original runs.
- Give you the honest split. What must come out now, what can wait, and what is genuinely fine where it is.
- Plan the routes. Balloon-framed walls, plaster ceilings and closets all decide where wire can go with the least opening up.
- Rewire, inspect, make good. New cable, modern grounded devices, permit and inspection, with openings kept to the minimum the route allows.
Why this is a Pittsburgh problem in particular
Two reasons, and both are structural.
The housing itself is old. Much of Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, the South Side, Highland Park, Mount Washington, Brookline and Beechview went up in the decades either side of 1900, when knob-and-tube was simply how houses were wired. It was good work for its time. It is ungrounded, it was never designed for the loads a modern household puts through it, and its insulation is now roughly a century old.
Then there is what happened afterwards. These houses have been retrofitted repeatedly — attic insulation blown in during the seventies energy push, kitchens redone, bathrooms added, attics and basements finished into living space. Knob-and-tube relies on air around the conductors to shed heat, and blown-in insulation packed over it removes exactly that. It is one of the most common genuinely dangerous conditions we find, and it is invisible from inside the house.
Balloon framing cuts both ways here. The long open stud bays in these houses make fishing new cable considerably easier than in modern platform framing, which keeps the plaster damage down. Those same continuous bays are a fire path, which is part of why the old wiring in them matters.
Serving Pittsburgh, PA and nearby
The city neighbourhoods are where most of this work is, but it reaches well beyond them — the older sections of Mt. Lebanon, the pre-war parts of Penn Hills, the original village streets in Murrysville and the older housing around Coraopolis Heights and Montour all produce the same finds.
Estimates are free, Monday through Saturday. If you have attic or basement access, a photo of the wiring runs sent to (412) 501-7391 will usually tell us straight away whether you are looking at a survey or a rewire.