Thread: Whatzit?

Anyone happen to know what this "thing" is and what its purpose might be? 75 year old house and so whatever it is its plenty old.

Looks like a flux capacitor, 13 gigawatts

My guess is a capacitor of some sort.

Love the spliced romex in the photo. Actually I dont, when I see these types of hack jobs, then I know my inspection evaluation is going to take much longer. Almost always an indication of other hack jobs to wiring throughout the home.

I know what it is, but if I told you, I'd have to ...

Originally Posted by imported_John Smith

My guess is a capacitor of some sort.

Love the spliced romex in the photo. Actually I dont, when I see these types of hack jobs, then I know my inspection evaluation is going to take much longer. Almost always an indication of other hack jobs to wiring throughout the home.

Right you are about the extra time John!

This particular house was about 50/50 do-it-yourself re-wire and remaining knob and tube wiring that was still in use.

Part of my pricing structure includes what I call a time ratio adjustment for older homes. I base my pricing on the square footage of the structure and then add 2 bucks a year for the age of the house because I know older homes are going to take me longer to look at and will have me generating a longer report to detail all of the deficiencies from decades of neglect, deferred maintenance, deterioration, and amateur repairs/modifications.

This 75 year old home for example had an automatic time ratio adjustment of $150 added to the base price per square foot just because of its age. That time ratio adjustment seems to work well for me in most cases but it does price me out of the work occasionally on older homes. Even still, I don’t loose any sleep over the jobs I don’t get where older construction like this is involved.

Originally Posted by Jim Luttrall

Looks like a flux capacitor, 13 gigawatts

It was hung up for recharging by the air ionization process.

You should have known that.

Phillip, did you find a modified DeLorean in the garage?

Originally Posted by Jerry Peck

It was hung up for recharging by the air ionization process.

You should have known that.

Phillip, did you find a modified DeLorean in the garage?

Nope,

No Delorean and not even a model-T or '55' Chevy in the garage. Just this "thing" still hanging by its wires in the attic after all these years.

Good catch Jerry