Recent content by xanadu245

no, definitely copper, at least at this outlet and any of the others I've looked at. It's a 2-gang box. As there are 2 separate circuits coming into the box, I opted to just remove the outlet and leave the light switch for the basement light. As it's apparently not a common 2-gang cover plate I...

Update: I took a deeper look and discovered that the two wires that had been connected to the hot side were in fact both hot and allowing passthrough via the receptacle. There also appeared to be a traveler wire that wasn't used for that circuit. After talking, my wife and I decided it wasn't...

Thank you for the recommendations. I have an electrician coming to help me troubleshoot it further and make it safe. In the mean time, I've left the circuit breaker off.

Starting with A little history to help fill in a few details. The house was built in 1956 and a fair bit of the wiring is likely still original which was MC cable with a hot and neutral which had the plastic/rubber coating and a fabric sheath (kind of hard to tell which was black and which was...