I bought a house last year and I was somewhat mystified by why the two light switches next to the door were horizontal instead of the normal vertical arrangement. Turns out they had tried to turn a single box into a double by basically just gouging a bigger hole in the cinderblock wall and filling it with a softball-sized lump of caulk into which they stuffed the two switches; somehow they could only get this whole mess to stay in place by putting the switches horizontally. For bonus points, one of the switches did nothing except producing a distant humming noise and then tripping one of the breakers after a few seconds.
arcing in the walls
Yeah, when I rebuilt the kitchen/living room wall, I found the stud that had held one of the original outlets and it was scorched black where the box had been. Kind of amazing the house was still standing.
I did reuse the scorched stud. 2x4s are fucking expensive and these ones from the 1940s were perfectly straight and completely knot-free.
My 5’x4’ bathroom has 3 seperate circuits feeding it. There is one circuit for the lights, one for the fan, and one for the single outlet in there. Those are the only things on those 3 circuits.
My basement has fully wired electrical outlets in the walls that were just sheetrocked over when the previous owner “finished the basement”.
My basement has an electrical outlet on every other stud throughout the whole thing; they are all on the same 15A breaker.
The the upstairs bedrooms are on seperate circuits except for one outlet on the north wall of each bedroom which both share the same seperate circuit.
I think my house was wired by M.C. Escher.
