u/Kujinata

We have over 40 turkeys on 5 acres. We sell eggs from a stand at the end of the drive.This year I bought chicks from tractor supply in the spring. 34 to be precise. At the time it seemed like a good idea. We were selling out of eggs every day and I just can't hatch enough turkey poults to keep up with demand from the stand. Yet in the end it means I killed my flock. I've never heard of blackhead until a couple weeks ago. But now I'm painfully aware. 4 turkeys died in quick succession. We had a necropsy done. And the result? Preliminary says almost certain blackhead. I culled another 4 today to save them the pain and suffering. The rest of my flock will quickly be processed even though they do not show signs or symptoms. Because this is a persistent "plague". I haven't felt this kind of regret and sadness for such a long time. No help to ask for. No cute post. Just need to state it out loud. I truly hope none of you share my fate.

Hello everyone, looking for some routing and strategy advice for a rewiring project. Short background: bought this house in 2023 after I found out I was too disabled to continue in the army and as a result was being let go. I bought this house by pooling my income with another disabled friend and my wife. To be honest I had no desire to work on a old house. But im stuck with the job.

I’m currently occupying the upstairs of a 4,000 sq ft, very old house in southern Michigan. The wiring I'm looking at is a messy mix of updates and old, ungrounded cloth-sheathed cable from yesteryear. Some of the breakers immediately trip and will not stay on, and with the way things are rigged, I know this house is a massive fire hazard just one bad appliance away from burning.

On another sub panel if you plug anything larger than a computer into a room it trips the breaker. But it's not nearly as old so I'm waiting to even attempt that side.

I’ve taken classes on AC and DC and worked on multi-million dollar communications equipment in the military, and I’ve done some residential electrical work before. I originally assumed I could just buy some Romex, trace the old lines back, and be done with it. Instead, I am hitting major roadblocks due to the house's construction.

I have a main breaker downstairs and two subpanels. The one controlling my upstairs area is an Eaton/Cutler-Hammer CH subpanel. It is by far the oldest and most dangerous. That is what I'm addressing today.

As you can see in the internal panel shot, almost everything feeding into this subpanel is old cloth-covered cable with no ground wires. The neutral bar is just landed with neutrals, and the feeder from the main panel appears to be a 3-wire setup.

There are random modern updates scattered around, like a smart switch mounted in a metal handy box to a joist, tied in with modern white Romex, right next to the old cloth cabling.

The circuits are completely messed up. One breaker controls two halves of different rooms, and it’s genuinely like that all over.

Every single wall and ceiling in this house is thick lath and plaster. The outer walls are solid brick. I started by trying to pull a wire that runs under the floor above the living room. The living room below has no ceiling lights and absolutely no way to access the ceiling cavity.

I dropped my phone down underneath the floor channel to get a look, and the old wiring is securely harnessed/stapled to the framing about 15 feet down the channel I can't use the old wire as a pull-string.

My assumption is that I need to create a new access path from the attic, but I’d repeatedly be drilling blindly. Not only that but the attic has a layer of loose insulation with fiberglass under it. I don’t want to destroy the plaster throughout the entire house, but I’d have to drill so many new paths if this stapled cloth wire is how the whole upstairs is done. Frankly if I have to renovate the whole upstairs I don't have the money.

I can muscle through the pain of being in the attic, but I want to work smart. For those of you who have tackled partial rewires in old lath-and-plaster/brick homes without gutting the walls, what would you do in this circumstance? Are there specific tools I should have? Routing tricks I need to know? Or methods I should learn before hand? What would you do in this circumstance?