Old wiring acting up
Emergency knob and tube problems in Louisville
Sparks, burning smells, hot switch plates, or half the house dead. Kill the circuit first, then call. We prioritize live-hazard calls in old houses across Jefferson County.
Call (502) 305-0444 nowDo these three things before we arrive
- De-energize the circuit. Breaker off, or fuse out, or the main off if you cannot isolate it. Knob and tube failures are heat failures, and heat needs current.
- Feel the wall, do not open it. A warm wall or ceiling above the failure means the overheating spread. Say so on the phone; it changes how fast we roll and whether the fire department should check with a thermal camera first.
- Leave it off, even if it seems fine later. The most dangerous knob and tube failure is the one that "fixed itself." It did not. The splice re-made contact and is waiting to heat up again.
What the emergency visit costs
The diagnostic visit prices like our standard assessment, $250 to $450, and it credits toward whatever repair or rewiring follows. There is no after-hours multiplier games; the written follow-up prices the permanent fix from the same published table as every other job. If the failure turns out to be the opening argument for a bigger problem, the Louisville Knob & Tube homepage explains how full rewires run.
Emergency questions, answered
I smell burning plastic near an outlet in my old house. What do I do first?
Flip off the breaker or unscrew the fuse for that circuit right now, before calling anyone. If you cannot tell which one it is, shut off the main. A burning smell from knob and tube usually means an overheating splice or insulation failure inside the wall, and leaving it energized is how attic fires start. Then call us.
An outlet sparked and now half my lights are dead. Is that a knob and tube thing?
Frequently, yes. Knob and tube circuits daisy-chain long runs, so one failed splice kills everything downstream. Leave the circuit off. We trace the failure, repair or replace the damaged run, and tell you honestly whether the rest of the circuit is safe to re-energize.
Can you actually repair knob and tube, or does it always mean a full rewire?
A failed section can be repaired to get you safe and powered, but code does not allow extending knob and tube, and a failure is evidence about the rest of the run. Our written follow-up tells you what failed, what it says about the circuit, and prices both the repair-only path and the replacement path.
My breaker keeps tripping on one circuit in a 1920s house. Emergency or not?
A breaker that trips repeatedly is telling you something is wrong, and resetting it over and over is the wrong answer. It is not a middle-of-the-night emergency if you leave the circuit off, and that is exactly what to do until it is traced.
Not urgent? Get the trace anyway
A near-miss is the cheapest warning you will ever get. Map the circuits before the next one.