Thanks Steve! The house has all new windows, but that's not saying that they were all sealed up properly. Since I haven't been there all winter, I don't know, but my wife said the kitchen floor is always freezing cold so that would tell me it has no insulation under it. The kitchen and the living room are additions to the original house so they don't have a full basement like the rest of the house althought they do have very small crawl spaces under them that I'm sure I could do the insulation.
Does the old knob and tube and the new romex work together? I quess what I mean is, the breaker panel is on the 1st floor in the mud room. The 1 room which I know has not been rewired is on the 2nd floor on the opposite end of the house. The inspector said he could only find signs of working knob and tube in that room which is why we assume that when the ceiling fan is on and the light is on, the light flickers a little. But if you use one or the other, it's fine. But is it possible that the new wireing was run to the upstairs and for whatever reason they didn't wire that room with new wiring and just spliced the new and old or somehting? I am starting to see that this wiring crap could be a real headache. I know just enough to be dangerous! haha The inspector also said that some of the polarities in the outlets were reversed and some had no ground. He said likely the wiring was redone in 2000 when all the remodeling was done and there weren't inspections and stuff for the area then so whoever wired it probably didn't really know what he was doing. I know how to fix the polarity issue, I have wired some outlets and fixtures and stuff, I am by no means an electrician! But I'm just a young guy and I have never seen knob and tube before buying this house.
I'm hands on and I'd like to do as much of this myself as possible. But I also don't want to burn the house to the ground! Also, is htere any reason not to insulate the ceiling in your attic? The way they have it insulated now is just some of the pink panther stuff under the floor. It doesn't even cover the entire floor of the attic because in some spots you can shine light through te floor and see there is no insulation, but in other spots there is.
Thanks for the help guys. I'm trying to get my plan in order before I get back so i know what I need to get. I'm also going to put a corn/pellet stove in, insulate the hot water heater and the piping, and hopefully remove the old
oil furnace which for whatever reason, the new gas furnace was installed in conjuction with a nonfunctional
oil furnace. i can't imagine that is very efficient!
BTW, I live in NW PA just off Lake Erie so in the winter it does get real cold and breezy.