On the Level

Finding Green in Old Brass Hardware

by Terry Meany

Like many aspects of the Bay Area, the weather this past fall was just as contrary to normal national patterns. While pre-winter temperatures dropped to the 20s in Billings, San Francisco at long last had some summer weather with sunny, clear, 70-degree days. This was the perfect time to check roofs for leaks, touch up peeling exterior paint, replace cracked glass and perform other landlordly duties that separate the minority of property owners from the city’s majority of renters. This weather seduced as surely as the sirens lured ancient Greek mariners onto the rocks; and, like them, you could easily forget that the warmth and dry days won’t—and didn’t—last forever.

The Winning Wiring
This past summer, I did some extensive work on a friend’s duplex. Comparing the electrical bids—upgrading two services and adding some lights, receptacles and a house meter—didn’t exactly require a Cray supercomputer but took some scrutiny to ascertain what was actually being proposed. In the end, oddly, each proposal’s fees were well within the ballpark of the others despite the different interpretations of what needed to be done. Each bidder brought a different view and code understanding to the table; and, in the end, the winner was the one who actually used a tape measurer to determine where panels and meters could be located. Why the others didn’t bring this basic tool is beyond me. Were they looking forward to arguing with the inspector? Was this some game of contractor/building department chicken? The lesson here is to get several bids, unless you have an electrician you’re already working with.

Another thing Granite Electric, the winning bidder, did was offer to replace any existing standard switch or receptacle and plate covers for $13 each in their existing boxes. I thought what a wonderful idea—just swap them out and check the wiring and grounding at the same time. After years of tenants yanking plugs out of receptacles or clicking switches thousands of times, the interfaces between renters and their electrical systems can loosen, and the “ears” under the terminal screws can break.

Two-pronged, ungrounded receptacles are replaced all the time with the three-pronged style, without a grounding wire being added. This isn’t an imminent safety issue for most users, but it’s misleading for those who believe circuits are grounded and then plug valuable pieces of electronic equipment in, only to find out the hard way that the circuits are not grounded and their equipment gets damaged or the users get shocked. Using a three-pronged adapter will allow a two-pronged receptacle to accept a three-pronged plug, but this in itself does not provide a ground unless the receptacle box is metal and is itself grounded. The wire or tab on the adapter can then be connected to the box under the screw that secures the receptacle cover to the box.

I’m a big advocate of outside lighting, and Granite Electric installed five exterior lights: three that are switch-controlled (two for the lower unit, one for the upper), a motion-detector light over the garbage cans and a second motion-detector at the front of the house for security. Talk about turning night into day. This additional lighting has been fabulous. No more wandering around outside with the trash and recyclables, with only one distant second-story porch light to guide the way. A new outdoor receptacle means no more running extension cords from the laundry room to power up the weed whacker.
Adding new common lighting like this can be tricky if there are only individual meters or electrical services in a small multiple-unit building and no house service for the garage, hallway, basement and exterior lights. Someone has to pay for the juice supplying these lights, and a tenant would rightfully balk to discover the landlord wasn’t paying for the new security lights but, instead, the occupants of unit 2B were. A service upgrade might be in order if the owner’s unit or house meter is not, or cannot be, properly billed for wiring additions.

Speaking of lighting, the holidays are here and that means Christmas-tree lights and the parade of warnings on the five o’clock news over fire dangers, real and imagined. According to statistics from the nonprofit National Fire Protection Association, out of 446,000 residential fires over a four-year period, only 530 involved Christmas trees (this was cheery news, naturally, to the National Christmas Tree Association). About half the Christmas-tree fires were caused by electrical problems, including frayed electrical cords. A competing statistic from the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Fire Administration claims Christmas trees account for 400 fires annually and cause more than $15 million in property damage. While these two organizations square off on whose data is more accurate, consider sending a note around to your tenants regarding holiday safety. If they are going to decorate cut trees, recommend they choose fresh ones (vast piles of needles, complete with homesteading wildlife, are signs they should pick another tree lot) and keep them well watered, checking the water level daily. Toss out any heirloom Christmas lights that were the latest thing during the Truman administration but now snap, crackle and pop whenever they light up. No frayed cords or homemade extension cords, either. As pretty as they are to fall asleep to or come home to, tell your tenants to turn the lights off when they’re asleep or not at home.

One Man’s Trash, Another Man’s Treasure
Over the years, I’ve repaired thousands of old windows and removed even more pieces of sash hardware for cleaning or replacement. Often what I was replacing was much better material than the new hardware, but clients, understandably, did not want to pay the cost of polishing and stripping the paint from old locks and sash lifts. I was able to clean and reuse (read: sell on the next job, sometimes to the same commercial client) most everything I salvaged. There are several salvage stores in the Bay Area that specialize in period hardware, as well as doors, windows, bathroom fixtures and wood trim.

When I walk through these businesses, I shudder to think of how much work it takes to recondition and install an old door with a dozen coats of paint in an opening different than the one it spent most of its life in. Lead paint needs abating, hinge locations might change and planing the edges is a given. By the time a carpenter is finished, you might as well buy new—charm be damned. Door and window hardware, on the other hand, make a lot of sense to save and reuse, but I’m less certain of wood items that require too much finessing.

Any replacement you plan on can provide you with your own salvaged items that often have some resale value. This is especially true when complete window replacements take place in apartment buildings. It might well be worth it to hire an unskilled laborer to remove locks, sash lifts and pulleys before the old sashes are trashed. Authentic and reproduction Victorian-era hardware isn’t cheap. One sash lift alone can cost up to $10. It won’t be a gold mine, but there can be plenty of green in your brass hardware.

Stripping metal hardware is easy. Fill an old pot—you won’t want to be cooking soup in it again—with hot water, a cup of granulated dishwasher detergent and the hardware. Boil it for an hour or so until the paint falls off. Rinse the hardware and run it against a fine wire brush attachment on a bench-top grinder. It will look like new. The waste water will be pretty funky so don’t pour it down the drain. I could recommend you mix it with some dry plaster powder or concrete mix to encapsulate it, but even if it is a clever idea, I could then safely expect to be accused of creating a lead-based byproduct. I suppose this disproves intelligent-design theory; if the world really were intelligently designed, lead would disappear all by itself, just like rent control.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. Terry Meany is a former contractor and landlord. He is now a full-time writer and author of Working Windows: A Guide to the Repair and Restoration of Wood Windows, published by Lyons Press. He’s cost conscious, but not cheap, and knows deferred maintenance always costs more in the end. He can be reached at tfmeany@msn.com. Copyright � 2006 by the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.