Aiken has a beautiful mix of historic homes and mid-century neighborhoods. Many of the houses in areas like Hitchcock Woods, Old Aiken, and the neighborhoods along Whiskey Road and Richland Avenue were built between the 1950s and 1980s. Some date back much earlier. While these homes have character and solid construction, their electrical systems were designed for a very different era. A household in 1965 might have had a television, a few lamps, a refrigerator, and a window air conditioning unit. Today's homes run central HVAC systems, multiple computers, smart home devices, electric vehicle chargers, and kitchen appliances that did not exist 40 years ago. The wiring in many Aiken homes simply was not built for this kind of demand.
Rewiring is not a small project, and not every older home needs it. But there are clear warning signs that indicate your wiring is no longer safe or adequate. Here are the seven most common ones we see in homes across the Aiken area.
1. Frequently Tripping Breakers
A circuit breaker is designed to trip when too much current flows through it. That is its safety function. It shuts off the circuit before the wiring overheats. If a breaker trips once because you ran a space heater and a hair dryer on the same circuit, that is the breaker doing its job. But if breakers trip regularly, especially when you are not running anything unusual, something deeper is going on.
In older homes, the most common cause is that the circuits are undersized for the loads they now carry. A home built in the 1960s might have an entire bedroom wing served by a single 15-amp circuit. Add a window AC unit, a computer, a phone charger, and a lamp, and you are at or beyond that circuit's capacity. Beyond simple overloading, frequent tripping can also indicate degraded wire insulation. Over decades, the plastic or rubber insulation around copper wiring breaks down from heat cycling, allowing small amounts of current to leak where it should not. This creates resistance, generates heat, and causes breakers to trip as a protective measure.
If you find yourself resetting the same breaker more than once a month, it is time for a professional evaluation. Repeatedly resetting a tripping breaker without addressing the underlying cause is like ignoring a check engine light.
2. Flickering or Dimming Lights
Occasional flickering when a large appliance kicks on, like your HVAC compressor or a well pump, can be normal. The motor draws a brief surge of power when it starts, and that momentary voltage drop can cause lights on the same circuit (or even the same panel) to dim slightly. However, persistent flickering, lights that dim when you plug in an appliance in another room, or lights that flicker for no apparent reason point to a wiring problem.
The usual culprits are loose connections, corroded wire junctions, or undersized wiring that cannot maintain stable voltage under load. Loose connections are particularly concerning because they generate heat at the connection point. A wire nut that was hand-tightened 50 years ago may have loosened over time from thermal expansion and contraction. That loose junction creates resistance, which creates heat, which is exactly how electrical fires begin inside walls where you cannot see them.
If your lights flicker regularly and changing the bulbs does not fix it, the problem is in the wiring, not the fixtures.
3. Burning Smell or Discolored Outlets
This is the most urgent sign on this list. If you smell something burning near an outlet or switch, or if you see brown or black discoloration around an outlet cover, stop using that outlet immediately and call an electrician. What you are smelling is overheated plastic insulation, and what you are seeing is evidence of arcing, which is electrical current jumping across a gap between conductors.
Arcing generates temperatures that can exceed 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the arc point. That is hot enough to ignite wood framing, insulation, and anything else inside your wall cavity. Arcing can occur at loose terminal screws on outlets, at degraded wire connections inside junction boxes, or at points where old insulation has crumbled away and exposed bare copper. The fact that you can smell it or see discoloration means the problem has been developing for some time and has progressed to a dangerous stage.
Do not attempt to diagnose this yourself. Turn off the breaker serving that outlet and call a licensed electrician the same day.
4. Two-Prong (Ungrounded) Outlets Throughout the Home
If most or all of the outlets in your home have only two slots instead of three, your home has ungrounded wiring. The third slot on a modern outlet, the round one at the bottom, connects to a ground wire. The ground wire provides a safe path for electrical current to flow back to the panel and trip the breaker if something goes wrong, such as a short circuit inside an appliance. Without a ground wire, that fault current has nowhere safe to go and may instead travel through you if you happen to be touching the appliance.
Grounding also protects sensitive electronics. Computers, televisions, and other devices with circuit boards rely on stable, properly grounded power. Plugging them into ungrounded outlets using a three-to-two adapter might physically work, but it provides zero ground fault protection and leaves your equipment vulnerable to voltage spikes.
Replacing two-prong outlets with three-prong outlets without actually running a ground wire is a code violation and provides a false sense of security. The only proper solution is to run new grounded wiring to those outlets, which is part of a rewiring project.
5. Aluminum Wiring
Between approximately 1965 and 1973, the price of copper spiked and many home builders switched to aluminum wiring for branch circuits. If your Aiken home was built during this period, there is a real chance it has aluminum wiring. Aluminum is not inherently dangerous as a conductor. It is used safely in high-voltage utility lines and in service entrance cables. However, aluminum branch circuit wiring (the wiring that runs to your outlets, switches, and lights) presents a specific and well-documented fire risk.
The problem is that aluminum expands and contracts more than copper when it heats and cools during normal use. Over years of thermal cycling, connections at outlets, switches, and junction boxes loosen. Loose connections create resistance. Resistance generates heat. Heat accelerates oxidation of the aluminum, which increases resistance further, creating a dangerous feedback loop. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) found that homes with aluminum branch circuit wiring are 55 times more likely to have one or more connections reach fire-hazard conditions than homes wired with copper.
If your home has aluminum wiring, you have options ranging from a complete rewire to approved remediation methods like COPALUM crimping or AlumiConn connectors at every connection point. A licensed electrician can evaluate your specific situation and recommend the most appropriate and cost-effective approach.
6. Knob-and-Tube Wiring
Knob-and-tube wiring was the standard installation method from the 1880s through the 1940s. It uses individual hot and neutral wires run separately through ceramic knobs (which hold the wires against framing) and ceramic tubes (which protect the wires where they pass through joists and studs). There is no ground wire.
Knob-and-tube wiring was well-engineered for its time, but it was designed for a fraction of the electrical load that modern households demand. The insulation is typically a rubberized cloth that becomes brittle and crumbles after 70 or more years. When insulation deteriorates and falls away, you are left with bare, energized copper wire running through your walls and attic. Additionally, knob-and-tube wiring was designed to dissipate heat into open air. When blown-in insulation is added to attics and walls, as it commonly is during energy efficiency upgrades, it covers the wiring and traps heat that was meant to radiate away.
Beyond the safety issues, knob-and-tube wiring creates practical problems. Many insurance companies in South Carolina will not write a new homeowner's policy, or will charge significantly higher premiums, for a home with active knob-and-tube wiring. If you are buying or selling a home with this wiring, it will almost certainly come up during the inspection and may affect the transaction.
7. Your Panel Is Maxed Out with No Room for New Circuits
Open your breaker panel and look at it. If every single breaker slot is full, or if you see tandem (double-stuff) breakers crammed into slots that were not designed for them, your panel has reached its capacity. This becomes a real problem when you want to add anything to your home that requires a dedicated circuit: an EV charger, a home office with server equipment, a hot tub, a workshop, a new HVAC system, or even a modern kitchen appliance like an induction cooktop.
A maxed-out panel is not dangerous by itself if everything is properly wired and within its rated capacity. But it puts you in a position where you cannot safely add new electrical loads without upgrading your panel or adding a subpanel. In many cases, a panel upgrade is paired with rewiring because if the panel has reached its limit, the wiring throughout the house is often similarly outdated and undersized.
What a Rewiring Project Actually Involves
A full home rewire means replacing all of the branch circuit wiring in your house with new copper wiring that meets current National Electrical Code standards. The process involves running new Romex (NM-B) cable through walls, ceilings, and floors from a new or upgraded breaker panel to every outlet, switch, light fixture, and hardwired appliance in the home.
In a typical Aiken-area home of 1,500 to 2,500 square feet, a full rewire takes one to two weeks. The electrician will need to open sections of drywall or plaster to access wall cavities and run new cable. This means you will need drywall patching and repainting after the electrical work is complete. A good electrician plans the cable routes to minimize wall openings, but some drywall work is unavoidable.
The project requires a permit from Aiken County, and the finished work must pass inspection before it is energized. The permit process ensures that the new wiring meets all current safety codes, including proper grounding, arc-fault protection (AFCI breakers) in bedrooms and living areas, and ground-fault protection (GFCI outlets) in kitchens, bathrooms, garages, and outdoor areas.
Cost and Value
A full rewire for a typical Aiken-area home generally ranges from $8,000 to $20,000 or more, depending on the home's size, the number of circuits, accessibility of the wall cavities, and whether a panel upgrade is included. That is a significant investment, but it comes with significant returns. Updated wiring eliminates fire hazards, protects your family, reduces insurance premiums (some insurers offer discounts for homes with modern wiring), and increases your home's resale value. Buyers and home inspectors look closely at electrical systems, and a home with verified, up-to-code wiring is far more attractive than one with aging, questionable wiring that represents an unknown cost to the next owner.
If a full rewire is not in the budget right now, a licensed electrician can help you prioritize. In many cases, the most critical areas, like circuits showing signs of overheating or rooms with the most deteriorated wiring, can be addressed first, with the remainder completed in phases as your budget allows.