Ridgetop is a small city in the southern end of Robertson County, sitting up on the high ground its name describes, just above the Davidson County line. It is a quick trip from our base and one of the more interesting places we work.
About Ridgetop
The town was created by the railroad. The elevation and the air made this a destination in the era when people left the valley for the summer, and the community that grew up along the tracks kept that residential, wooded character long after the trains stopped mattering. Some of the houses date from those years, others from the decades since, and the whole place is small enough to walk across.
Its position at the county boundary means Ridgetop is only minutes from Goodlettsville and everything south of it, which is why it has held its population without ever developing commercially.
Old cottages and the wiring inside them
Houses of this vintage almost never contain a single generation of wiring. The original installation may survive in part, overlaid with a 1950s update, an extension from the 1980s and a few circuits added since. When we assess one, we open the panel, get into the attic and crawl space and pull a sample of devices, because that is the only way to establish what is really there.
Typical findings include knob-and-tube left in place, sometimes still connected; insulation that has gone brittle and drops off the conductor when moved; splices made outside any enclosure; ungrounded circuits behind three-prong outlets; and services far too small for how the house is now lived in.
The answer is not automatically a full rewire. Frequently it is a staged plan that clears the dangerous items first and takes the rest during the next renovation, and we would rather propose that than sell more than the house needs.
Being on high ground
Elevation has electrical consequences. Ridgetop takes weather directly, and lightning and utility surges are a genuine and recurring cause of damage to HVAC boards, appliances and anything with a processor in it. Whole-property surge protection at the panel, with point-of-use protection where the sensitive equipment lives, is a reasonable precaution rather than an upsell here.
Storm work is a normal part of what we do in this area: damaged service masts and weatherheads, burnt terminations, dead circuits after a strike, and generator inlets fitted with an interlock so that a portable set can be used safely while the utility catches up.
Trees, drives and outbuildings
Wooded lots mean exterior work — post lighting along drives, security and landscape lighting, garage and shed feeders run underground, and receptacles outside that were installed before ground-fault protection was required.