Greetings all! While mapping out circuits and figuring up the load on each breaker in our old house, I discovered that the upstairs bathroom's power went off with a breaker. It also goes off with one of the knife-switch boxes located upstairs. All of rooms upstairs are still hot when I pull the Main switch on the breaker box in the basement ( Including this particular bathroom.) The wires to the knife-switch boxes are still hot as well. Is it possible that the upstairs is wired directly, either before the meter or before the breaker box? If so, how is this bathroom on a breaker as well as the old system? Also, I have heard that this old knob & tube wiring was sometimes put into a circle and that all wires to receptacles came off of this same "circle" wire, and therefore you can't cut any of the wires off of the "circle" or you will lose all of the receptacles, is this true? Is anyone familiar with this situation? Any input you may have would be greatly appreciated!

I have a problem here with a three-way switch. 1st--the power runs from the light fixture to a switch to a switch. 2nd--the line going to the 1st switch is a 14/3 wire. They have the red wire connected to the black wire(power source). White wires are connected together and so are the black wires. 3rd--the line going to the 2nd switch is a 14/3. I removed the lines to rewire the hallway because they had a single switch at the top of the stairs and a dual switch at the bottom of the stairs. One switch from both ends of the stairs runs the hallway light. The other switch at the bottom of the stairs runs another light in the room downstairs. I was going to do something simple like put two switches at the top of the stairs to match the ones at the bottom. This way you could turn on the light in the hallway or in the room downstairs, but now I can't get the new switch to work properly.