That crawlspace rewire in Memphis taught me a lesson about existing wires

Last month we got a call to add a hardwired smoke detector loop at this old church in Memphis, and I figured it'd be a quick afternoon job. The blueprint showed a clean run from the panel to the attic, but when I got in the crawlspace, there was a mess of abandoned alarm wiring from three different systems that previous installers just left behind. I spent about two hours tracing lines before I realized a 30 year old wire was still live at 24 volts and I almost cut it with my cutters, no joke. Now I always carry a voltage tester even for low voltage work, and I label every dead wire I pull with a tag before I move on. The church gig took 6 hours total instead of the 2 it should have, but at least no one got hurt. Anyone else run into abandoned wiring surprises that made you change your process on every job since?

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