Hey guys,

I have often wondered what other EC's are doing with knob & tube, cloth 2wire cable w/no ground are doing, when lets say for example "you pull down an old fixture and find cables with crunchy insulation and/or have no insulation. "?

Get a copy of David Shapiro's "Old Electrical Wiring", published by McGraw-Hill. You will find several options depending on the condition of the old wires.
Creighton.

Creighton Schwan !! We don't get to see much of you very often.

Your paper "Things Are Not Always What They Seem" [EC Mag, Nov. 1999] is mandatory reading for my students.

Where do I find it. I have heard it was excellant.

Try Here

Books by David Shapiro

And

Books by Creighton Schwan

[This message has been edited by iwire (edited 05-03-2003).]

Obsaleet,
I tell my customers that getting into K&T is never a sure thing, many dominoes may fall due to one simple task.

Yup! Played dominoes with the 1948ish version of romex last week.

Adding some gfci receps turned into 3 days work,much to the homeowners dismay.

You have to cut back to the good stuff if there is any.

Heres a possible suggestion, Has anyone thought of using High voltage sleeving (Like they use on electric motor connections and leads). Its very durable and comes in many sizes. Just a thought any opinions?

We used to use heat shrink on the old insulation. If the insulation wasn't too bad that was. This way the new heat shrink would keep the old insulation in place.


HE

Where a Light Fixture is concerned, now with it's stated 90C requirements, is there any (approved) alternative to replacing the wiring?

Bill

Shapiro's book suggests the use of high temperature sleeving in applications where the insulation does not meet the current temperature requirements. I have used it as a last resort. You may want to try it. I'm not sure if is acceptable to local authorities. It is available from at McMaster-Carr.

I had to use heat-shrink tubing on the crumbling BX when I was replacing the dodgy wall switch in the bathroom in my new apartment two years ago.

A simple 10 minute excersise turned into a "run to Radio Shack on a late Sunday afternoon for a pack of heatshrink" and PRAY that the insulation didn't continue crumbling up into the BX's armor!!

Oh...did I also mention that the rotten box had broken off the stud and was hanging inside the wall? The device cover is the only thing holding the entire thing in place against the wall!!!!

The luminaire in the bedroom is just a rubber pigtail socket because I heard the tell-tale "crunch" when I pulled down the old 60-watt fixture (with two 100-watt bulbs) and dug out the CHARRED fiberglass insulation that had been shoved up into the box!

I didn't move the insulation much so I none of the insulation crumbled.

Bathroom and bedroom lights and one outlet in bedroom are on the same 15 amp circuit....of course this is a 1950s apartment building.

My guess is the circuit was overfused at one point...because the wall socket in the bedroom on that same circuit also had the cruncy insulation (heatshrink on that one too). Thank god for circuit breakers!!!

When I saw some of the scrapped fuse-holders from the other apartments in the garbage the day the electricians put in the breakers, I saw 30 and 20 amp Edison fuses in these things.

I'll be tearing this stuff out in the very near future...

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 05-05-2003).]

I’ll second the sil-rubber sleeving for covering cooked rubber or PVC wire insulation. Overlamped incandescent ceiling fixtures can be a mess to fix. {A few decades ago little old ladies with long hours in the kitchen led to 200-watt lamps for dimming eyesight.} Try a motor shop for this stuff. A slang term for the stuff is sil-ex tubing. Get several sizes if you have to wing it. Ten feet of it shouldn’t bankrupt anyone. With a little work it’s not too hard to “milk it” onto a wire past the loom clamp.

One common style is http://www.eis-inc.com/oem/catalog/pdfs/sleeving/Bentley.pdf ”Ben-Har 1151-FR sleeving is an extremely flexible silicone-rubber-coated fiberglass sleeving…”