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Submitted by CT Wireman
He'll explain these








Take it away, Peter!...S

Pic 1- Romex embedded in 1/2 inch of plaster. After I took down the light, I grabbed the wire, and down it came!!

Pic 2- Well ventilated octagon box. Every knockout removed. The shabby looking wires on the right emerge from disintegrating AC cable. No connectors obviously.

I knew an industrial electrician who specialized in that method: Notch drywall to put in some NM-B and then just run a strip of tape and some compound overtop of it.

The H/O sees how easy it is to do, assumes it's code compliant, and suddenly you find that everywhere in the house.

-John

Here in Austria that would be an acceptable wiring method, though no one would do that in a plaster & lathe ceiling since it'd be much easier to fish the wires parallel to the joists. One small hole where the wire enters the ceiling and one at the fixture, viola! Done that many times (though I _always_ used flexible pvc conduit). Removed loads of such wiring from our walls here. Old time geniuses here used THHN instead of NM in order to bury it in plaster! _That_ is scary!

We are allowed to do that in some instances with the right kind of cable, but we would also need to follow this rule.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, what's really dumb about the NM in plaster is there's a wide open attic above that ceiling!

The NM was going to a 3-prong outlet down on the wall, which was also pretty stupid considering they tapped it from old AC cable and "forgot" to connect the ground wire to anything.

Bob, I don't think this comes even close to meeting any of those rules. I think out West though, where concrete and adobe houses are pretty common, you would see a lot of this.

[This message has been edited by CTwireman (edited 06-06-2004).]

No wonder homeowners think it's okay to do this, I saw on one of the home shows the "electrician" running NM under the cove molding around the ceiling for some recessed cans.

Peter


I agree with you 100% I was mostly responding to Texas Ranger.

Bob

CTwireman wrote:


Cant say I've come across this before! (the embedded romex) ! It's amazing how much work someone can put into doing something the wrong way!
Now on the other hand... The open air rated 4/O box is a California homeownered classic
-Randy

Cable buried directly in the plaster and only a fraction of an inch below the surface is also very common in many old British houses.

To be code-compliant, the cable needs to be protected by channeling.