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Old Electrical Outlet

H

Homer J Simpson

I ask the question because I might have to remove a large portion of
the braided cloth to add a new receptacle.

So: did the old-style BX cables for residential apartments generally
use cotton braided cloth around their wires?

Was asbestos braided cloth used mainly for high-temperature
applications?

Yes, mainly in electric ranges and the like.
 
M

mm

can't speak for the BX, but the old cloth romex I'm pulling out of my

They had cloth romex? I thought the start of romex was after cloth
insulation.
house appears to have a wrap of asbestos in it. After burning it (to
recycle the copper) in a very hot fire, there is what appears to be a white
ribbon spiraled around the copper. I can only assume it's asbestos put
there for pulling strength.

Asbestos doesn't burn, aiui, so that makes sense that it's still t
here. I didn't know it had pulling strength, or tensile strength in
general (if there's a difference).
 
H

Homer J Simpson

I can't speak for the BX, but the old cloth romex I'm pulling out of my
house appears to have a wrap of asbestos in it. After burning it (to
recycle the copper) in a very hot fire, there is what appears to be a
white ribbon spiraled around the copper. I can only assume it's asbestos
put there for pulling strength.

I'd expect linen not asbestos.
 
V

volts500

Marilyn said:
The OP said that he lives in New York City where BX (armored cable) was
required in the 1920s (and still is today). Cloth covered wires with
armored sheathing is standard in older building in NYC. This is not knob
and tube. It is BX and it is grounded (although some may question whether
the armor provides an adequate ground.

Yep. Back in those days steel BX was intended to prevent vermin from
eating the wire insulation. A manufacturing flaw resulted in rusting
between the spirals of the armor. If used as an equipment grounding
conductor the impedence may very well be high enough that the fuse or
breaker won't trip upon a ground-fault, resulting in a possible fire as
the armor heats up. IMO, the OP would be better off installing a 2
wire receptacle or a GFCI receptacle.
 
R

RBM

Damn Volts your good, The stuff was made in General Electric's Sprague
plant. They took sheets of galvanized metal, cut them into strips, and wound
it over the conductors wrapped in the cotton sheath. The problem, as Volts
indicated, was that when they cut the sheets of metal into strips, the edges
were left with no galvanized coating, so they oxidized
 
C

CJT

Steve said:
I can't speak for the BX, but the old cloth romex I'm pulling out of my
house appears to have a wrap of asbestos in it. After burning it (to
recycle the copper) in a very hot fire, there is what appears to be a white
ribbon spiraled around the copper. I can only assume it's asbestos put
there for pulling strength.
I don't think asbestos could contribute to pulling strength.
 
H

Husky

mm said:
They had cloth romex? I thought the start of romex was after cloth
insulation.

Can't speak for railphotonut, but the house I bought last year has a ton
of cloth "romex". The wire itself is insulated with a plastic like
material, possibly an early vinyl, definitely NOT rubber. It clings to
the copper conductor, and leaves a sticky coating on the wire after it
is stripped. Each conductor is wrapped with tar cloth braid, they are
bundled with a brown kraft paper "string" (think old grocery bag), a
wrap of paper, and another wrap of tar cloth. Where and when ever
possible, I am pulling new ROMEX into place using it as a pull tape. In
those instances where it isn't possible to pull it out, I handle it as
little as possible, though the insulation isn't brittle. It does make a
filthy mess no matter whether removing or reusing it. I believe it was
installed in the fifties, as some of it was plastered into the pink
flamingo bathroom walls. The only reason I know that is I had to
completely gut the bathroom for other reasons. Luckily I found it
without hitting it with a saw, drill, or nail... Some has a silver-blue
outer wrap, other has black. The internal cloth is all black in the
black, and color matched to the wire in the silver-blue. They both have
the white wire covered with white inner insulation.

I also have a lot of that old BX with the cloth wires. Thank goodness
the house was originally built in 1890, before electrification. All of
the upgrades were done later, so there isn't any knob and tube. My
grandmother's 1902 built house in Buffalo wasn't so lucky. Because of
the Pan-American Exposition in 1901, builders were doing K&T installs in
new houses even though electricity was still new and not widely
available. I was still removing K&T in the eighties, and I think I got
the last of it abandoned in 1989 when we built a new dormer and
completely split the upper apartment from the lower. Prior to that the
upper always included utilities even though there were two meters. After
that, the upper was no longer cross wired with downstairs, although
there were two outlets in the lower living room that no longer worked
after that. I just never got around to going in the crawl space and
rewiring those two, as I didn't want to disturb all the abandoned
asbestos steam heating pipes under there. Just goes to show that it is
sometimes better to be late to the game than to be an early adopter...
 
S

Steve Barker LT

Yes, it's been very interesting what they got away with for scores of years.
 
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