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Thread: Cloth Covered Electrical Cable?

  1. #1
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    Cloth Covered Electrical Cable?

    A niece sent me the inspectors report on a house she is looking to buy, built in 1960.
    Among other things, he faults it for having cloth covered electrical cable. The picture is small, but he has arrows to one cable in a group of romex and armored cable.
    Was cloth covered cable used in 1960? Is it safe?

    There is a leak from a lead drain pipe. I am very surprised there is lead in a 1960 house.

  2. #2
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    My folks' house was built in 1960. It has both those things. Lead pipes was used for drain pipes and even in drinking water service connections into the '70s. Lead paint too. Lead in plumbing materials wasn't banned until mid-eighties. We sold the house a couple of years ago and neither were flagged as needing replacement. Sometimes the inspectors will note something that doesn't meet current code without specifically recommending it must be replaced.
    Last edited by Stan Calow; 08-16-2020 at 8:18 PM.

  3. #3
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    There is some of that type of early flexible cable in the oldest part of our home...along with nasty old steel jackets armored 2 conductor table with "cloth like" insulation on the conductors. Unless it's physically damaged, it's not likely to be unsafe, per se. When I had our electrical service updated including a new panel back in 2005-ish, all the old stuff was lefts in place, at least to j-boxes near the panel with new NM from the j-boxes into the new panel since it was sized differently and in a better position. The biggest issue with that old cable is that it can become brittle, but that's not a "yuge" thing if it's out of the way and not where it's going to get touched or moved by anything.
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  4. #4
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    I always wondered if there was asbestos in that covering. I never put any effort in finding out, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it does.

    I found some in a house built in 1934 that we replaced some wiring in. The metal outlet boxes also had about half of the sides open. Most had mice in them, at one time, or another. We just put in all new stuff, and bypassed all that old wiring.

    At least it's not as old a knob, and tube, that I saw working in houses still in the 1970's.

  5. #5
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    I think my house might have that type. My home was built in the 50s some parts are still two wire and some parts I have ran new Romex with a ground.
    My kitchen and part of the hallway has asbestos underlayment with linoleum. It bonded tight to 3/8 plywood it runs under the walls and cabinets. Its quite the project.
    Back to the wires I haven’t had any problems with the old two wire cables other then some are a difficult to replace.So they stay for now.
    Good Luck
    Aj

  6. #6
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    My last house has cloth covered 3 wire electrical cable. I never bothered to replace it wholesale (there were some places that was impossible anyway, as it was run between brick courses). Generally speaking, as long as it wasn't handled a lot it was fine. If it was handled too much, the fabric coating could fall apart. That was the outer coating, the inner wire insulation was still rubberized plastic, like romex. The other thing that I just didn't like about it was the tiny ground wire included (it was about 18ga in a 14ga bundle).

    That house was built in '64, so yep.. that'd be the timeframe for it. Of course, it also had 2x3 (actual) interior walls too.
    ~mike

    happy in my mud hut

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by mike stenson View Post
    My last house has cloth covered 3 wire electrical cable. I never bothered to replace it wholesale (there were some places that was impossible anyway, as it was run between brick courses). Generally speaking, as long as it wasn't handled a lot it was fine. If it was handled too much, the fabric coating could fall apart. That was the outer coating, the inner wire insulation was still rubberized plastic, like romex. The other thing that I just didn't like about it was the tiny ground wire included (it was about 18ga in a 14ga bundle).
    A ground wire isn't supposed to carry any current so it doesn't necessarily have to be sized the same as the other conductors. The main problem with 18 AWG might be breaking it if solid copper. Today's code allows a smaller ground wire once you get above a certain size of wire. There is also a maximum required size for a ground wire. (I don't recall the numbers exactly so I don't want to give bad info.)

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Tom M King View Post
    I always wondered if there was asbestos in that covering. I never put any effort in finding out, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it does.
    Tom, our electrician told me that yes the cloth does contain asbestos..

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Brian Elfert View Post
    A ground wire isn't supposed to carry any current so it doesn't necessarily have to be sized the same as the other conductors. The main problem with 18 AWG might be breaking it if solid copper. Today's code allows a smaller ground wire once you get above a certain size of wire. There is also a maximum required size for a ground wire. (I don't recall the numbers exactly so I don't want to give bad info.)

    Yes, I know and YES... breaking was the problem. You'll note I did comment that I just didn't like it, not that code didn't allow it
    ~mike

    happy in my mud hut

  10. #10
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    I think cloth insulation was gone before ww1. It was replaced by cloth covered rubber insulated wires. There was some tar in the mix as well. The rubber moved to some fake rubber around ww2. Around 1960 it moved to pvc jacketed with fake rubber that was molded two colors. 1950's wire is very hard to tell the two colors apart. A ground wire was not required in 1958. A ground wire was required by 1965 or so. That is also when telephone plug jacks started to be used.
    Bil lD

  11. #11
    There are a few types of cloth covered "Romex". The really old stuff is from the 1930s and early 40s, where it is a thick, tar saturated cable (you get tar on your hands handling it) with cloth covered type R wires with honest to god rubber insulation. Sometimes the wire is tinned (probably to help you solder it with your copper soldering rod and gasoline blow torch, naturally this gets wrapped in friction tape). This stuff is around 80 years old. The main problems with it are that the insulation and the wire aren't completely compatible and tend to corrode each other, and the rubber insulation dries out and gets brittle. I suppose as long as it hasn't been disbursed that might be OK, but it still kind of terrifies me. I wouldn't run any heavy loads on it.

    The next stuff they used (1950s) was closer in size to modern romex, but still had the cloth covering and cloth covered type R wire. Same issues as with the old rag wire, but at least it is a couple decades newer. It terrifes me, but not as much as the tar stuff.

    Next, sometime in the probably late 50s, when plastics came on the scene, was a cloth covered romex, but with type TW wire. This stuff is probably fine, the insulation seems to have held up well over the years and the jackets do OK (say what you want about asbestos, but it does its primary job well ). The only real knock against it is that it is almost universally ungrounded.

    After that you get into modern plastic jacketed NM, starting in the mid 60s, no ground to start out with, but appearing late 60s. Then in the late 60s to about 1973, 14 and 12 gauge aluminum wire reared their ugly head. Then finally in 1984, the modern NM-B that we all know and love was introduced.

    In defense of knob and tube, as long as the connections are good, it actually is pretty robust. The wires are normally inches apart, and nearly impossible to short across. That said it should still be torn out whenever it is encountered. It has that cloth covered type R wire and is around 100 years old, and the insulation is often quite brittle.

  12. #12
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    Cotton was used for most of the cloth wire insulation but where something better was needed, especially in hot locations, asbestos was used. You can tell the difference with some confidence by bending the wire. If the cloth seems old it is probably cotton. If it looks like new after a century in use it's probably asbestos.

  13. #13
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    This page might have more than you really wanted to know about cloth covered Romex.
    Beranek's Law:

    It has been remarked that if one selects his own components, builds his own enclosure, and is convinced he has made a wise choice of design, then his own loudspeaker sounds better to him than does anyone else's loudspeaker. In this case, the frequency response of the loudspeaker seems to play only a minor part in forming a person's opinion.
    L.L. Beranek, Acoustics (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1954), p.208.

  14. #14
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    I could not remember his name. I had to look it up, Thomas Davenport. The first American to make an electric motor in 1834. No insulated wire in those days so he ripped up his wife's silk wedding dress and warped the wire in cloth strips to insulate it.
    Bill D.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas...ort_(inventor)
    Last edited by Bill Dufour; 08-24-2020 at 10:39 AM.

  15. #15
    Our house was built in the early 60's AFAIK. It has remnants of that type wire in everything we haven't remodelled yet.

    I think my electrician called it "wireloom" (?) The wire itself it good, but its definitely not code because it is 2 wire (no ground) and maybe has asbestos in covering.

    Looking at the page Dave cited, it looks just like Paraflex.

    He wants to replace all of it, but we haven't gotten around to it. Told me I have to if we ever sell the house.
    Last edited by Robert Engel; 08-24-2020 at 12:26 PM.

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