They had cloth romex? I thought the start of romex was after cloth insulation.
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).
I'd expect linen not asbestos.
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.
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
I don't think asbestos could contribute to pulling strength.
I was just guessing at the reason it was there.
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...
NM cable (Romex) was recognized in the 1926 NEC
Here's three pictures I have of mine. I had untaped these splices because I was curious to see if they were soldered. They were not.
That's enough to make your blood run cold.
Yes, it's been very interesting what they got away with for scores of years.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.