Alarmed at story about house wiring !

[robgraham]

I've just had my son in law on the phone about the wiring of an ex- council house they have just moved into.

He went to investigate some of the single wall sockets to see about putting doubles in and detected that a number had earth/neutral or line /neutral reversals. I'm not a professional but I am confident in my competency on domestic electrics, and am comfortable that he is competent enough (!) to inspect all the outlets (and lighting circuit, etc) and address the errors

My concern is the age of the wiring - I haven't seen the cables but his report is that it is PVC - red and black but the cpc is green insulated in the cable. I rewired my own house starting something like the late 70's and I don't remember cable like that. Just when was cable like that phased out for the uninsulated cpc, and will such age of cable be of concern? The fact that there are such blatant wiring errors already is of concern, and puzzlement how they exist - no, possibly not: explanation is quite possible that anyone could have changed the sockets at anytime for ones of a more up to date style.

Thanks

Rob

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Being council it might be run in conduit so the cables would be singles and the EEC insulated like the others- only green.

Some councils also didn't use standard 13 amp sockets which could also account for them being changed. There was (is?) a round pin variety called D&S and also one where the pins were rotated 90 degrees from the standard

-called Walsall gauge.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Only time I've seen T&E with the earth sleeved inside the sheath it was aluminium wiring. Aluminium wiring presents special problems at terminations. Domestic aluminium wiring is very rare in the UK; it was used only for a short period in the early 1970s during a copper shortage, but even then its use was rare.

However, in your case it might just be that the push-on sleeving has been pushed a little way into the sheath.

[cj]

Hi Rob Having not seen the wiring I can offer the following that may shed light on the situation . Early council instalations had a council spec' that required the earth core to be sheathed so the sparks would strip the insulation from single core green earth wire and slide it over the bare earth core .As this was a heavy gauge pvc it would penetrate the grey pvc core of the T&E giving the appearance of a green earth core. As for the L/N reversal earlier sockets had the L & N terminals revered by manufacurer. IIR MK live on right Volex Live on left. Easy to see how the reversal could happen if a socket was changed.( Even done it myself years ago).

"Always look at the terminals" haunted me for years :-)

CJ

[meow2222]

PVC does not usually degrade significantly with age indoors. Early T&E with PVC outer and rubber inner is another matter. Really you need to establish & tell us just what cable you have -

- outer sheathed or singles

- PVC both layers or pvc & rubber

- what size conductors

- Cu or Al conductors

- whether there are any other problems once you've corrected the socket connections

Nb if the cable is rubber or Al, disturbing the connections can cause safety problems.

Some more info on old cables:

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Never seen this. When was it made?

[Andrew Gabriel]

I've seen something which looks like this, but is in fact lead sheathed. Aged lead look just like aged grey PVC.

[chris French]

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

Yep, we had length of that in our old house, only realised it was lead when I came to disconnect it.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Looks like but feels different? Cold to the touch? All the lighting wiring in this house was lead when I bought it. For about 2 days. ;-)

[Andy Wade]

I suspect this is a reference to the products called 'capothene' and 'ashothene' that predated PVC twin (with or without earth). The -thene endings though suggest polyethylene, rather than vinyl.

I found this in Google's page cache: http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:kliMGfHZf1wJ:

bit about the move from rubber to PVC cables being a consequence of the Korean war...

[dmc]

[snip]

It's not that the previous owner had fitted "nice" expensive brass sockets etc and took them off to take to their new place is it?

Our house was like that and thankfully they took them all with them (saved me a job :))

Darren