Two Core Lighting Cable

Yes, not fully compliant, unless the fittings on the circuit are Class 2 (plastic/fully insulated). I'd have no problem replacing the fuse box with a RCD protected CU, along with no CPC/earth to the lights.

Reply to
A.Lee
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Re-examine the conductors of your lighting circuit carefully in x-section. Reason being is the middle / late 60's was just when copper clad aluminium stranded cable was used for afew years. I know, I had a large house in it which required rewiring throughout.

The lack of an CPC wasnt so much of an issue with the lighting ciruits, but we couldnt get a pass on the earth loop impedance test and thus no certificate for the purposes of renting it out.

Tim..

Reply to
Tim..

Re-examine the conductors of your lighting circuit carefully in x-section. Reason being is the middle / late 60's was just when copper clad aluminium stranded cable was used for afew years. I know, I had a large house in it which required rewiring throughout.

The lack of an CPC wasnt so much of an issue with the lighting ciruits, but we couldnt get a pass on the earth loop impedance test and thus no certificate for the purposes of renting it out.

Tim..

Reply to
Tim..

How can I tell if I have copper clad aluminium stranded cable? Are the wires copper coloured on the outside? The wires in my cables are silver/grey in colour.

Reply to
Wesley

Copper clad aluminium would have a copper coloured surface with a silver coloured core visible at the cut end.

It was normal for cables in that era to be tinned copper, almost certainly what you have.

Reply to
Mike Clarke

Measure a strand. The copper will be 0.029" diameter. Dunno about the ally stuff - I've never seen it.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I cant recall ever seeing copper plated on to Al. either.

Most flex is copper cored tin or lead/tin plated.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Our 1972 house had the rings in AlCu cable, with the lighting in a mixture of 3/029 and 1mm copper - all copper coloured - no tinning on any of it.

The power cable looked like 7.029, but was about half as big again as usual imperial cable. For it's size, the cable felt unusually flexible - the unwelcome first clue as to what I had.

If you cut the end of the cores and use a glass you can see the Al core, with a thin skin of copper.

In it's 40 year installation there appeared to be no real problems - no loosening of screw joints and overheating, which is what I feared. The copper coat appears to solve most of the pure Al cable problems. The PVC was in perfect condition - encouraging for the future.

The size is a problem though - two cores will go into a 13A socket receptacle OK, but three (for spurs) is a problem, and I did find some quite nasty examples, with uninsulated bits hanging out, and poor connections. The cable CPC was a single wire, around the size of 1.5mm metric, and this was a problem too, with lots of connections tending to break off from metal fatigue when disturbed.

The one good thing about it was that it had been installed in decent sized oval conduit, and I was able to replace it with physically smaller 2.5mm T&E with ease.

Charles F

Reply to
Charles Fearnley

The copper coat fixes the surface oxidation, but not the tendency to creep. Cracking still happens, but with less dire results. So not a great idea really.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

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