conduit under finish floor -- what would you do?

[Max]

The story is as old as Home Improvement -- a simple job (lEt's puLL Up tHe CaRpEt and SAND THE FLOOr!!!) turns into . . . more, when 1,600+ face-nailed nails were found in the floor.

So. I'm pulling the old floor up and discover -- the floor is floating on sleepers (ok) with frigging conduit run through the sleepers. Not ok?

shows one of three such installations in the room, each about 8 feet long. running on a diag. line.

There's a basement underneath, with a 1/4" plywood pebble-textured painted ceiling with three light fixtures in it.

The question: should i relocate the wiring runs to the basement, below the planking? If so, should i run some kind of flexible armored wiring, something else or pull the basement ceiling and run conduit?

And while we're at it -- would you go with new sleepers or go with plywood or OSB or something else to replace the old sleepers i'm removing?

.max

[Chris Lewis]

According to Max :

It's okay. Unusual, but perfectly code-legal. The conduit is required because the wire is within 1 1/4" of the finished face (the top of the flooring).

installations

I wouldn't bother rerouting unless there was a compelling reason for it. There doesn't seem to be, tho, if you did reroute, you probably could do without the sleepers altogether.

If you did reroute under the floor, you'd probably _not_ require conduit or armor at all.

[Curmudgeon]

No need to run conduit/armored cable if you wire in the basement ceiling..almost all municipalities approve of Romex flexible plastic cable these days...but yes, personally I would pull the basement ceiling, remove all the conduit upstairs, and make new Romex runs thru the floor joists. I would not use sleepers in any case...too much flex possible with the hardwood floor...just asking for creaks. So, in my opinion, it's Romex in the floor joists, or existing conduit with OSB sub-floor cut to accomodate the conduit.

installations