I think it was "HeyBub" who stated:
There's still a war on.
Only this time, we're encouraged to SPEND, SPEND, SPEND . . .
. . . to SUPPORT the war effort!
Things have changed since then . . . .
I don't have any string, but I gotta shitload of cigar boxes I don't have any use for.
And a corrolary to Murphy's law that seems to apply to me most: As soon as I toss that short cutoff, I'll need it!
I tend to keep stuff that's 3ft or longer I suppose. It doesn't take up much room and has actually paid off in some cases, and not in others.
Cheers, cc
Certainly you don't need a lot of it but short pieces of "free" copper wire are handy for tying things up. In an emergency it can even be a halfway decent hose clamp. I usually have a bucket of wire scraps around the shop. Hobby and artist folks seem to love solid copper wire. I know a guy who makes sculptures from it.
With the price of Romex these days, I would not throw ANY of it away. Lets say you got an outlet on your workbench and need another on the other end of the bench. You might only need a 4 or 6 foot piece. Or you need to wire several outlets or switches inside one box and need one foot of the black wire, so you strip off the Outer romex coating and extract that piece of black (or white). Why cut a foot off a full roll when there are scraps. I also find the individual wires are good for wrapping around stuff. I know I have had a muffler bracket break on my car and used a piece of #12 wire to hold it in place till I get a proper bracket. Things like that are handy to have. Take a small piece of plywood and nail it across two floor joists in your basement and stick the scraps up there. It's out of the way till you need it.
I must say I never heard of splicing that many pieces of wire together. I am always against wasting stuff, and even if I did want to get rid of that wire, I'd sell it to a recycler, copper brings a good price now. But I think the guy that wired your house with the K&T must have run out of wire that day. Just seems like a lot of work for 12 feet of wire. But if it's soldered, it was probably good as anything....
BTW: That "sheathing" they slipped on is called LOOM. You need to have worked with K&T to know that word :) These young electricians probably never heard of it.....
Mark
Yeah, but this time we just raise the national debt so the next 3 or 4 generations will have to pay for Bush's blunder. That moron will haunt people for the rest of this century, if not longer.
No sir. Splicing is just a lazy way to hurry n get a persons house burned down. Lol.
Romex /can/ be spliced as long as the junction is in an accessible box. If properly twisted and wire-nutted...a splice would be no different than any other junction.
Splicing line cords, now that is a different issue.
I got a kick out of how my grandmother would extend the length of lamp cords.
She could not deal with a total re-wiring of the lamp (or radio)...or even deal with replacing a plug...but what she did was to simply cut the cord in two places and splice-in an additional length of lamp cord...then bind it all up with black friction tape.
Though it would hardly pass an electrical inspection, she used enough tape that there really was no danger of anything shorting out.
Though I do not keep it plugged in...I inherited a console radio from her...and left the cord-splice in-situ.
When I was about 25 I had a friend who had wired his own Soho lotf co-op in NYC, one that had been a print shop before he and the other person on that floor turned it in to two apartments. I guess he'd read a book, but I was his technical advisor, even though I'd never wired anything bigger than a lamp and my Lionel train. (Well, I'd rewound a motor, repaired house wiring, and done other things)
Some other woman was re-doing her co-op and he referred me to her to do electrical work. Maybe I should have said no, but I wanted to do it not just for the money.
NYC didn't and probably doesn't permit Romex, wires in a heavy vinyl sheath**, and insists on BX, spiral metal shielded wiring**.
**Sometimes I go into more detail than people in the ng need, for the sake of someone I send an email copy to.So I don't know if what I learned applies to Romex or applies outside of NYC, but I ran BX, let's call it number 1, from her breaker box to an accessible junction box (not just used for junction but it also had an unrelated switch or light in it, and there I wire-nutted number 1's wires to another BX and ran that to something else another 20 feet away.
Years later I learned that I was not allowed to do that and I should have run two continous wires from the breaker box, in and out of the junction box to the final destination.
So maybe BX is different from Romex, or NYC is different from elswhere.
She had told me up front that I didn't have to touch the fuse box in the basement of the building, that she'd hire a professional electrtician for that part, but when I was just about done with this job, she wanted me to connect to the fusebox. 10 or 15 years later, I would likely have done it -- in my own building, I could remove the fuse in the basement and the output connection would have been dead. but I hadn't spent much time in the basement of my own building yet.
Good for you. Let me tell you about my grandmother. When I was about 8, I was lying on the floor in front of the TV and it must have been my bare foot that went under the sofa and got a shock. The next day, with daylight, I was able to see that she had a wire with a 2-prong plug lying there, and I think I determined that 6 or 8 feet on it was plugged into an extension cord. So somehow she had a cord with plugs on both ends. But I was 8 and it didn't occur to me to challenge her or the arrangement so I just decided to not go under the sofa anymore, even with just my leg. She lived there another 10 years and nothing bad ever happened.
I can't believe my cousins did this. I'm not sure they even know how, so that leaves my grandfather, who had come from Europe when he was 20 and hadn't even had electriicty there. But when I was 6, he had shown me how to change a wall light switch. And I somehow inherited one of his screwdrivers, which I later learned he must have sharpened himself, pretty good huh, except I also learned he'd sharpened it wrong, like a chisel instead of parallel sides, or better yet getting slightly wider at the end, with a flat end, no single-edge. He must have had a good reason for making a cord with plugs on both ends, something that wasn't there anymore. Before he owned a grocery store, he was a junk man, so there's no telling what he ended up with.
If you're not making a splice or junction in the box, why would you ever run the BX straight through the box at all? Just run it to wherever it's going. I would think that pass through would raise the inspectors eyebrows, more so than just making a routine splice. If the box has other stuff in it, like yours did, inspectors here wouldn't even analyze it to figure out what's spliced versus actually connected to other stuff inside the box.
This is one of two or three things I can't remember, but there was a reason.
I wanted to do it right, not do something wrong that inspectors wouln't notice.
I've actually forgotten which floor or building it was, but I know the block and I drive by every time I'm in nyc, and it hasn't burned down yet, so that's a good sign.
I agree.
There is nothing wrong with a splice, it's done all the time...and my house ...which has one...recently passed an electrical inspection.
The inspector spent most of his time making sure everything was grounded properly.
With BX, I think you *must* use a metal box. I dislike using it as cutting it is always a hassle -- always wondering if you're going to *knick* the insulation on one or more conductors while cutting the armor, having to wrap the conductors in tape to prevent the armor from rubbing through their insulation, etc.
On Friday, September 11, 2015 at 4:48:08 PM UTC-5, Don Y wrote: I dislike using it as cutting
...you kink it, unwind it, and cut it with diagonal pliers...and there's a fiber-like insert that you put-in to protect the conductors.
Ok so I think the romex is being bogarted by my hoa and neighbor (garage) t he pics I'll post u can see the wore going up which it nundles in loops aro und the wooden frame structure of my garage interior - to then the other si de if garage where rom ex powers the lite off alley exit
So how if they are socking holes to sink they power in my wall without aski ng and who knows I mite b paying for - can these b spliced into to assist m y low watt situation Which from my pics u can see is a hot mess And 1(20) switch just Abt powers all my house so there's that
Well I can't fig how to post reply with pic
It's not a binary group.
I see. Well that makes good sense ,.and thank u all for ur replies & esp the kindness avail in which I may still confide 2other groups(vet ke l Lol pls forgive the amateur commentary in lieu of my ignorance - ok so .... I'
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