Cable by the metre

The idea of 'upselling' to a whole reel would never cross their minds, obviously.

Why bother?

Brown/Blue was legit before part P, and Red Black after it. No one is going to care in most cases...

Obviously a real diyer goes to the shop for 2 metres of shiny new cable.

A real electrician would chuck in a piece from the scrap bucket on the van.

Owain

Really. A real electrician carrying out a rewire would gather together loose bits of cable saved in the back of the van in the hope they might fit the cable runs, rather than turning up with a reel of cable. I can see that.

For a DIY extension lead, I did find that PVC cable was easier to find and cheaper than rubber.

How many install new installations. I can understand 11kv cable not being sold by the metre.

Isn't that because it's cheaper to make, and when cable was asked for I thought of cable rather than Twin & earth which is differnt to teh cort of cable you should be using for an extention lead.

I wouldn't use rubber. It tends to perish after a few years and become brittle.

Odd then that most high quality power tools have rubber, rather than PVC, flex?

Although both are cables, most would call the sort used for an extension lead flex.

Be careful if you buy a long length and actually need a long length. I bought 15m of 16mm singles because I needed 15m of 16mm singles, and just managed to stop the desk clark from folding it up into "convenient" 100cm lengths.

Except most don't bother, but this might depend on culture or country, studetns find this sort of thing difficult the differtn between flex, wire cable, solder etc..

Can I have some solder wire, can I have some wire solder is another.

I explain that these are two diffent things.

For me a wire is a single conductor that could be solid core or stranded whereas a cable can have more than one conductor wire. You'll notice I said for me, if I were a cable car engineer or a fisherman I'd have string and rope to worry about too.

This approach seems to have worked. I mentioned this (cable not sex) at the coffee bar. The manager said his father was a retired electrician who had emigrated to Australia leaving a shed load of leftovers. Unfortunately, he only had 1.0 mm2. However, the assistant's father is a semi-retired electrician and she will bring me in a 2 metre length tomorrow.

Not comparing like with like. Flex has to be able to be twisted, coiled or whatever hundreds of times (clue lies in the name) and is not generally expected to last 40 years. Nobody would wire a house using flex.

May be out of date but:

"Part P approved document Appendix C

"Tough Rubber Sheathed (TRS), vulcanized rubber insulated (VRI) cables "Prior to the use of pvc insulated cables becoming common in the

"The extent to which the insulation and sheath deteriorate in service depends very much on whether the cable has been subjected to overloading and/or excessive temperature, or the rubber has been exposed to direct sunlight. Deterioration results in a loss of insulating properties, with the rubber becoming dry and inflexible, perhaps with a tendency to crumble.

"Such wiring installations should be tested by a competent person at the earliest opportunity, but otherwise left undisturbed until replacement, as they are beyond their normally expected safe working life."

This does not look like encouragement to use rubber cable to me.

Plus if it is after Part P, you just say you didn't do it. And add, wouldn't it be illegal if I had?

You are confusing two different applications; Permanent wiring and flexible cables. For flexible cables, which can usually be replaced fairly easily, rubber has the advantage of being much more flexible than PVC and doesn't stiffen due to low temperatures.

No I am not confusing different applications. I am replying to a posting that confuses two different applications. Please take care with attribution.

In what way is a power tool cord very different from an extension lead?

Who was suggesting you should?

BTW, the rubber used these days for flex might well be very different from the rubber used all those years ago for house wiring, etc.

You're confusing something. The comment about rubber being better than PVC rather obviously applied to an extension lead - ie flex.

And given you can't buy rubber TW&E, no real point in discussing it for a new installation.