Old T & E cable

That sounds like bog standard T&E cable to me, the red and black inner sheathing will be PVC as well as the outer cover. It lasts a

Was single core 2.5 ever produced with rubber insulation? From what I read the single core metric cables only entered the regs in the 1970s so well after PVC insulated wire replaced rubber in normal use.

Dave

Yes, I can remember all PVC insulated "7 x .029" cable being the standard ring circuit cable well before the single core ones became standard.

PVC outer with rubber insulated conductors is rare, but did exist. It is old, usually imperial sizes and typically stranded. It will probably be in better condition than fully rubber insulated cable.

Well it *could* still be safe. You would need to inspect carefully - especially at the termination points.

Old T&E may only have a 1mm^2 CPC/Earth (if it has one at all). That means that a spur on a socket ring circuit may not have adequate fault protection if the circuit is fed from a BS3036 re-wireable fuse but it is probably ok on a MCB.

I really don't know if it is some Imperial size, but it looks like 2.5mm. And the insulation is indisputably rubber rather than PVC, though quite possibly some sort of synthetic rubber.

Come to think of it, the earth conductor does look small, but I have at least got MCBs. And the reason I saw it was getting rid of a spur with four double sockets on it!

A white outer is nowadays sometimes a sign of it being LSZH (low smoke zero halogen) cable which is more fireproof than regular PVC. It uses XLPE inners rather than PVC which can be more stretchy - maybe that's what you're seeing?

Theo

A possibility, though it is about 40 years old, and I think the conductor insulation is very elastic, doubles in length on pulling.