book recall... a bit OT or not...

[Doug Miller]

Still is, per 2008 NEC Article 250.118 (8).

Not by any competent electrician. That was *never* approved by Code AFAIK.

[CW]

The information in this book is known to the state of California to cause cancer.

[papadoo1]

I recently worked on an old house built in the 50s that had NO ground. Makes one wonder about building codes *back then *. . . .

[Scott Lurndal]

methinks you're confusing a neutral (grounded conductor) with a ground (grounding conductor).

In Miller's setup, both conductors in the BX were used to supply the hot side of the circuit to the light and the outlet, with the armor providing the return path (grounded conductor). This violates pretty much every version of the NEC I've ever seen.

Using the armor as a grounding conductor used to be ok per code, but now only EMT or solid metallic conduit can be used as a grounding conductor, however neither AL flex conduit nor BX may be used as the grounding conductor.

scott

[Larry Jaques]

On Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:57:22 -0600, the infamous dpb scrawled the following:

The book is from 1998 and doesn't list any version of the NEC. It has literally nothing electrical in it, hence my wondering WTF was wrong to have it recalled.

Yeah, go ahead and do that. I hope they have Internet in STIR!

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[Larry Jaques]

On Sat, 9 Jan 2010 11:33:04 -0800, the infamous "CW" scrawled the following:

"Caution: Do not ingest more than 3 color pages of this book in one sitting or 5 in one calendar day or 21 in one calendar week."

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[Puckdropper]

Larry Jaques wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I've got the Sunset Home Repair Handbook, but as far as I can tell it's not among the recalled ones. The ISBNs don't match. My look through the wiring section doesn't show anything wrong, but I'm not a household or commercial electrician. (I stick to the low voltage stuff.)

Oh well, I'd rather have the $10 than the book. It takes up much less space on the shelf. :-)

Puckdropper

[Larry Jaques]

On 10 Jan 2010 03:23:14 GMT, the infamous Puckdropper scrawled the following:

I sure hope you're not serious. That's taking advantage of a company after a stinking speaking weasel got them down in the bent-over position. Bad karma, dude.

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[Charlie Self]

Yeah. It was too early in the a.m. or too late in the afternoon for me.

[Charlie Self]

I doubt it pre-dates three wire as standard, two wire plus ground. A friend and I rewired a small extension to my mother's attic in '62, and, at least in Westchester County, NY, a ground wire was code. Actually, it was illegal for an unlicensed electrician to work in the home, or so we were told, even back then. Because my friend is an electrical engineer, again according to them, they gave us a bye on that one.

Of course, things are different here. When this house was built-- again, 1962--there were NO building codes in Bedford County, Virginia. I once rented an old farmhouse where all new wiring was run around the outside of the house, snugged up under clapboards for protection. It was standard indoor cable stapled in place. The house was half log structure, half rough cut framing lumber, with plaster over wood lath interior walls and clapboard exterior. The logs were white oak, as were the logs used as floor joists on the first floor. I could understand a shortcut or two, as it would be a real mess to open up those walls to run new cable, but I moved not too long after I got really familiar with the wiring layout.