The AM Forum

house wiring sucks. 1/4 mile  into it and need at least another 1000 feet of romex.
up and down back and forth work all day and have little to show for it.
I'll be a real man and use #12 for everything. Hey wouldn't it be nice to have lights in the closets. I want a 40 breaker panel..

Oh well at least it isn't siding 30 feet up a ladder in the hot sun

I'll enjoy work monday morning............maybe   gfz

Does anyone use metal sheathed BX cable anymore ?? I never see it in new houses. This place is wired entirely with BX. To keep things consistant any add on wiring has been done with BX. I am curious, is it considered okay in the electrical codes to mix BX and ROMEX in the same installation ?? Or is it strictly one or the other ??

Frank, please tell us you are NOT installing the wall outlets upside down as is fashionable these days.
There sure are some stupid "improvements" to the electical code, while they overlook other practical gains.
For example, the electrician who did the Radio Lodge wanted to use 14ga for everything but the heavy circuits I specifically requested. I said no way, LET'S RUN 12ga and do it right. This kinda piqued him, and he asked me how much wattage I actually expected to pull from a general lighting circuit (in his reference this includes duplex outlets). When I answered that a heatshrink gun might run 1500 watts, or a couple of video floodlights, plus there's surge current when I kick something on and I want to avoid voltage drop, then he didn't say much. He just noted it's a lot easier to pull 14ga through the house than 12ga, and suddenly I knew what was what. I made sure the bus from the house out to the Radio Lodge was heavy too. And here we went again. "Why do you need that heavy a supply run?" and I said for the 200 feet there's voltage drop, you've got an HVAC on there, two or three transmitters, and conceivably a peak draw of 100amps. No argument, just lay the damn cable. My voltage out there is 120 at full tilt boogie, when in the house it's 124-125. So you'll be glad you're pulling all that heavy stuff. I think you should install the duplex outlets horizontally, so that the wires don't entangle and create a hazard, with the neutral prong topside (for added safety!), ground hole to the left, and start a new trend. Think of it -- all the box suppliers can sell the "new" version that nails longwise into the stud, and raise prices because the supplied nails are longer.

Europe's been doing it horizontally for years.

Does anyone use metal sheathed BX cable anymore ??

My house ,built in 1939-1940 used BX cable. When I updated the service from 60 to 200 amps I used BX. It is easier to strip needing only a hacksaw for the sheath & strippers for the wire. There is none of that "Pain in the ass" nylon string & plastic wrap to deal with.

Industry still uses it; the electricians installed a solder fume removal system two weeks ago using BX.

In my town the electrical codes allow mixing Romex & BX.

mice don't chew BX

I once saw a house that burned down after the BX got zapped by lightning. It started a fire the whole length of the attic where the metal sheath touched paper backed insulation material.

I bet romex would have burned also Dave. 50 mils of plastic over the wire wouldn't  matter.
They are constantly doing construction at work and it is all bx.

The only ROMEX cable in use around here is a length running underground to the garage. The garage is a separate building with no physical attachment to the house. It's also much older than the house. So when the electrician electrified the garage he dug a trench and buried a length of ROMEX underground. Had he used BX he would have had to run a conduit. With the ROMEX he was able to bury it directly.  Otherwise the rest of the place...it's all BX, ... and sometimes it's all BS...   ;D ;D ;D

Geez I thought you guys would be into wirless power distribution by now......

Ah, we've got it easy. As I recollect, that nasty, cheap Romex is still illegal to use in residential construction in the Chicago area. They have to use metallic conduit and pull wire through it. Because of the fire danger, you know.
Signed,
-Your Concerned Friends at the IBEW

Well,  I can understand Chicago.They have the legacyof the infamouse "Chicago fire".  I guess they are wary that ROMEX cable could be the next O'Leary  lantern.

     I hope when he installed the "Romex" by burying it, he used " UF " rated Romex. Regular Romex dont hold up... the stuff is not constructed like Romex. She'll wick like a banshee, or maybee a little, little worm.....   As far as the Chicago thing, you might want to look at the NEC for multi dwellings, etc.... BX , or armored cable, is still used in new instilations. Case in point, Most fire alarm wiring (non residential) is armored..  
                
      'Lectritians come in two flavors, Thems that are slaves to the CODE, and others that think the code is a bunch of crap and others that just dont know.  ...  Make that 3 flavors, then come 'engineers who look to the Code as a framework for design ...  

      <<< Code?? have you ever been in someones basement, and noticed that the plumbing is mostly garden hose? The hot water heater is vented into the cellar? A classic one is "the lights dont work unless we put bread in the toaster" .. a few " They told us to not connect that to the water pipe, it attracts lightning" (The service ground, forget a driven conductor).. but the barn had lightning rods.

     Having done work in urban and rural areas I become a Liberal in terms of code like standards.>>> Licensed; FYI , no I'm not, but my brother was and i spent time in crawl spaces pulling cable, etc....

     You should befriend an electrician, buy him a beer and talk nice... they are a great source of parts........   klc

I have family in the biz and a great source of information. I hate to make them work more but the offer is out there.
The codes make a lot of sense. My building inspector knows his stuff and made good suggestions. He also told me some good lightning stories.

Now that it is Tuesday at work can't wait to get back to the torture of wiring....

screw the wiring, you shoud be making pickled eggplant!

12/3 Romex throughout here in Ohio.
The only conduit I gots is the 100 Amp service to the sub-panel for the addition and the downwall feeds in the garage.

The 200 amp service from the pole is in 3" steel outside and 3" plastic inside to the main panel.

AND ..... If lightning is gonna getcha it don't matter what ya gots !!!

Frank,
There will be pickled egg plant in my future. Some weekend I'm going to the beach with a big bottle of red stuff and make a big batch. Looking at a few lonely hunks in the bottom of Dad's jar. Now to shake the OM down for the spices he uses.
I saved your design.
I noticed you didn't offer any at the big party.....I looked carefully
you gotta have the right blood to like it though.

 Re: BX cable,

At a small cabin that I am building out in  the off-grid sticks,  have been using a Coleman Cable product--Corra Clad.  It has an extruded continuous aluminum tube around the copper conductors,  and then it is corrugated.  The aluminum outside is the safety ground,  and being continuous (ie not wound around the conductors),  it is a true and good RF shield.  The goal is to keep the RF generated by the Soalr power system as far away as possible from the RF coming into the RX front end.

This cable looks a bit like BX,  but with BX,  whe metal shieth is wound around the conductors,  and therefore does not make a good RF shield.

It is possible that this detail is a bit obsessive,  as the Solar Panels are out on a roof,  kinna like a large planar antenna.   Time will tell.

Pulling wire seems an awful lot like WORK !       73,    DE    Vic    K6IC

if ya want to be obsessive, use RG8 inside of that hollow bx/conduit stuff fer yer pwr.....  klc

so if rf hits your solar panel do you get power....hmmm
strap yourself to strap

When I ran four 85 foot lengths of #6 wire for my genset through a conduit I made the Kid from Brooklyn sound like Mary Poppins.  I found many new ways to use the f-word.  What a pain in the BA's that job was.

Bob,
I hope you pulled all at the same time. I only had to go from the meter socket to the breaker panel with 0000 copper and made the mistake of pulling one at a time. What an idiot I was. I felt like mary poppins when I dropped the can of no ox down the conduit heading to the street.  Good thing the rope was in the pipe and I was able to pop it out with a big knot. I almost had to dig it up and cut it. That day I felt very stupid....

Well after 5 days of work the truck is loaded and I'm headed South this afternoon from work,  I will be happy to do a couple days of sucky electrical after working.

The same stuff, or something that looks identical, is used for gas  lines.  It is flexible, but being a continuous run, has a lower risk of leaks.  In many cities, copper pipe is off limits for gas lines, but the corrugated stuff is ok.  The preferred product is old fashioned rigid steel pipe with threaded joints.

Anyone  know why steel pipe is any safer than heavy duty copper tubing?  I suppose there is a danger of a leak if someone tries to bend the copper around too small a radius, but otherwise it would seem to me less likely to have a leak than steel threaded pipe.

My house was wired in the 30's with the old fashioned romex with rubber insulation, wrapped with what looks like ordinary paper like what cardboard is made of, and the whole thing is covered with tar-impregnated cloth.  I suppose at the time they thought it was an improvement over the original knob-and-tube wiring technique, but over the years the stuff dries out, and now I have to be extremely careful when changing out a switch or outlet recepticle, not to bend the  stuff too much, or the insulation falls off.  It seems safe enough as long as it's left alone.  Knob-and-tube construction, if done correctly, is hard to beat safety wise.  Of course modern romex with vinyl plastic insulation, doesn't seem to deteriorate with age.

I do most of my own house wiring.  I have a copy of several editions of the NEC, going back to the late 30's.  Most of it make logical sense, but I think some of the no-no's are aimed more at making the job foolproof for incompetent electricians than inherent safety hazards.

Most of my outlets were installed horizontally.  The original recepticles were two-prong, and there is no third wire for ground.  The original wiring had the hot prong down.  I have replaced a few of them with three prong recepticles because I got tired of having to do a knock-down drag-out  house search to locate an adaptor whenever I wanted to plug in something with a three prong plug.  (I periodically buy those things by the half dozen, and still can never find one when needed.  A black hole evidently sucks them up as fast as I buy them.)  But I orient the ground plug to best accomodate power cords designed to lay flush with the wall (prongs coming out 90 degrees from the cord).  If the prongs face the wrong way, those cords extend away from the outlet in the wrong direction.  If near a doorway, I want the cord to go away from the door, not towards it.  If the outlet is next to a large appliance, I want the cord to extend towards the appliance, not away from it.  Safety-wise, I don't think it makes a rat's-arse difference whether the hot prong is on the top or the bottom, or if the ground prong is above or below the hot/neutral prongs.

For the shack, I use a breaker that once went to an electric stove, and the wiring to the other building is the wire intended to run from the pole transformer to the house, good for direct burial.  I buried it, but used PVC conduit anyway, since I always seem to end up digging ditches and holes around here, and don't want to dig into it.  The PVC stuff seems durable enough to protect it.  A friend who worked at the power company gave me the stuff for free.

Frank,
         #6 aint that bad, try pulling 4 pieces of 500MCM through 4" rigid! When I had my store years ago I did all of the wiring my self. We ran #6 to all of our rotisserie machines, I had my partner greasing it and shoving it into the pipe, I was pullung from the other end, a formidable job, but nothing like pulling the service cable.
4 pieces of 500MCM through 4" rigid conduit. I had to put a large chineese finger around it and tie the rope to the bumper of my truck!!

And then bending it to come through the service head was another interesting accomplishment! I was hanging of of the side of the building by the cable 25' in the air to get enough of a bend in it to get it through the service head.

I didnt have time to make pickled eggplant for the party, but hopefully I'll make some for easter. However I did make 40lbs of lasagne!

I'll think about you tomorrow when I light off the grill and burn some RIBS!!!!!!!!
 
                                                                     The Slab Bacon

Well Frank, Hope you have some left overs to heat up for washing down the ribs.

After a number of years, any kiink in the gas supply line tends to erode at the 'kink'.... My aunti woke up one day and said she smelled gas. The line from the wall to her oven was  a piece of non corrigated pipe that was bent to fit. This is where the the leak started.... The instillation was in the  late 20's (natural gas) and the leak developed in the early 1980's ... anyway,  thats that... Anyone ever work with Bus Bars.??......thems dont fish well...

Wow, that brings  back some memories. I remember my grandfathers house has the old knob and tube wiring. I remember seeing it where it was exposed in the basement and attic and then dissapearing into the walls. It had a really quaint old fashioned look to it that was really cool.  The house pre-dated electricity and was originally lit by candles and oil lamps. The wiring probaly dated back to the late 1900's or so, The house was located in a part  of New York City  known as the South Bronx.

Frank,
Oh, I sent them all at the same time. No doubt about that. The stupid part was I made the mistake of not pulling them but pushing them through a conduit at first. Don't know what I was thinking. I only took me 10 or so tries to figure it out.  Live and learn I guess.  Then to make matters worse I chose a conduit that should have been sized one size up from the size I chose. Instead I chose the smallest in order to save a few bucks.

In 1979, when this house was being constructed, I had requested from the builder that ALL wiring be done with 12 AWG.  I had offered to pay any increased cost. The builder said he would advise his electrician.  (Note: this was requested AFTER the construction contract had been signed)

When the electrician had done his part, I returned to inspect.  12 AWG wiring was only done to the few mandatory 20 amp circuits.  When I asked the builder why everything hadn't been wired with 12 AWG as I had requested, he informed me that it would be in violation to the code and every 15 amp circuit HAD to be wired with 14 AWG.  Knowing that this was a lot of crap, I argued that 14 AWG was a minimum and 12 AWG was permissible because it had a greater current capacity.  The builder asked me, "are you a licensed electrician?" I replied "no". He replied, "I trust the word of my electrician over YOU".  What could I say at that point? 

So there you go, folks... it appears that bullshit rules!

Eric - WB2CAU

"So there you go, folks... it appears that bullshit rules! "

Yep . . . unless it appears in a contract or change order, signed by all parties, and a portion of the payment is based on passing your final inspection . . . then, you have their critical components ($) in hand and they will much more likely to complete the job to spec.

Ah to do your own work and be anal about it.
Big Al K1JCL suggested #10 in the kitchen. I'm considering ripping out the #12
and use the home runs for the basement.

Another long weekend but built a nice dolly to sit on with a padded seat.
3 way switches inhale wire...

consider 14/2 .. 3ways they are for  lamp ckts??  save a few bucks.. generally,  it will support 12 100W lamps per ckt...  klc

The comments about knob and tube wriing took me back.  We moved into a house in '59.  It was built in about the 20's, and it had knob and tube wiring in the basement.  I was twelve, and was fascinated with it..looked old fashioned, for sure..but it also looked like wiring on the poles.  (Over the years it got replaced.)

But it also reminds me of something related but off-topic.  But I'll throw it out anyway.

Anyone remember living a house with a coal furnace?  I know the house I was born in had a coal furnace ( I remember it had a de-commissioned coal bin)  I have no recollection of the conversion, but I do have very dim memorys of the damper control with chains running to the basement.  I also remember being in a friends house about first grade where the conversion hadn't been made.  When I saw the damper control I knew I'd seen it before.  If it wasn't for that, I may never have recalled living in a house with a coal furnace.

Anyone aware enough of those times (late 40's) that can recall shovelling coal...lighting the furnace in the fall...gas conversion?

The house we move into in '59 (The house I got my license in) had a gas conversion coal furnace.

Sorry about off topic.

Paul

When I was a punk, I was fascinated with the HV ignition transformer setup on the oil burner heat in my folks home in Illinois. "Wow, 10,000 volts!!...Cool!"

They converted to gas which wasn't nearly as impressive. But every time I fill up one of the diesels today, that smell of #2 fuel oil takes me back.