Whats the oldest type of wiring sytem you have had to work on/repair/replace

[Pete999]

Carrying on from the types of cables etc got me wondering, what are the oldest types of wiring you have worked on?
Myself I can recall working with Lead covered cables, cleated singles, capping and casing (no not PVC trunking) TRS, VIR Bare MICC apart from us old timers, the list wont mean much to many of you.

 

[PEG]

...I put a new string,on Edison's kite...

 

[Bob Geldoff1234]

I helped my father rewire Blackpool town hall in the 80's and it was one of the first buildings in Blackpool to have electricity.circa 1850.It was lead cable with waxed paper as the insulators.They terminated in metal joint boxes and then had bitumen poured in to seal it.It was still in use when we ripped it out in mid 1984.I bet they never had any loose joints on that installation!.Blackpool also had its own generating station feeding the area including the town hall.

 

[Vitesse]

I removed this from a house last year. It wasn't in use but I needed to remove it to put a new CU in, to replace the existing one from the 60's and the owner let me keep it.

Not in bad condition considering it's 80 odd years old!

The company that installed it was formed in 1931 and ceased trading in 2008. So not a bad run.

The house was built in the 30's and I think domestic properties started getting electricity installed in the 1930's? So it could be one of the original domestic boards.

Fused neutrals as mentioned earlier.

 

[ruston]

...I put a new string,on Edison's kite...

I saw you.

 

[sparkdog]

Used to do lead sheathed cable when I was an apprentice. If the existing wiring was lead any new circuits were done in the same.

 

[Delboybully]

A couple of years ago I had the joy of trying to get lights back on in a place wired in VIR cable, wired in singles with no conduit.. The fault was a loose connection at a switch but the owner had taken a light fitting down. I fixed the switch ok (the insulation was quite good - no cracking) but the neutral at the light kept cracking as I bent it to terminate it. I ended up putting a lengh of heat shrink over it and then bending it. It worked a treat and got the lights back

I have since rewired the place

 

[Delboybully]

A couple of years ago I had the joy of trying to get lights back on in a place wired in VIR cable, wired in singles with no conduit.. The fault was a loose connection at a switch but the owner had taken a light fitting down. I fixed the switch ok (the insulation was quite good - no cracking) but the neutral at the light kept cracking as I bent it to terminate it. I ended up putting a lengh of heat shrink over it and then bending it. It worked a treat and got the lights back

I have since rewired the place

 

[Lucien Nunes]

I've worked on all the above, not least because we get asked specifically to look at older installations. Sweated lead joints and refilled the sealing chambers with compound. About the only two things I haven't done from scratch are install wooden casing, which is an art in itself, and vulcanised rubber joints in-situ. Working imperial MI is interesting because the cable is potentially good for another lifetime, if only one can maintain the terminations in a practical fashion. I do still have a few NOS seals and tooling but often one has to improvise. One of our last mainly original VIR-in-conduit systems from 1928 has recently come out of service although some of the original fittings are being re-used. It is a pity that most of the genuinely interesting stuff has gone now, if I had started collecting sooner it would have been so much easier.

 

[davesparks]

I've got a pdf somewhere which lists all of the imperial micc sizes with the metric equivalent sized glands and pots which will fit (sometimes with a little soldering)

 

[freddo]

There used to be quite a lot of lead sheathed, rubber, RBJ, singles in casing or slip conduit around, don't see very much of it now. There is a farm house with 1930s wiring, wooden Kantark fuse boards, porcelain ceiling roses etc. The cables are in very poor condition, sections of insulation have fallen off of some of the surface cables. Every time I got there to fault find, all I can do is disconnect the faulty circuit. We priced to rewire the place 10 years ago, and keep telling him but he still won't spend the money, what's worse is he's minted, typical farmer. He turns the main switchfuses off before he goes to bed or leaves the house...

It's probably a good thing a lot of older stuff has gone as I seem to hoard it, I even have a load of old Crabtree switch and pendant cartons. Some of the stuff is quite old, but all of it still functions. A friend has a lot of much older light switches and a few light fittings, late 1800s stuff, decorative but robust with no tools required to access the tingly parts, he has them installed in his house. One of his light fittings has ES lamps, the threaded cap connected directly to the metalwork of the fitting, and a single core connected to each of the centre lamp contacts.

 

[dmxtothemax]

knob and tube wiring.
from the 40's
at a masonic lodge in Brisbane

 

[UNG]

I've got a pdf somewhere which lists all of the imperial micc sizes with the metric equivalent sized glands and pots which will fit (sometimes with a little soldering)

Before BICC stopped manufacturing Pyro in Prescot if we needed seals and glands for imperial cable and no metric equivalent was available we called the factory and they would drill out pots and glands to suit the imperial cable. Turn round was quite quick and if we needed them in a hurry the factory was only 10 minutes away

 

[Lucien Nunes]

Not part of the electrical supply, but we maintain some old wiring installations that are part of large pipe organs that have their original electric action. As an example, the Southampton Guildhall Compton still has all its original cotton-covered wiring from 1937, all in excellent condition. Top of head there is some 100 miles (yes, miles) of single-core DCC 26SWG wire, loomed up with cotton tape or lacing cord into bundles typically of 61, 73, 85 or more cores. The largest bundle is about 2,000 cores, while the console cables of maybe 600 & 800 cores respectively actually unplug with giant multipole connectors. All of this works at 18.5V DC, for which the total supply is about 100A continuous, 300A peak, from a belt-driven dynamo. The mains and submains are still in VIR, in good condition, of which the largest is something like 19/.064 (about 40 mm²).

Some of the workmanship is quite spectacular, hundreds of connections all fanned out with not a single wire 1/16" out of place. I'll dig some pics out later.

 

[Midwest]

Me & the Mrs used be members of the National Trust. One of the last places we visited, was Tyntesfield in North Somerset. It was acquired by the Gibbs family in the late 1800's. They made they money by making fertiliser out of bird ----.

It was bought by the NT, when the last of the Gibb's family, Richard, past away in 2001. He used only three rooms in this mansion. Public were granted access, during its restoration. The whole place was covered in dust, and the musky smell was quite strong. It had a games room, which had (at the time) the latest 'billiard' or games table with automatic mechanical scoring. The Grand Staircase carpets had been trashed, by contractors. It contents were catalogued and included, an unexploded Second World War bomb. By 2013 the inventory had risen to 47,154 items.

The restoration of these places, use some trades that have fallen into obscurity, which requires the acquisition of new trades & apprentices.

Ohhh, and it had some really old wiring in it, which was replaced with some nice shiny new MI (I never worked on any of it).

A plug for the NT, its about £65 a year pp. Worth it for entry, to some of the most fabulous & fascinating places to see (big & small) in England, Wales & NI.

 

[Pete999]

knob and tube wiring.
from the 40's
at a masonic lodge in Brisbane

Can't talk about that it's a secret.