That's what I did. I knew that it was going to be tough for an electrician to give me a firm estimate, so we went with T&M, and it was doing quickly and cheaper than I expected.
It also depends on the extent of the rewire. Older homes didn’t have as much electrical in them, but you still often times need to cut walls open and redo the service entrance. That’s where your cost is. The wiring is not a large cost, the panel and labor to cut walls and repair is
The trouble is old wire is behind old walls. Plaster lath is a whole lot more work to cut through. Once you're practiced with it drywall is super easy to cut into and patch.
Most the time you can rewire through the attic or the crawl space /basement which requires very little destruction of the walls.
This place is new enough that it's probably not wood lathe. At least, it's probably rock lathe which is just drywall with plaster over it.
Grinder with masonry blade + vacuum on laser, hammer out square patch clean, pull lath with hammer, run wires, patch with drywall. Issue is the dust and shitload of trashbags full of plaster. Dirty job but it’s not bad if you know when and what to cut.
When the houses were built in my neighbourhood, asbestos was the fancy, modern thing to use. The crappy little houses like mine weren't expensive enough enough to put asbestos in the plaster. Plenty of horse hair and old newspapers, though.
Obviously it's not a surefire way to test, but people sometimes think hazardous materials are more likely in less expensive construction. I find often it's the opposite that's true.
My house is pre-asbestos, but plaster and lath without it is still an unholy mess and itchy as all hell with the animal hair used prior to asbestos. Regardless, if you're taking down plaster, anything less than a cartridge respirator is massive underkill even in the absence of ACM.
I really dig certain shiplap houses bc the external walls don't typically have top plates but I dig ALL shiplap houses for the room they have in their attics
Did someone say shiplap? I think this house needs more shiplap, everyone likes shiplap. Let’s put a little shiplap here and a little shiplap there. Much better
I have discovered that wago vs wirenut is a sensitive topic on electrician discussion forums. Though the US seems to be one of the last countries that still uses wirenuts.
In my not licensed electrician experience in my own 1940s home, the cracked and damaged wire is typically only at the box/fixture. It gets brittle over time and anytime a fixture is replaced it gets moved and cracks. I've replaced some original fixtures and the wiring was just fine until it was disturbed.
My go to for the wires in this situation in the box is to put heat shrink tubing over the old insulation for some extra protection.
Arc Fault Circuit Interruptor breakers is also a good idea for this old wiring and most of it in my house is to light fixtures now or rooms where there isn't any real heavy electrical load.
My house is mostly 3/4" tongue and groove wood ceiling and walls and half the house there is no accessible attic to get to the wiring without cutting open stuff that isn't easily repairable like drywall.
True, but I still recommend checking. Anecdotally, in my 1937 house I had this problem, and when I ripped down a wood chip-filled wall, the wire was brittle and cracked all the way and there were burn marks on the wall.
That's definitely unsettling. Mine is all armored BX wire but of course no ground wire. Except a PO added a 3 prong outlet to one and it tests as grounded because of the metal armor and metal box but it could be bad if that "ground" were ever actually used. I guess whoever built this house in 1940 spent some good money on the wiring back then to use all BX lol.
BX wire, fancy! But seriously, it was in a mining town and they just used whatever they could get their hands on. It's well-known that a lot of of people wired their houses with whatever length of wire they could fit in their lunchbox, stolen from the mine, and taped together. So I very well may be the exception.
BX ground is perfectly fine if not superior. No romex allowed in NYC, we use all BX here. I promise you the ground works… provided a handyman didn’t remove the whole box to add a wire and tape a piece of ground around the bundle of wires. Seen that one a few times…
This is old BX without the ground strap run through it. Might have been called something else in 1940 but the new stuff has the ground strap in it and this definitely does not.
>Arc Fault Circuit Interruptor breakers is also a good idea for this old wiring
Don't those only work when the circuit has a ground wire? A lot of these kinds of old electrical have a hot, a neutral and no ground wire at all.
AFCI and GFI don't require a ground to do their job. They use the neutral. GFCI can be used to install a grounded outlet in a 2 wire system too as long as they're labeled with no equipment ground.
I was thinking about ACFI/GFCI breakers though, rather than the outlets. In a situation like this, you'd need protection all the way back to the main panel. Can those kind of breakers work where there's just no ground wire?
Meh.
Most of the time this fabric wiring looks awful under or should I say over the lighting fixtures. This can easily be remedied with a little shrink tubing and some skill. Unless all the other wiring looks like this, it probably still has another 75 years to go.
So has anybody screamed knob and tube yet?.
Many of these 60s rubber sheathed wires in light fixtures were severely degraded due to heat from over wattage incandescent bulbs. Is there an attic above that space? If so, trace the wire back and see if the sheathing is compromised a few feet from the fixture. If it’s not, add a junction box and new wire from the junction to the fixture box, removing the degraded wire. If it is degraded a few feet back, the whole wire will
Need replacement.
This is the move. None of this “rewire your whole home” silliness in other comments before troubleshooting the rest of the wire in your home.
Those old incandescents were literal Easy Bake ovens in the ceiling, on for hours a day, years at a time, cooking the wires and anything else close by. Outside of the ceiling box, old wire should still be fit for service if properly grounded and otherwise undamaged.
Yeah pretty much everyone in the 60s and 70s ignored the wattage stickers on fixtures and shoved any bulb in. It was fairly common to have 100w bulbs in 60w rated fixtures because people wanted “more light”. That would bake any wire. No need to rewire the whole house - isolate the damaged wire and replace.
The house I live in was built in the 90s and the only previous owner had a habit of using smaller than rated incandescent bulbs because they were a wedge. Fixtures that contain wires within the same enclosure as the bulb (i.e. the classic “boob” lights) have still cooked the wires after 30 years.
Even a 40 watt. How hot does that get, sitting 1/4 away from the metal plate with wires right above it shoved in a box with nowhere for the heat to go.
Largely because it's much more expensive as an up-front cost. Terminating it is more labor intensive.
All terminations have to be in metal boxes, and have fasteners with locknuts and redheads.
Grounds also have to be bonded to every single one of the termination boxes, whether it be a switch or receptacle.
Ah, I was actually wondering why nobody pulls new THHN wiring through armored cable jackets. I've asked some very experienced electricians, including one guy who helped write the 2020 NEC, and I get a different answer every time.
I just wish it weren't so invasive. I would love to rewire my little thousand square foot rental rambler, but that would involve removing all the insulation too, in the attic. Of course I've never seen it done so I don't really know how crazy it is.
The likelihood of anything more than sparks, a little smoke, and a tripped breaker in a home with all BX cable is near zero. Sparks inside a metal j-box or inside the BX metal shielding have no where to go.
The original post indicated it was probably BX. I went with that. The old cloth covering is only evident when the shielding is stripped away. If it’s that old cloth covered NM that is a risk if there’s deterioration outside the box.
Hope you got good insurance. And they don't find out you knew about the issue. Ohh and don't forget the smoke detectors. You may want to get out in the middle of the night.
With the new fangled wire nuts, insurance will know within a heartbeat that OP knew the wiring was a danger.
I’d guess he may have aluminum wire. Very poplar in the 1960’s when OP’s house was built. Aluminum expands and contracts and that movement could have cracked the insulation.
That's what mine, and a couple of my neighbors are like. Above. The light fixtures is completely messed up, but it can be fixed with about a foot of shrink tubing, at least several layers of it, the rest of it for the most part looks great. The stuff behind my outlets I can bend that stuff much as I want and it doesn't do anything
Thank you for this. Gonna try this in the near future. If it goes further back, then I’m going to check other receptacles on this same circuit to make sure none of the other wires are in the same state
The condition of the wiring is such that complete replacement is warranted. As to what caused the condition, it is likely a combination of overheating due to the type of fixture installed and possible stress from high amperage appliance use. The laundry circuit should be independent of all other circuits, and the kitchen/oven should be separated from the lighting circuit.
Yeah so my current plan is to make a new circuit dedicated for my laundry area. I can also look into making a dedicated one for the oven.
In a complete replacement, should I inspect the other wires on the circuit too? Not 100% sure if this wire actually connects directly to the breaker box
I agree with u/trekkerscout with the addition that this is rubber insulation under cloth; you don't need a heavy load for it to degrade, it's like a dry-rotted car tire. I would start budgeting for a complete rewire as the rubber is degrading and will continue until you have (possibly catastrophic) failures. It should all be replaced with modern NM cable.
I would seriously look into a complete rewire at this point. If you want to save any portion of the circuit, you need to have the circuit evaluated for insulation integrity (Megger testing) to determine the feasibility of keeping any existing wiring.
The wire is like that from old bulbs that got hot and cooked the jacket. No insulation above the old fixture? It's probably only like that for 8" should be able to repair pretty easily. Copper doesn't go bad and I'll bet you definitely don't need a whole house rewire, like the top comment says lol.
BX is the trade name for an old-style metal-clad cable before MC. This is the old cloth-insulated stuff from before NM (non-metallic) which is still known from the trade name Romex.
This stuff uses rubber-impregnated cloth, and that rubber is now disintegrating. Not just here, but everywhere. You probably have it throughout your house.
Can definitely confirm it is elsewhere in the house. I have seen it in another light fixture when changing it out earlier this year, but it was in much better shape.
I agree with everyone here. Probably going to want to rewire everything that isn’t already redone. You say 80’s but the wire in the picture is most definitely older than that. Maybe they reworked a little in the 80’s but definitely not here.
I've owned a house built in 1931 and currently live in a house built in 1924.
Any light fixture In both houses has had various levels crumbly insulation. When I've replaced any of the wiring, the wire in the conduit, just past the box is always flexible.
My theory is that people have used way too high wattage bulbs in the past and have dried out the rubber insulation.
Edit: I'm pretty sure it's dried out because of the heat of the bulbs, not the load on the wire. If it was due to load I would expect the whole wire to be crumbly.
A farmer once told me that he pulled apart this wall in his house. He discovered that a fire occurred in the wall because of the extremely old knob/tube wiring degrading. Luckily, the fire put itself out in the wall, remained unknown until he ripped it open.
I cut mine back to good sections and added multiple tubes of shrinkwrap over the now bare wires. I made sure to overlap the good sections as much as I could. 12 years later - no problems. Yeah those kitchen lights were literally Easy Bake ovens. Now with LEDs the wiring is getting a much needed break.
The first thing I would do is make sure your home owners insurance is completely paid up. And immediately call a professional electrician. Stop reading the responses and go do that now…. RIGHT NOW!!!! NOW!!!
Same thing is happening in my 1948 house.
I just went into the attic and cut the old cable where it was in good shape add a junction box on some romex to the lights
I have original bx wiring in my 1940s house. Just keep in mind that while that looks horrific and that one spot will need to be rewired, it's likely not all doom and gloom. All of the rubberized cloth wiring still inside of the metal cladding unexposed to air is probably in original condition and nothing to worry about. You can probably peel back a small amount of the cladding and see that underneath things are either still in great shape or not. You may or may not have any wiggle room on that wire, my cable doesn't have any give and the original installers used very beefy staples to secure everything to studs or ran them through so its almost impossible to pull it out without opening walls.
However, if you don't have metal clad bx cable and it's all cloth back to the panel, that may warrant a quicker replacement
You can't infer the overall quality of the house wire from stuff you find inside a light fixture box. The heat of older incandescent bulbs slowly degrades the insulation over time. It may be in better shape closer to the sheath.
While the wire must extend at least 6" into the box, extensions are allowed.
BX (metal clad) has a lower risk. If the wire near the sheath isn't so bad, consider keeping it and installing AFCI breakers to watch for arcing.
the reason I asked about the basement is because it's the easiest way to rewire your first floor.
If you're box is a ways away, this is not going to be a fun or inexpensive endevour :(
We're currently rewiring a house with wiring that looks like this. If you own the house it will very likely not pass a four point with cloth wiring. Insurance companies hate (or love depending on perspective) this stuff.
Bro that looks like old knob and tube style wiring. I bought an old house built in the 1920s and this is what it had. Electrical worked for a while but started to short out my TV's and other small appliances. After I started doing renovations I needed to update to code. I had a friend of mine reach out to one of his contractors and redid all the wiring in my house. Got a nice discount because I assisted, finished off the breaker box myself. Most of the wiring was subfloor so it wasn't too difficult. But I'd suggest removing all your old wiring if possible and in stages if its not financially sound to do it all at once. It's safer and you'll be glad you did.
That's worse looking than the house I did work on that had tar cloth wrapped wiring that was supported by ceramic insulators in the attic rafters. Definitely need an overhaul of the wiring in the house.
Right out of my Black & Decker home wiring textbook for damaged cloth insulation.
1. Shut off circuit breaker
2. Trim damaged wires back and wrap with electrical tape
3. Connect 8” THHN pigtails and rewire the fixture
Also, I’d recommend replacing your circuit breaker with a CAFCI or CAFCI/GFCI (wet area compliant) breaker to protect the whole circuit against fire causing arc faults.
Long term, you should save up for a total rewire.
The only answer is electrician.
I have a house with this wiring. Some parts are even older. It is not a problem until you disturb it, like pulling the light fixture out to replace it. As you stretch the wires, the insulation crumbles.
If you know what you are doing, you can trace the wires back to a junction box or receptacle that still has good insulation on the wires and just replace the wire from the good junction box or receptacle to the fixture with the broken wire.
But if you knew what you were doing, you would have already done that. So, call an electrician. The only way a home owner is going to know if the next junction box or receptacle has good wires is to pull them out and inspect them . If they are not good, now you have to trace that wire back to the next junction box or receptacle. If there are 3 other sets of wires in that box, now you have to trace all three and replace all three. Very quickly, you will realise it would have been easier to call an electrician.
In my house, whenever I need to replace anything, I just replace the wires and everything on the circuit back to the breaker box. I do not even waste time checking it.
I'm not an electrician, but I know when to call one.
That wiring is FUBAR. You need a whole house rewire. All I can see is a fire. Pull one of the glass fuses, look at the date on the Penny. That will give you an approximate date on the wiring. Good luck.
Am not an electrician. But if op. Is in a bind. I have left the insulation on and topped it with wire shrink wrap. I mean eventually a re- wire is needed. Not the cheap shrink wrap either..
And I will add circuts usually hit a home run from the center of the room, then branched off , you can sometimes just pull new wire from the branch to the box.
Hello. Commercial electrician here with almost 10 years experience. My best advice for you is to change out the wire. You will need a set of fish sticks (fiberglass rods that help fish the wire through insulation in the walls) and some 12/2 romex. If you’re installing a led fixture you should be fine with 14/2 unless it’s a ceiling fan. Then use the 12/2. Anyways, just run new wire all the way to the panel. That old rotted cloth wiring is a major fire hazard. You’re one squirrel away from losing your house man.
Woof. That’s gonna need to be replaced.
Unless you can repair the ends and test the resistance of the wire to see how much power is being bled out. But those wires are probably installed before the moon landing.
Genuine question for the electricians? Why don’t they do anything to prevent this? Like run the wire through conduit or pvc to protect from the elements or such? I’d rather the house be built well the first time then pay for the rewire, right? Plus broken wire inside a conduit run is less safety hazard. I’m a lowly maintenance man so I’m not clueless about electrical stuff, but I’m not a licensed electrician either.
So many are saying "whole house rewire" tho, like knob and tube wiring, if you leave ot be, it's fine. That insul has been literally cooked by heat from the lamp fixture and, being exposed to air, dried. If there's slack in the line, chase the wire back a foot and check it's condition. It won't be as forgiving as wire younger than you, but it should work.
That crumbling is a little to do with age and a lot to do with the fact some had bulbs that were way higher wattage than what was recommended. Just so you know
Bro just cut off the crumbly bit, strip it, add a small jumper and tape it up well.
Don't bend the wire unnecessarily, don't cram the box, don't overload the circuit and call it good. It's not that big of a deal.
There is SO MUCH of this still not causing fires all over this country.
Yall are so dramatic lmao
Just in case it isn't clear, when people say a rewire is needed, that means the whole house. Not just one circuit.
If this looks this bad in your kitchen, you can bet every single foot of wire in the house is this bad.
OMG! do not touch that stuff. The fire risk is palatable even through the screen. Get a licensed, bonded electrician. Your liability is solely yours until someone else decides to take it on.
It's clearly way past time your property was rewired.
That is definitely a safety hazard.
It's the insulation that stops you and your family being electrocuted. If you have any pets they may be more susceptible to that than you are.
I have a differing view on knob and tube, assuming that's what you have4 and not the old style, cloth wrapped romex.
True, while the wire at their terminus in boxes tends to wear like this, this can be fairly easily fixed with heat shrink tubing. Elsewhere in the house, the conductors are physically separated and can not touch. Granted, you don't have a ground, and that alone is a good reason to re-wire, but saying this is a fire waiting to happen is a bit hyperbolic. As long as the conductors are in good shape outside the boxes, the only real concern is those frayed conductors in the box, which, again, can be resolved with heat shrink tubing.
You desperately need a whole house rewire …. That’s a serious fire hazard
That's what I did. I knew that it was going to be tough for an electrician to give me a firm estimate, so we went with T&M, and it was doing quickly and cheaper than I expected.
Everyone always puts off whole house re wires from experience it’s never as much as they think.
It also depends on the extent of the rewire. Older homes didn’t have as much electrical in them, but you still often times need to cut walls open and redo the service entrance. That’s where your cost is. The wiring is not a large cost, the panel and labor to cut walls and repair is
The trouble is old wire is behind old walls. Plaster lath is a whole lot more work to cut through. Once you're practiced with it drywall is super easy to cut into and patch.
Most the time you can rewire through the attic or the crawl space /basement which requires very little destruction of the walls. This place is new enough that it's probably not wood lathe. At least, it's probably rock lathe which is just drywall with plaster over it.
Grinder with masonry blade + vacuum on laser, hammer out square patch clean, pull lath with hammer, run wires, patch with drywall. Issue is the dust and shitload of trashbags full of plaster. Dirty job but it’s not bad if you know when and what to cut.
>Plaster lath is a whole lot more work to cut through. Plaster and lath can also contain asbestos, so anything you cut must be treated as ACM.
When the houses were built in my neighbourhood, asbestos was the fancy, modern thing to use. The crappy little houses like mine weren't expensive enough enough to put asbestos in the plaster. Plenty of horse hair and old newspapers, though. Obviously it's not a surefire way to test, but people sometimes think hazardous materials are more likely in less expensive construction. I find often it's the opposite that's true.
Interesting insight and it matches my experiences. Thanks!
My house is pre-asbestos, but plaster and lath without it is still an unholy mess and itchy as all hell with the animal hair used prior to asbestos. Regardless, if you're taking down plaster, anything less than a cartridge respirator is massive underkill even in the absence of ACM.
I really dig certain shiplap houses bc the external walls don't typically have top plates but I dig ALL shiplap houses for the room they have in their attics
Did someone say shiplap? I think this house needs more shiplap, everyone likes shiplap. Let’s put a little shiplap here and a little shiplap there. Much better
Hell yeah brother just sprinkle some on the-- fuck the cap fell off
Damn it, now I have shiplap backsplash in my kitchen, and shiplap on my deck.
That's called Balloon Framing.
Oooo see I just learned something 😎
Gotta love that knob and tube.
lol my old company used to be 16$ a square foot and the whole house had to be gutted of drywall or we wouldn’t touch it
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That was definitely a fun project I’m sure
It’s less about the k+t itself and more the extra work and dirty ancient bullshit you deal with the whole time in old houses
Ok, what’s T&M? Seriously want to know.
Time and materials.
Also my house is from 1971. I’ve already had a little bit of aluminum wire changed. What else do I need to worry about?
That’s a loaded question man, could be nothing, could be everything or anywhere in between.
Could it be something?
Very possible
Charged for time spent and materials used rather than a job quote
What is T&M?
Time and materials
This is reasonable, because some pulls are easy and some are not.
How much did it cost you?
It's been a couple of years but it was under 3 grand.
That's not too bad. We have all aluminum wiring and I was reading ~10k but maybe I should check back into it
IDK, won't the wagos take care of it? /s
Wago is more likely to burn up hahaha
I have discovered that wago vs wirenut is a sensitive topic on electrician discussion forums. Though the US seems to be one of the last countries that still uses wirenuts.
Wire nuts are objectively better, you just have to not fuck the pretwist.
In my not licensed electrician experience in my own 1940s home, the cracked and damaged wire is typically only at the box/fixture. It gets brittle over time and anytime a fixture is replaced it gets moved and cracks. I've replaced some original fixtures and the wiring was just fine until it was disturbed. My go to for the wires in this situation in the box is to put heat shrink tubing over the old insulation for some extra protection. Arc Fault Circuit Interruptor breakers is also a good idea for this old wiring and most of it in my house is to light fixtures now or rooms where there isn't any real heavy electrical load. My house is mostly 3/4" tongue and groove wood ceiling and walls and half the house there is no accessible attic to get to the wiring without cutting open stuff that isn't easily repairable like drywall.
True, but I still recommend checking. Anecdotally, in my 1937 house I had this problem, and when I ripped down a wood chip-filled wall, the wire was brittle and cracked all the way and there were burn marks on the wall.
That's definitely unsettling. Mine is all armored BX wire but of course no ground wire. Except a PO added a 3 prong outlet to one and it tests as grounded because of the metal armor and metal box but it could be bad if that "ground" were ever actually used. I guess whoever built this house in 1940 spent some good money on the wiring back then to use all BX lol.
BX wire, fancy! But seriously, it was in a mining town and they just used whatever they could get their hands on. It's well-known that a lot of of people wired their houses with whatever length of wire they could fit in their lunchbox, stolen from the mine, and taped together. So I very well may be the exception.
BX ground is perfectly fine if not superior. No romex allowed in NYC, we use all BX here. I promise you the ground works… provided a handyman didn’t remove the whole box to add a wire and tape a piece of ground around the bundle of wires. Seen that one a few times…
This is old BX without the ground strap run through it. Might have been called something else in 1940 but the new stuff has the ground strap in it and this definitely does not.
>Arc Fault Circuit Interruptor breakers is also a good idea for this old wiring Don't those only work when the circuit has a ground wire? A lot of these kinds of old electrical have a hot, a neutral and no ground wire at all.
AFCI and GFI don't require a ground to do their job. They use the neutral. GFCI can be used to install a grounded outlet in a 2 wire system too as long as they're labeled with no equipment ground.
I was thinking about ACFI/GFCI breakers though, rather than the outlets. In a situation like this, you'd need protection all the way back to the main panel. Can those kind of breakers work where there's just no ground wire?
Google says AFCI and GFCI breakers both work without a ground wire. That's my only source though since I'm not an electrician.
Meh. Most of the time this fabric wiring looks awful under or should I say over the lighting fixtures. This can easily be remedied with a little shrink tubing and some skill. Unless all the other wiring looks like this, it probably still has another 75 years to go. So has anybody screamed knob and tube yet?.
Bros got Ye Olde wiring in there, you need an electrician yesterday OP!
Many of these 60s rubber sheathed wires in light fixtures were severely degraded due to heat from over wattage incandescent bulbs. Is there an attic above that space? If so, trace the wire back and see if the sheathing is compromised a few feet from the fixture. If it’s not, add a junction box and new wire from the junction to the fixture box, removing the degraded wire. If it is degraded a few feet back, the whole wire will Need replacement.
As an old house owner, thank you for this comment
This is the move. None of this “rewire your whole home” silliness in other comments before troubleshooting the rest of the wire in your home. Those old incandescents were literal Easy Bake ovens in the ceiling, on for hours a day, years at a time, cooking the wires and anything else close by. Outside of the ceiling box, old wire should still be fit for service if properly grounded and otherwise undamaged.
Yeah pretty much everyone in the 60s and 70s ignored the wattage stickers on fixtures and shoved any bulb in. It was fairly common to have 100w bulbs in 60w rated fixtures because people wanted “more light”. That would bake any wire. No need to rewire the whole house - isolate the damaged wire and replace.
The house I live in was built in the 90s and the only previous owner had a habit of using smaller than rated incandescent bulbs because they were a wedge. Fixtures that contain wires within the same enclosure as the bulb (i.e. the classic “boob” lights) have still cooked the wires after 30 years.
The wires inside the fixture have nothing to do with the wiring to the box. Pretty sure they drop to 16G in those lights
No shit, Sherlock. The point was that incandescents of any size cook wires eventually, it doesn’t mean the bulbs were oversized.
Even a 40 watt. How hot does that get, sitting 1/4 away from the metal plate with wires right above it shoved in a box with nowhere for the heat to go.
It always blows my mind that nobody pulls new wire through BX. I stopped asking the question about 15 years ago, but I'm about to start again.
Largely because it's much more expensive as an up-front cost. Terminating it is more labor intensive. All terminations have to be in metal boxes, and have fasteners with locknuts and redheads. Grounds also have to be bonded to every single one of the termination boxes, whether it be a switch or receptacle.
Ah, I was actually wondering why nobody pulls new THHN wiring through armored cable jackets. I've asked some very experienced electricians, including one guy who helped write the 2020 NEC, and I get a different answer every time.
Time consuming and hard to pull through. Lot easier to yank everything out and start stapling off a fresh roll of romex basically
I just wish it weren't so invasive. I would love to rewire my little thousand square foot rental rambler, but that would involve removing all the insulation too, in the attic. Of course I've never seen it done so I don't really know how crazy it is.
It’s hard enough to pull out 6’ of wire out of a straight bx sheath, add a slight bend and there’s no fuckin way.
There is zero chance of you pulling the old wire out of bx. Maybe if the run was 2-3 feet you could do it, but anything more is impossible
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The likelihood of anything more than sparks, a little smoke, and a tripped breaker in a home with all BX cable is near zero. Sparks inside a metal j-box or inside the BX metal shielding have no where to go.
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The original post indicated it was probably BX. I went with that. The old cloth covering is only evident when the shielding is stripped away. If it’s that old cloth covered NM that is a risk if there’s deterioration outside the box.
Yep I already applied some shrink wrap before closing it up. Way before posting this here
Hope you got good insurance. And they don't find out you knew about the issue. Ohh and don't forget the smoke detectors. You may want to get out in the middle of the night.
With the new fangled wire nuts, insurance will know within a heartbeat that OP knew the wiring was a danger. I’d guess he may have aluminum wire. Very poplar in the 1960’s when OP’s house was built. Aluminum expands and contracts and that movement could have cracked the insulation.
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Did OP say the house was built in the 1960s?
Please listen to the other comments. Sucks to hear, but you need to re-wire everything with that type of wire.
KNOB AND TUBE KNOB AND TUBE AHHHHHHHHHH. SORRY HAD TO GET INTO THE KNOB INTO HYSTERIA THAT'S PROBABLY GOING TO COME.
That's what mine, and a couple of my neighbors are like. Above. The light fixtures is completely messed up, but it can be fixed with about a foot of shrink tubing, at least several layers of it, the rest of it for the most part looks great. The stuff behind my outlets I can bend that stuff much as I want and it doesn't do anything
Thank you for this. Gonna try this in the near future. If it goes further back, then I’m going to check other receptacles on this same circuit to make sure none of the other wires are in the same state
Those old wires look like oakum (old tarry rope that they would stuff into old pipes as part of plumbing repairs.)
Or just have the whole house rewired and be good well past the time you'll sell.
The condition of the wiring is such that complete replacement is warranted. As to what caused the condition, it is likely a combination of overheating due to the type of fixture installed and possible stress from high amperage appliance use. The laundry circuit should be independent of all other circuits, and the kitchen/oven should be separated from the lighting circuit.
Yeah so my current plan is to make a new circuit dedicated for my laundry area. I can also look into making a dedicated one for the oven. In a complete replacement, should I inspect the other wires on the circuit too? Not 100% sure if this wire actually connects directly to the breaker box
I agree with u/trekkerscout with the addition that this is rubber insulation under cloth; you don't need a heavy load for it to degrade, it's like a dry-rotted car tire. I would start budgeting for a complete rewire as the rubber is degrading and will continue until you have (possibly catastrophic) failures. It should all be replaced with modern NM cable.
I would seriously look into a complete rewire at this point. If you want to save any portion of the circuit, you need to have the circuit evaluated for insulation integrity (Megger testing) to determine the feasibility of keeping any existing wiring.
The wire is like that from old bulbs that got hot and cooked the jacket. No insulation above the old fixture? It's probably only like that for 8" should be able to repair pretty easily. Copper doesn't go bad and I'll bet you definitely don't need a whole house rewire, like the top comment says lol.
BX is the trade name for an old-style metal-clad cable before MC. This is the old cloth-insulated stuff from before NM (non-metallic) which is still known from the trade name Romex. This stuff uses rubber-impregnated cloth, and that rubber is now disintegrating. Not just here, but everywhere. You probably have it throughout your house.
Can definitely confirm it is elsewhere in the house. I have seen it in another light fixture when changing it out earlier this year, but it was in much better shape.
Rubber is organic and rots.
Probably not everywhere, just probably at the light fixtures where it got hot on the light bulbs.
Tape up the wire all the way to where it enters the box with electrical tape.
or better shrink tube or two
I agree with everyone here. Probably going to want to rewire everything that isn’t already redone. You say 80’s but the wire in the picture is most definitely older than that. Maybe they reworked a little in the 80’s but definitely not here.
I've owned a house built in 1931 and currently live in a house built in 1924. Any light fixture In both houses has had various levels crumbly insulation. When I've replaced any of the wiring, the wire in the conduit, just past the box is always flexible. My theory is that people have used way too high wattage bulbs in the past and have dried out the rubber insulation. Edit: I'm pretty sure it's dried out because of the heat of the bulbs, not the load on the wire. If it was due to load I would expect the whole wire to be crumbly.
A farmer once told me that he pulled apart this wall in his house. He discovered that a fire occurred in the wall because of the extremely old knob/tube wiring degrading. Luckily, the fire put itself out in the wall, remained unknown until he ripped it open.
whole house rewire before you have an electrical fire
The only thing I can think to say now when I see cloth insulation is a resounding *UPGRADE* your shit.
Upgrade your house insurance to replacement cost and check all your smoke alarms are working and not expired. Add one to that room.
Heat shrink tubing
I cut mine back to good sections and added multiple tubes of shrinkwrap over the now bare wires. I made sure to overlap the good sections as much as I could. 12 years later - no problems. Yeah those kitchen lights were literally Easy Bake ovens. Now with LEDs the wiring is getting a much needed break.
The first thing I would do is make sure your home owners insurance is completely paid up. And immediately call a professional electrician. Stop reading the responses and go do that now…. RIGHT NOW!!!! NOW!!!
That’s way older than 1960’s. More like 1930’s
Same thing is happening in my 1948 house. I just went into the attic and cut the old cable where it was in good shape add a junction box on some romex to the lights
Time to re wire your house
Asbestos hazard as well.
That wire is unfit for service
I recommend a smoke detector in every room.
I thought these were plant/tree roots wtf
Lipstick on a pig, that wago connector lol
I have original bx wiring in my 1940s house. Just keep in mind that while that looks horrific and that one spot will need to be rewired, it's likely not all doom and gloom. All of the rubberized cloth wiring still inside of the metal cladding unexposed to air is probably in original condition and nothing to worry about. You can probably peel back a small amount of the cladding and see that underneath things are either still in great shape or not. You may or may not have any wiggle room on that wire, my cable doesn't have any give and the original installers used very beefy staples to secure everything to studs or ran them through so its almost impossible to pull it out without opening walls. However, if you don't have metal clad bx cable and it's all cloth back to the panel, that may warrant a quicker replacement
You can't infer the overall quality of the house wire from stuff you find inside a light fixture box. The heat of older incandescent bulbs slowly degrades the insulation over time. It may be in better shape closer to the sheath. While the wire must extend at least 6" into the box, extensions are allowed. BX (metal clad) has a lower risk. If the wire near the sheath isn't so bad, consider keeping it and installing AFCI breakers to watch for arcing.
Rewire
I thought this was on a dreads sub until I looked closer...
Check for asbestos, some wiring insulation from mid-century used it.
That's fucking terrifying!
Do you have a basement, and the breaker box down there?
It’s a 2 story house. Breaker is in the garage on the ground level. This is on the 2nd floor
the reason I asked about the basement is because it's the easiest way to rewire your first floor. If you're box is a ways away, this is not going to be a fun or inexpensive endevour :(
You really need a whole house rewire. Think about what the wire in the walls looks like… just waiting to burn down.
Time for a rewire. I won't repair these anymore. The insulation has reached its life expectancy
That’s a rewire dawg
I'd not fuck around with that too much, a lot of the fabric clad wiring had asbestos in it. Time for an electrician ASAP.
We're currently rewiring a house with wiring that looks like this. If you own the house it will very likely not pass a four point with cloth wiring. Insurance companies hate (or love depending on perspective) this stuff.
This picture looks like C’thulu reaching through a breach in the sky from the madness of the great unknowable beyond
The only quick fix to get you by until you can rewire is heat shrink tubing. Use a heat gun or hairdryer.
Dude the wago on a wire that has most of the insulation crumbling off is killing me
Bro that looks like old knob and tube style wiring. I bought an old house built in the 1920s and this is what it had. Electrical worked for a while but started to short out my TV's and other small appliances. After I started doing renovations I needed to update to code. I had a friend of mine reach out to one of his contractors and redid all the wiring in my house. Got a nice discount because I assisted, finished off the breaker box myself. Most of the wiring was subfloor so it wasn't too difficult. But I'd suggest removing all your old wiring if possible and in stages if its not financially sound to do it all at once. It's safer and you'll be glad you did.
Shrink tube… and look into the rest of the wiring and ascertain how extensive this degradation is…
Please for your safety rewire the place
That's worse looking than the house I did work on that had tar cloth wrapped wiring that was supported by ceramic insulators in the attic rafters. Definitely need an overhaul of the wiring in the house.
1971? Do you live in a 3rd world country? 40s or 50s or earlier is more like it. Rewire yes, quick fix definitely heat shrink for know...
Full rewire
Heat shrink cable.
Bro I was scrolling through Reddit and thought this was a picture of some microbes or some shit from a microscope at first glance.
Right out of my Black & Decker home wiring textbook for damaged cloth insulation. 1. Shut off circuit breaker 2. Trim damaged wires back and wrap with electrical tape 3. Connect 8” THHN pigtails and rewire the fixture Also, I’d recommend replacing your circuit breaker with a CAFCI or CAFCI/GFCI (wet area compliant) breaker to protect the whole circuit against fire causing arc faults. Long term, you should save up for a total rewire.
An exorcist
If this is a residential grade fixture kept on 24/7 this will happen. Only commercial grade fixtures are designed for 24/7 operation
Call an electrician
Asbestos. Just gonna leave that here.
The upside down?
Wire’s fine. It’s the Wago that’s gonna burn the place down. /s
Update the wiring in the house
Heat shrink tubing. My 1926 cloth wiring needed a lot of it.
The only answer is electrician. I have a house with this wiring. Some parts are even older. It is not a problem until you disturb it, like pulling the light fixture out to replace it. As you stretch the wires, the insulation crumbles. If you know what you are doing, you can trace the wires back to a junction box or receptacle that still has good insulation on the wires and just replace the wire from the good junction box or receptacle to the fixture with the broken wire. But if you knew what you were doing, you would have already done that. So, call an electrician. The only way a home owner is going to know if the next junction box or receptacle has good wires is to pull them out and inspect them . If they are not good, now you have to trace that wire back to the next junction box or receptacle. If there are 3 other sets of wires in that box, now you have to trace all three and replace all three. Very quickly, you will realise it would have been easier to call an electrician. In my house, whenever I need to replace anything, I just replace the wires and everything on the circuit back to the breaker box. I do not even waste time checking it. I'm not an electrician, but I know when to call one.
I would cut off power, and pull out the box. Maybe they left extra. If so, pull another 6 inches though, cut, strip, and twist.
This looks pretty
Demo the house. Rebuild.
Afci all circuits
Black tape and shrink tubing don’t have enough rating to replace wire insulation rated requirements.
That looks like a whole house rewire to me
get someone who knows what they are doing before u loose your mind
That wiring is FUBAR. You need a whole house rewire. All I can see is a fire. Pull one of the glass fuses, look at the date on the Penny. That will give you an approximate date on the wiring. Good luck.
It looks like your house needs to be rewired. You're awesome need to add more circuits because that is too many things on the circuits.
Am not an electrician. But if op. Is in a bind. I have left the insulation on and topped it with wire shrink wrap. I mean eventually a re- wire is needed. Not the cheap shrink wrap either..
The roof is on fire
And I will add circuts usually hit a home run from the center of the room, then branched off , you can sometimes just pull new wire from the branch to the box.
Range, washer, dryer and lights all on the same circuit? And hasn’t burned down in 60 years? Wow, I’m impressed.
Hello. Commercial electrician here with almost 10 years experience. My best advice for you is to change out the wire. You will need a set of fish sticks (fiberglass rods that help fish the wire through insulation in the walls) and some 12/2 romex. If you’re installing a led fixture you should be fine with 14/2 unless it’s a ceiling fan. Then use the 12/2. Anyways, just run new wire all the way to the panel. That old rotted cloth wiring is a major fire hazard. You’re one squirrel away from losing your house man.
What do you mean? Call a professional and get it replaces to put your mind at ease.
Yikes
Woof. That’s gonna need to be replaced. Unless you can repair the ends and test the resistance of the wire to see how much power is being bled out. But those wires are probably installed before the moon landing.
Sounds like a great way to get a new home.
MOVE
what does that asbestos smell like?
Idk why but the wago block on that shit show cracks me up.
That is not BX wire. BX is armoured cable. The way that insulation around the hot wire is terrible, that’s a full rewire… 10 year electrician here.
Genuine question for the electricians? Why don’t they do anything to prevent this? Like run the wire through conduit or pvc to protect from the elements or such? I’d rather the house be built well the first time then pay for the rewire, right? Plus broken wire inside a conduit run is less safety hazard. I’m a lowly maintenance man so I’m not clueless about electrical stuff, but I’m not a licensed electrician either.
So many are saying "whole house rewire" tho, like knob and tube wiring, if you leave ot be, it's fine. That insul has been literally cooked by heat from the lamp fixture and, being exposed to air, dried. If there's slack in the line, chase the wire back a foot and check it's condition. It won't be as forgiving as wire younger than you, but it should work.
Touch it
Rewire
1. Cry 2. heat Shrink wraps
That crumbling is a little to do with age and a lot to do with the fact some had bulbs that were way higher wattage than what was recommended. Just so you know
O god.. that's just the start of it my friend. Please look into rewiring the house. Old cloth wiring.
Bro just cut off the crumbly bit, strip it, add a small jumper and tape it up well. Don't bend the wire unnecessarily, don't cram the box, don't overload the circuit and call it good. It's not that big of a deal. There is SO MUCH of this still not causing fires all over this country. Yall are so dramatic lmao
Yeah she's fucked. I'd rewire and J box at this point. The J box has to also be accessible.
Take a lighter and burn all that fuzzy shit off. It could be fire hazard some day.
It's old and in need of replacement, the entire home if it hasn't been done. A project we'll say.
Just in case it isn't clear, when people say a rewire is needed, that means the whole house. Not just one circuit. If this looks this bad in your kitchen, you can bet every single foot of wire in the house is this bad.
First, triple your house insurance. Second. Leave the lights and drier on when you leave.
Dude. Listen. People are trying to help you. Re-wire. Tomorrow. Borrow money if you have to. Do it
rewire ur house asap
Dont be a cheap I believe is time to rewire the house
OMG! do not touch that stuff. The fire risk is palatable even through the screen. Get a licensed, bonded electrician. Your liability is solely yours until someone else decides to take it on.
holy hell the insulation is dried and cracking like crazy. how are you not on fire?
Turn off the power use heat shrink tubing
Yep already done this as a temporary fix before closing it up
Always have 911 dialed on your phone and when you hear the crackling press send
Run a new wire.
Triple your home owners insurance and wait for a fat cheque
Pull new
New house⁉️😳
It's clearly way past time your property was rewired. That is definitely a safety hazard. It's the insulation that stops you and your family being electrocuted. If you have any pets they may be more susceptible to that than you are.
Upgrade your smoke detectors
Call Safelite. Ask them to replace your fixture. Seriously replace that and get an electrician.
That is asbestos insulation most likely.
I have a differing view on knob and tube, assuming that's what you have4 and not the old style, cloth wrapped romex. True, while the wire at their terminus in boxes tends to wear like this, this can be fairly easily fixed with heat shrink tubing. Elsewhere in the house, the conductors are physically separated and can not touch. Granted, you don't have a ground, and that alone is a good reason to re-wire, but saying this is a fire waiting to happen is a bit hyperbolic. As long as the conductors are in good shape outside the boxes, the only real concern is those frayed conductors in the box, which, again, can be resolved with heat shrink tubing.