Household Wiring Woes

Next week I get to work on one of the Manager's - Wife's Iron. Dry cracking, cuts etc.... Perhaps a goal of replacing the HPN wiring on a vintage iron... "was sparking." Yea! cracks to conductor etc all over its cable. Cord length was luckily short enough my cable supplier was able to just "sample" it out. How as a Manager of a lighting company, didn't you question it's wiring before it started sparking?
 
Next week I get to work on one of the Manager's - Wife's Iron. Dry cracking, cuts etc.... Perhaps a goal of replacing the HPN wiring on a vintage iron... "was sparking." Yea! cracks to conductor etc all over its cable. Cord length was luckily short enough my cable supplier was able to just "sample" it out. How as a Manager of a lighting company, didn't you question it's wiring before it started sparking?
HPN is amazingly durable, how old is this and how was it mishandled??
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
Cuts in conductor and wear at strain relief. Beyond that no idea of age.. Just glad I got "sampled" out fresh cordage given overall sales. Not going to get into if in the 70's or 50's there perhaps was a probolem in starch on HPN wiring, such as DF-50 fluid has on any thermoplastic wiring.
 
I think the biggest thing that will give me pause is when I discover rubber romex. Sometime prior to the late 50's, romex was rubber covered by cloth, then an outer sheath of cloth. In the late 50's they changed to plastic covered conductors, although the outer sheath still was a braided cloth-like material. Ever piece of the plastic stuff I have run into has been fine. Quite the opposite for the rubberized stuff. Touch it, bend, it, anything... it just turns into black powder leaving you with bare copper in a cloth sheath. Once you see it, you know the whole house is probably that way. The last time I ran into it, I told the homeowner, a friend, "Move... Just move.."
 
I think the biggest thing that will give me pause is when I discover rubber romex. Sometime prior to the late 50's, romex was rubber covered by cloth, then an outer sheath of cloth. In the late 50's they changed to plastic covered conductors, although the outer sheath still was a braided cloth-like material. Ever piece of the plastic stuff I have run into has been fine. Quite the opposite for the rubberized stuff. Touch it, bend, it, anything... it just turns into black powder leaving you with bare copper in a cloth sheath. Once you see it, you know the whole house is probably that way. The last time I ran into it, I told the homeowner, a friend, "Move... Just move.."
IKR? - plus working with it so dirty, everything just gets black.
 
DBRC- Old Household, double braided rubber coated wire with cotton braid. Weather and fire resistant.

Lots of old books and years of taking notes of interest from them.
 
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