BMacky
Senior Member
- Location
- Foster City, CA
I took a look at some exterior lighting issues for a customer at a 100+ yr old property south of San Francisco yesterday. The street front/curbside lighting consists of 4 post lights and some add-on lighting via some exterior j-boxes at the stairway leading down to the front door of the residence. Half of the lights to one side of the stairs were in-op, so I was digging in the flower bed looking for conduit and/or some access point where the conduit appeared on the non-working side of the stairway (concrete and brick). I found an LR conduit body with no cover on it buried in the duff from the redwood trees along the streetside. The signal from my proximity tester was good inside this exposed box but the j-box directly above had no signal. When I started probing around to identify what wire was which in the upper box, I realized the wires were pulled so tight there was not much room to work with. I killed power and undid the splices in the upper box and what I found was this: in the rigid 3/4" conduit that passed under the stairway, there where two conductors. One, a bare #12 copper wire, and the other a rather hefty single 12 AWG conductor that was insulated with thick rubber and a malleable metal jacket. That was it. One insulated conductor and another bare. This is a 120 V system, in the ground, exposed to the elements, and had recently failed in the location that I was inspecting the wires.
Has anyone reading this ever ran into such a wiring practice in an older residence like this? It is obviously an old standard (or poor choice of wiring) without an insulated neutral and poses a shock hazard in the condition I found it in.
I've seen older cable with a metal jacket before, but it was cable, not a single, insulated conductor.
Comments?
Has anyone reading this ever ran into such a wiring practice in an older residence like this? It is obviously an old standard (or poor choice of wiring) without an insulated neutral and poses a shock hazard in the condition I found it in.
I've seen older cable with a metal jacket before, but it was cable, not a single, insulated conductor.
Comments?
