On Sunday, 4 April 2021 at 12:00:47 UTC+1, Ben Blaukopf wrote:
Finally got round to looking at the upstairs lights in this place, and discovered that all the chased-in cable uses 15mm copper as conduit containing 1 or 2 1.5mm cables (well, could be 1.0)


Pulled up some floorboards today (and split one of them ), and in the course of putting a temporary run in, discovered the existing wiring is stranded. Discovered some tags for 3/029 under the floor. This is quite fun. So presumably it was rewired in T+E in (presumably) the early 70s - at which point they appear to have surface mounted all the cables they couldn't hide in the original copper "conduit". Also found some of the original VIR in a copper pipe (I say copper. It looks like copper. Was 1/2" copper common in 1935??).

Also some twin-core (not in service, so far as I've been able to determine) and an obviously retrofitted 6mm (maybe) earth which I'm a bit worried about since it's still connected to the CU, and heading off in the direction of the bathroom. Surely someone hasn't connected the supplementary bonding back to the CU.... Or perhaps it's a main bond for the cast iron waste?

The wiring is still in good nick - but we plan on being in this house for a good while, so we'll gut the lot and then get on with decorating. If I can get hold of the guy inspecting it, I'll ask how he feels about calling the copper tube "capping" - otherwise I've decided to just rip it out and pick a different battle.

Wiring the lot in 1.0mm since loads won't approach anywhere near 6A. Planning to run a neutral to all the switches while I'm there.

The downstairs will be the fun bit. I want to insulate underfloor, I so I need to lift every floorboard. Not to mention 20sqm of laminate.