Quote:
Originally Posted by dieseljeep
A 100 amp service is enough for a single family home that has a gas range, furnace, water heater and clothes dryer. It looks like a few extra circuits were installed.
The code in Chicago, requires all wiring to be "Vermin Proof" meaning the use of EMT, BX or Armored cable or Greenfield. Not sure about the rest of Cook county!
Regarding the use of grounded receptacles in an area that didn't originally have them, there might be a return to ground through the BX armor. The real problems come into play, when the home was wired with K&T, which wasn't allowed.  |
The vermin-proof code amendment still makes sense and I bet that is an old requirement. When NM cable was first introduced in the late 1930's, it was tar-coated, tight-woven jacketed and paper wrapped the rubber-insulated copper conductors. A veritable feast for rodents
As NM cable evolved into the present thermo-plastic jacketed cable in the 1960s, the restriction remained because plastic cables are so easily damaged. I use a lot of MC cable (armor clad with separate insulated ground) in my own house, which is another 50 years older than Bob's. We get lots of mice, being surrounded by farm fields. My grandfather used BX (armor clad two-conductor) when he built their stone house in 1937. He wanted better than knob and tube, the universal method at that time.
Chicago, NYC and others are big enough that the "code" was amended to enhance safety due to population concentration. Unfortunately, few places with these risk factors could actually win against allowing the compromises inherent in "affordable housing". Philadelphia allows NM cable (aka romex) at least in low-rise buildings where the NEC permits it.
