PSA: Found out my 1960s house wiring is cloth-insulated, not rubber

I was getting ready to rewire a room in my house over near Old Town, and I pulled an outlet to check the wiring. What I thought was old rubber insulation turned out to be cloth wrapped wire from the 1960s. A friend who does electrical work told me this stuff gets brittle and can cause shorts pretty easily. I found this out by reading a local building history site run by the city, which had a whole section on common wiring types in ABQ homes built before 1970. I was surprised because the house looks solid otherwise, but now I'm wondering if I should just redo the whole house at once. Has anyone else dealt with this cloth wiring in their older home and what did you do?

3 comments

3 Comments

faith_king18d ago

My 1970s house has the same wiring and I'm not touching it since it hasn't caused any issues in 15 years.

bell.felix18d ago

Yeah I get that, but man, my luck would be the one time I ignore it is the day the whole thing catches fire while I'm making toast. I'm the guy who trips over his own feet walking into a room so I probably shouldn't push my luck with 50 year old wiring. Plus those old breakers can get kinda lazy and not trip when they should, which is a whole other headache. Have you ever had an electrician even take a peek at the panel just to see how bad it looks?

danielkim18d ago

Honestly @bell.felix you should check the breaker age too since some old ones can fail to trip at all.