Friday 21^st March 2008

I've finally finished de-wiring the living room. Well that's not strictly true. I've removed all the wiring that was being used by the last resident I've found a few wires that just stick out the wall and have been cut off. So far I've not found any live ones. I removed the old Bakelite light switch and noticed an interesting looking bit of wire was supplying it. Closer examination, by that I mean ripping it out of the wall, showed it to be lead sheathed wire. A quick google for information on it leads me to believe it's from about 1910 as the conductors are cloth covered rather than rubber covered.

I then moved on to removing the door bell system as that accounts for about 5 km of cable on it's own. I was worried that it might be mains powered and it turned out it was. I found a small transformer wired into a socket that I couldn't isolate except by switching off the whole house! That socket is also wired with steel or maybe aluminium cable. I found a very novel way to de-wire a bell system. There was a box near the front door with about a dozen cables going into it and a kilometre or two of cable coming out of it. Rather that carefully unscrewing the box and cutting the cables I grabbed one end and ran down the hall. The box exploded and the cables came free – perfect.

Fraggle hasn't been doing much for the house today as she has been preparing for my birthday which is tomorrow. I don't think much will happen on the house tomorrow.