Aluminium wiring

[UNG]

Most of the BT aluminium cable was installed in the mid to late 70's and most of the houses round where I live were built from about early 74 up to 78 / 79 and nearly all the trunk cabling into the area is aluminium, when they first introduced ADSL there were loads of problems getting anywhere near the speeds they claimed and a lot of it was down to the aluminium

 

[timhoward]

Also, picture of the consumer unit, it looks pretty butchered to me!

Circuit 4? B40 and apparently sockets.

 

[littlespark]

Most of the BT aluminium cable was installed in the mid to late 70's and most of the houses round where I live were built from about early 74 up to 78 / 79 and nearly all the trunk cabling into the area is aluminium, when they first introduced ADSL there were loads of problems getting anywhere near the speeds they claimed and a lot of it was down to the aluminium

I thought BT tried to introduce ISDN first before ADSL.....

My uni lecturer called it “It Still Does Nothing”

 

[UNG]

I thought BT tried to introduce ISDN first before ADSL.....

My uni lecturer called it “It Still Does Nothing”

BT had many different products around from the late eighties more suited to commercial enties communications needs and ISDN was on of them

 

[Rockingit]

I thought BT tried to introduce ISDN first before ADSL.....

My uni lecturer called it “It Still Does Nothing”

Indeed they did. And back in a time when I tried to escape from electrical work I had two 'banded' ISDN lines into my house, giving me a blistering..... 256K

 

[Simon47]

Alternatively, ISDN stood for I Smell Dollars Now
Another of those BT policies. In principle, it should have been a good option to nudge people towards ISDN - especially if they'd used the NTEs with built in analogue adapters. They could have had people on "digital to the premises", and with some additional diagnostics via the digital link. And for people wanting two lines (e.g. phone and fax - remember those ?), only one pair.
But no, they didn't want to risk damaging their leased lines cash cow - so ISDN was priced to avoid that risk, and it never really became a "mass" product.
They did the same thing with ADSL at first - deliberately priced to stop people ditching their leased lines. I recall back in the 90s we had two 64k leased lines - about 6k/year each IIRC. These days (or rather, at my last job) we just put in ADSL and run a VPN for something like 1/10 of the cost and higher bandwidth.

 

[Markyd]

If the house is in that bad a state as you mentioned rewire it anyway

 

[Zerax]

Still, dad had a tale of using silver for busbars during the war. He said they kept meticulous records of where, and it was all replaced with copper when it was available.

I seem to remember a story about when they were making the atomic bombs for Hiroshima etc... they needed to make large electro-magnets, for which you'd usually use copper of course. However it was wartime... copper was very scarce, but they had large reserves of silver in the state vaults... so they used that instead. Then after they'd finished with it... it was smelted back into ingots ! Perfect recycling !

 

[Zerax]

They did the same thing with ADSL at first - deliberately priced to stop people ditching their leased lines. I recall back in the 90s we had two 64k leased lines - about 6k/year each IIRC. These days (or rather, at my last job) we just put in ADSL and run a VPN for something like 1/10 of the cost and higher bandwidth.

I remember working for a Telco years ago when SDSL was just starting... we had a bunch of demo connections for sales purposes... and the speed increase was dramatic ! It was almost like science fiction to us...

 

[Simon47]

Yeah, and they managed to kill SDSL off as well. Would gave been ideal for a lot of business situations.

 

[pc1966]

If the house is in that bad a state as you mentioned rewire it anyway

Have to agree. If the cable quality, rating, or soundness of any connections is in doubt the best use for it is to pull new stuff through.

But step back and ask the question of what should the final installation look like? How many sockets per room and where?

Anything from that era will probably be sadly lacking and so starting from the desired outcome, instead of what is already there, is the best thing I could suggest.

 

[Steve T]

Have to agree. If the cable quality, rating, or soundness of any connections is in doubt the best use for it is to pull new stuff through.

But step back and ask the question of what should the final installation look like? How many sockets per room and where?

Anything from that era will probably be sadly lacking and so starting from the desired outcome, instead of what is already there, is the best thing I could suggest.

If it was my house I would certainly rewire it.

It does seem to have sufficient socket outlets but none look original so its safe to assume lots of additions have been made. Also the light and switch points don't have any CPCs, they have used junction boxes in the attic space and double insulated singles to the switches and lights. At least everything is fairly easily accessible.

I will certainly suggest a rewire to my friend as he is planning quite extensive work and I'm sure when he gets an EICR done that will at least suggest rewiring the lighting circuits as well as a new consumer unit etc.. But I'm sure you're all familiar with people who don't see a problem if it all 'works' so we will see what he decides to do!