Estimated age of wiring?

[mandrake]

I have trawled the forums trying to find a definitive guide to the points that certain cable types and consumer units were used up to and changed.
Some have relatively obvious minimum ages, eg. 16th edition and 17th edition boards and blue/brown (EEC) cable colours but some not so obvious, the BS 3036 rewirable fuses fitted in the 50's right up into the 80's.
when did they stop using wooden back boxes for instance?
Is there a guideline available so when the EICR asks for the estimated age of wiring i don't have to write old? :wink5:

I did read an excellent post by nick, i think, listing the wiring types in order but not many dates/years to reference from.

If it has been asked before and i missed it completely i promise to shake my --- down to specsavers asap :blush5:

Kev

 

[somersetsparks]

From my testing experience-
Well I have seen houses from 1961 wired in pvc twin(possibly ashathene, i'm told) And I have also seen houses from 1961 wired in blacxk rubber, so would guess the changeover was about then?
Green sleeving seems common in early-mid seventies houses. 2.5mm with 1mm earth used right up until early eighties.
Re-wireable fuses can be found in any age of installation so hard to date!
In honesty though it is just an estimate!

 

[trebor]

I started my apprenticeship in Dec1962, at that time we trs and lead on the shelf which was not been used
the pvc cable in the early 60`s was twin and we ran a seperate bare earth wire, the last rubber install I knew of was 1957
We were installing metal back boxes all fixed lugs, surface crabtree switches and wooden mounting blocks were the norm for garages etc until about 1969, wooden capping for surface wiring to about 1970
Mosst switchgear had BS numbers on them which can be dated by reference to the BS tablesand then finally what date is the newspapers under the lino in domestic

 

[SirKit Breaker]

Its is not that important, just make an educated guess, it is subjective, and write it in the box. You could say its 40 years old, i could say its 30, how do we know who is right?

Cheers............Howard