What type of inspection did you have - a pre-sale type inspection or inspection for contract purposes or insurance inspection?

Normally if you are using a home inspector they will tell you what is wrong and show you the item in a photo just like the one you posted and tell you to bring in an electrician to review and repair. Which is exactly what I suggest: get an electrician and repair it if you are staying in the house or keeping the property. If you are selling it, it becomes a point of negotiation. If it's not under contract, fix it. Fixing it can be anywhere from replacing the wiring to replacing the panel. I don't know from what you posted. Plus, I'm not an electrician. I'm a Realtor that has to work with these type issues on a regular basis so I keep a short list of excellent and responsive electrical contractors handy :) JMO

It appears to be old non-metallic cable probably dating from the 50’s. The earliest forms didn’t have a grounding wire, later forms an undersized grounding wire that was often cut off or just wrapped back around the cable or sometimes around the cable clamp.

As Denita said, what you do about it is dependent on the purpose of the inspection that you had done.

It's not inherently dangerous. It looks exactly like the ungrounded cable that I had in a house I owned that was built in 1952 before code required that cable also have a ground wire. Over the years, particularly as I remodeled, I replaced all the wire with grounded cable. As long as the house was wired properly in the first place, there is nothing illegal about what you have and most insurance companies would not hesitate to cover you. Having said that, it is advisable for you to upgrade when you can so you can have the improved safety offered by grounding, 3-prong outlets, and fully functional GFCIs.

Home inspectors are unreliable and generally uneducated in electrical issues. I agree with the previous posters. It indeed appears to be cloth sheathed NM cable. Yes it doesn't have a ground and that's less than desirable but they're full of excrement when it comes to insurance issues. It would be a problem if they had grounded-type receptacles attached to them (without the benefit of a GFCI) but there's nothing inherently wrong with that cable.

I would recommend you get an electrician come in and do an inspection.

Thank you all very much for your comments and input. Yes, it was a home inspection that our buyer ordered, we are selling our home. Nothing was flagged from our previous two inspections on the home before we purchased it.

I guess the weirdest thing about it all is that upon further inspection, I took the plate off the box and noticed these are the only two fabric wires out of all of them. I located the outlets that the breaker was connected to and they are all grounded.

So my question is, even though the inspector claimed that the wires are not grounded, and I checked the outlets themselves that they are connected to and those are in fact grounded. Is this the same thing? The wires being grounded and the outlets being grounded? Thank you all again for your time!

it s old and dangerous because it deteriorates and can set on fire

Josh,

Your tester didn't indicate that there's a missing ground, but that doesn't mean that it's a proper ground. That tester is just a quick and easy test to show obvious problems, not all problems.

Open the receptacle and check out what's going on inside (after turning off the power). It may show how your tester got tricked or whether something else has properly grounded the outlet.

it s old and dangerous because it deteriorates and can set on fire

Bull hockey.

Again the issue isn't the type of wiring here but the implications of it not having a ground (seeing such is a flag to such or that the ground if it is there isn't adequately sized).

First off, the three light tester is not the end all of electrical inspection. You need an electrician to look at what the ground pin on those receptacles is connected to:

1. Could actually be connected to a ground in the cable and you're looking at a different circuit than the two cables identified earlier.
2. There may be a wire run separately to the building grounding system. This is allowed for retrofits.
3. The wire may be connected to the grounded conductor (the neutral/white wire). THIS WOULD BE VERY BAD.

The wire is connected to some other bootleg ground that's not approved. ALSO BAD.

With your other pictures posted I do see some other things of concern. There appears to be some type SE cable going to a 30 Amp breaker (stove? dryer?). This circuit scares me for several reasons:

1. It looks very new, but such an installation is not permitted by the code in many cases.
2. Someone unbraided the bare conductor and stuffed it under two screws. THat's not allowed (for good reason).
3. The breaker is only 30A but the cable appears way larger. This is not itself a problem but it's odd enough to make me wonder what is going on.
4. The breaker is ILLEGAL. It looks like a Type BR breaker but your panel appears to be a GE one.

Take note of the inspector's words: "old, fabric, ungrounded, insurance limitations". Forgive me, but if I was the buyer in question, I'd walk away for fear of a fire. Although older homes are beautiful with architectural charm and character, they likely have the old wiriing and insulation too,

Recently, the Bosch DW caught fire- A little research revealed that the model was recalled. When purchasing, we did not think to research the home's appliance models for recall notices, but will do so in the future. Now I'm leary of all appliances.

DK Haas-

Home inspectors are not the best resource to evaluate a home’s wiring. That type of cable is in millions of homes and somehow they’re standing. The wires in that cable are fully insulated, even if the jacket is a bit frayed. It’s not going to spontaneously combust. House fires are typically caused by incorrectly done wiring, bad connections at the junction box, or overloading extension cords, etc. These types of deficiencies can cause fires even if the cable was installed yesterday. While it would be good for the OP to upgrade to new cable for grounding purposes, one need not be paranoid about such older cable. And contrary to what the inspector opined, it doesn’t pose insurance problems.

Kudzu-. Home inspectors are not the best resource to evaluate wiring Huh? That is their job to inspect for all areas of concern. In this case an area of concern was noted. It alerts the HO to investigate further to alleviate insurance issues.

My DH accompanied the inspector for our last house, as well as the current one. The home inspector of our second home was much more thorough than the first. . It is a shame that there are good ones and bad ones.

Yup. Many people don't know much about what to look for when buying a home, and get a false sense of reassurance because a home inspector looked at it. While there are some quite good home inspectors out there, there are also a lot who are marginal, miss things, and make mistakes. For example, my daughter just bought her first home and the inspector identified knob and tube wiring that he thought should be replaced. When she had an electrician look at it, he determined it was an old tv antenna up in the attic and that there was no knob and tube wiring anywhere.

It doesn't take much to become a home inspector. There are many online courses that will qualify you in a matter of weeks. The requirements to get licensed to cut hair are much more demanding. If you look in detail at the contract you sign with a home inspector, you will see numerous disclaimers about the limitations of the inspection. And having a home inspection doesn't protect you if a major problem wasn't missed as the contract typically limits liability to the cost of the inspection. I'm not saying home inspections are worthless, but I simply see them as one more piece of information to be evaluated.

A good electrician will be of far more use in assessing home wiring than an inspector. Not only do electricians have more knowledge and experience, they do things that inspectors typically don't do, such as remove cover panels and cover plates to check connections, and use meters and other equipment to check the integrity of the system and look for faults. Inspectors don't want to assess anything unless it's in plain view and they don't typically take anything apart. This limits their electrical report to being superficial at best.

You do want to watch out for the really ancient NM cable with rubber-and-cloth insulated wires inside. Many times, the rubber insulation has deteriorated from heat and air pollution. I've had the insulation on type R wires flake off right in my hands.

Heat was caused partly by overfusing (30 amp plug fuses replacing 15 amp). The air pollution came from burning high sulfur bituminous coal for heat in homes, and from industry.

However, what you have there is newer than that. It should be fine, as long as it's protected by the right size of circuit breaker.

As for the lack of a ground, if there are receptacles on the circuits, just change them for GFIs.

dyliane does not know what she is talking about.

As long as cable is undisturbed there is not a problem. Even the oldest wiring--knob and tube--is safe if undisturbed and not buried in insulation. There is probably active knob and tube wiring in 50% of the homes in South Philly (buried in walls and under floors). And all these houses aren't burning down.

You should, though, make sure that you have GFCI outlets on all circuits near water (as everyone should).

While rubber-insulated wires usually have a cloth braid (for good reason), not all cloth braided cable has rubber conductors. The individual conductors in the cable in the pictures above appear to be PVC.

Is a vintage Volkswagen bug dangerous- of course not they are perfectly safe. No seatbelts, no air bags. So maybe they are safe contextually- great for intown driving at street speeds but deadly at highway speeds where you can be smooshed by a land rover ten times your weight.

Same here- old two conducter wiring that is in good shape CAN be fine. Unfortunately over time people add to the circuits, change out the outlets for three prong with no active ground, plug in a surge protector plus ten electronics. This makes something that is safe enough for how it was designed not safe.

It looks like you only have two circuits that are two conductor judging by all the romex coming in at the top of the box. I would get an electrician in to evaluate what is actually on those old circuits and the feasibility of replacing it. In one of my houses we were able to replace everything except the power to the porch light, so it remained on its own 15amp circuit with knob and tube- never caused a problem but there was no risk of overloading.

It looks like he has three vintages of wiring here. Most of the branch circuits as well as the panel itself look to be fairly modern and neatly done. There are two branch circuits of older wiring also neatly done. My guess is that there was a panel upgrade here that also upgraded most of the branch circuits but for whatever reason, the two circuits at the bottom were just moved to the new panel without upgrading.

Then some duffer (probably an "appliance installer" without a clue) put in the bogus 30A circuit. That needs to be fixed for sure.

Ron: could this be of an age where the ground is carried through the conduit pipe itself?

This also looks like a subpanel, which doesn't really matter.

yes tatts knows everything she is so sapient and sage oh!

Well, dyliane, HE knows when a statement like that is wrong and should be corrected. Electricity is serious business, and unlike design, there are right and wrong answers.

I wonder if that hacked up 30 amp circuit feeds a(nother) subpanel. With no separate equipment ground, that would be pretty far from code compliance and safety. But it wouldn't be the first time I'd seen a subpanel installed that way.

Dyliane, thanks for your concern, but the other posters here are correct. Age alone doesn't equal danger. And there's nothing inherently hazardous about the specific cables the OP was asking about.

As I said before, ancient NM with rubber insulated conductors can be iffy. Same with BX using the same type of conductor insulation.

Tatts is right that rubber insulated wires in knob and tube systems are usually OK, even if the rubber has deteriorated, as long as they're undisturbed. I'm less confident about rubber-insulated wire in NM cable or BX cable, because the conductors are much closer together than they are for in most parts of a K&T system. BX especially was installed in lots of places where it's subject to routine flexing, such as furnaces and water pumps.

But as Ron pointed out, the wires entering the panel from the bottom are NOT rubber insulated. That's modern thermoplastic insulation on the conductors. The cambric outer jacket doesn't matter. As long as the circuit is protected with the proper breaker, those cables will be fine.

Ron: could this be of an age where the ground is carried through the conduit pipe itself?

Using the conduit as the equipment ground is permitted in many of the metal conduit systems, but I don't think we have that here. Everything seems to be in cable. While it's possible those fittings are actually conduit fittings rather than cable clamps, but I would tend to doubt it.

It's clear the 30A circuit is WRONG in at least two ways before you even worry about what it is feeding: you can't unbraid stranded conductors like that and it's got the wrong design breaker. Unless it's feeding a grandfathered dryer or range, the use of the bare wire as the grounded (neutral) conductor is illegal. As pointed out, if it feeds a subpanel, it's way wrong.

This panel probably is a subpanel. What grounds there are appear to be landing on a separate grounding bar on the right. I don't see the bonding strap but it's sometimes hard to see in a photos of GE panels even when it is there because it's up where the main breaker sits.

"Old" wiring is not necessarily a reason to panic. It is alarming, however, that the receptacle indicates it is grounded with only a black and white going to it. There is an improper ground to neutral, another circuit, or a metal pipe.

It could also be that the tester isn't working properly. And it is possible that the circuit was legally extended with grounded receptacles even if the branch circuit in the panel only has two wires (as I described earlier).

What it takes it someone with a clue to open things up and actually perform an inspection rather than guessing.

What I can see from the pictures provided is a dangerously illegal 30A circuit has been crammed into that panel for some purpose.