I terminated a lot of CAT 3,4,5 and coax network wiring during my 15 plus years as a networking geek, but I have never before faced terminating a 120v line like this. The house is 1957 vintage and as far as I can tell there are no junction boxes. From the exposed wiring in the garage, it appears that to make a junction, they removed a section of insulation on the Romex style cable, wraped the second wire around the first, soldered the connection, and then wraped the junction in electrical tape. Not quite up to current NEC standards…
The house has a total of 5 circuits, one 20 amp circuit feeds the entire kitchen including dishwasher, refrigerator, garbage disposal, ceiling light, exhaust fan, and four duplex outlets. I am running a separate circuit for the dishwasher, garbage disposal, and refrigerator and want to properly terminate the existing wiring. The wiring and the junction is buried in the wall. I figure the best thing would be to install a new junction box, feed the wire into it, and then put individual small wire nuts on the hot and neutral wire (no ground), then wrap them with electrical tape.
Any better suggestions that don’t require demolishing the dry wall on one side of the kitchen?
Replies
That will work.
But better is going back to the box that feeds this one and then cutting cable there back to where it enters the box.
Then cutting it at the "receiving" box.
Yeah, it sounds like whoever did the wiring was an old K&T fan. May actually have been kosher back then (though it's a bit of a stretch).
What you describe -- running the wire end into a box and wire-nutting the ends -- is probably a reasonable way to go to terminate the end of a hot cable. However, if you can safely clamp the cable in the box (ie, the box has a clamp and the wire's not too brittle to hold the clamp), it may actually be better to just cut the two wires to different lengths and wrap with tape (inside the box). To use the wire nuts you'd have to strip the wire ends and are apt to crack the insulation.
Since there's no ground, use non-metallic boxes.
Thanks again for your insights. Just cutting unequal lengths and taping sounds good.