Octopus Box by Hartley Electromotives Limited 1958
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- Опубликовано: 3 авг 2021
- A steel junction box from 1958 which was typically used for lighting circuits, with a single cable to each point all joined at a central location.
This one was removed intact from an installation and still contains the original rubber insulated cables.
Made by Hartley Electromotives Limited, this example is a Type B and dated 19 March 1958.
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Some more information on the installation this came from:
It wasn't in use at the time I stripped it out (the house having previously been part-rewired in the mid-80s in PVC with some remaining VIR dotted all over the place) and was above the kitchen ceiling just under the landing. The repeat use of the stairs coupled with loose timbers (now fixed!) may have caused bits of the insulation to fall off with the vibration as it dried out and became brittle.
I also traced two of the farthest left earthed cables to single sockets in two of the three bedrooms where the cabling hadn't been stripped out behind a built in sliding wardrobes. There is another video of one of these just recently where the box remained live with all the lighting circuits turned off, so is possible they had much use for socket radials as well.
It wasn't secured in any way in the ceiling void, but was tucked in the floorboards with numerous VIRs snaking along that all started to crunch as I inspected it, despite being soft to the touch.
I saved a piece of three core cable from that house (red, white & blue cores) but can't seem to find it at the moment.
In other properties in/around that estate, I have found that some of the original wiring is a mix of PVC & VIR (PVC for lights & VIR for sockets mainly) or just VIR or PVC, so may have been at a transitional time, though this house was seemingly purely VIR when originally constructed in the late 50s so far as I can tell.
Sounds like an interesting estate to work on! I have seen PVC & VIR mixes in properties around that age but I've never had an entire estate in a somewhat time capsule snap shot of technological changes. I did come across an oddity the other day though, PVC inner core T&E with a rubber outer sheath in a 1960's property It all tested perfectly fine and inspected all points where possible and found now issues but I have never come across anything like it before. I don't suppose there is an example of that on the estate too?
@@effervescence5664 Can't say I've found any, sounds extremely rare
Actually a great product that lasted and terminated neatly as well.
Welcome back John. It’s been a while - we have all missed the uploads
Nice to see how neatly those cables were arranged. Pre Instagram.
A thing of beauty, elegance and pride and that's just your channel John 😉🤟. Great find Paul and nicely examined by the master Mr JW.
I guess that was the model before the plastic bicc rb4 , i still use the modern equivalent made by ashley today , i am really enjoying your videos JW having just found your channel . Thanks 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Welcome back 👍
Quite neat by modern standards , someone took pride in there work fitting that back in the day.
I love the videos about the old stuff.
It seemed to be well constructed. Certainly a good idea, as you say, there's less wires in the ceiling rose.
I wonder why and when we moved to 3 plate,
It was deemed that all joints should be at all accessible points such as the 3 plate ceiling rose, rather than hiding joints in lofts, under floor boards etc.
Nice to see you back John
I was missing my JW videos and came looking as to why I wasn't receiving notifications. Inexplicably RUclips seemed to have unsubscribed me. Very annoying as they did this to my subscription to Big Clive's channel a while back too.
Thanks for another fascinating blast from the past John.
The insulation is the best I've seen on Vir I rewired a house in 2003 every cable except for the heating controls was Vir as soon as I unscrewed or touched anything it just crumbled I was surprised it was all still working without issues
In my limited experience of VIR it's the blue insulation that goes first.
They always seemed to wire things up very neatly back then.
Great to see you back making videos
Memories flooding back. Installed this lighting system 1970 on a residential estate. Replaced by three plate ceiling roses.
Hartley made whole-house wiring harnesses for the 60's pre-fab housing boom. Made erection alot easier as wiring could be buried in the wall panels at the factory before transportation to the building site and then connected into central points.
How to make an octopus laugh
Give it tentacles....... ( 10 tickles)
But an Octopus only has 8 legs.... Yes the first 2 were testtcles.
@@andrewwright1200 that's because October has balls
@@andrewwright1200 octopus I meant..... Damn this thread is going to tangle me up 😂😂
@@Xclub40X octopational hazard
Lovely wiring inside.
Well the box seems perfectly reusable .😉 Thanks for the video John.👍
Cheers boss 👍 interesting thing🙂
Seen one of these for the first time about 3 weeks ago 👌🏼
7:32 they have a ceiling above them.... So does everything in my house JW.... very well spotted, and welcome back
Seen this system with lead cables, I used this system in the 70's with JB 601's we called it spidering. (joint box system)
Good to see you are doing OK, JW... didn't see a video from you in quite a while!
Still see them often enough in some of our older properties.
Made in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. Believe Hartleys also made wiring looms for big installations - can't remember if it was also for ships.... Memories fade.
Hartley Electromotives, Octopus Works, Monkmoor Road, Shrewsbury.
The screw varnish was often red - looked like nail varnish, and same type of liquid - same solvent based smell
I like these old equipment overviews.
Surprising how "glass hard" that rubber insulation got in that box, while it was still flexible outside. not good!
From my standpoit that might be a chemical interaction with the rubberized trim that held the wires in, combined with the near airtightness of the enclosure. While on the Outside any harmful interaction would be stopped by the available airflow around the cables
On second thought it might even be the screw-lock varnish instead
We have something similar in our loft for the upstairs lights. It is plastic and made by Volex installed approx 1971 when the council estate was constructed so a few houses with the same layout. All switch wire and feeds to lights go back so only one cable at each point even both the 2 way 3 cores go back. All the terminals had glue on them as not to loosen in transit. it was placed at the loft access and each cable is marked bed 1 light, bed 1 switch etc, and was clipped with metal buckle clips to the light or switch.
omg i remember these boxes when we had our council house rewired i removed all the old rubber cased wiring & one of these boxes
Its slightly amazing to me that there are still rubber conductors on active wiring in this day and age, unless this was taken from an abandoned building that was being demolished. I remember as a child in the early 70s my father telling me how rubber wiring was dangerous and being replaced with PVC insulation. I would sit and watch as he took old radios apart and replaced the wiring in them, and he occasionally did the same for neighbours appliances. Most of the time he threw the wire away but sometimes for solid core wire I would sit and strip off the insulation for him (some of which was already crumbling) and we would use the bare wire in our electronics projects.
Until very recently I was living in a rented house that was mostly still running on vir, changing a socket was a nightmare, had to be very careful not to move the cables to much, some of them I put heatshrink sleeving on.
Have pulled out working VIR and lead sheathed cable out within the last year. Am a builder, when we find it we have the electricians rewire and gut the old out. Often its short sections a previous rewire couldn't get to or be bothered to get to.
Lead-sheathed cable in my house when I bought it around 14 years ago. Previous owners told me it had a full rewire in the early-00s (CU was labelled accordingly too) so I didn't bother getting an electrical survey. First time I lifted a floorboard to add a socket I wondered why the T&E was so cold and hard...
Well they still make rubber cables today, though we don't generally use them for building wiring anymore. I wonder if the modern synthetic rubbers will hold up better than the old natural ones.
But that aside, I get the impression there is a lot of very old wiring still about :( I suspect the new Landlord EICR rules are causing a lot of it to get ripped out at the moment but that still leaves owner-occupied houses. When I bought my current place a few years back the wiring in most of the house was a mixture of old rubber and horrible bodges.
A guy from England that moved to New Zealand in 2002 tried to make one of these things at the same time as he was re-wiring his house.
No electrical experience at all, we had an argument and I ended up ripping the thing out, he thought it was just a junction box for EVERYTHING in the house and yes it probably was, but when you have the oven wiring mixed in with the lighting circuits, that is not how we wire stuff here.
Thanks for the video, JW.
Not how we do it in the UK either!
Modern one's were Ashley RB4 joint box I often use them in house rewires in the 70's
Well terminated bit of kit, why have I never seen an old wylex board that tidy, pretty well thought out.
Mr ward , new to your channel. Your focus is for the re-education of electricans , just a suggestion to you educate the public what to expect from a Electrical contractor inc certification and advice when they get a kitchen remodel or a shower fitted . Basic I know , but would help so many people
These are known as spider boxes.come across these quite alot and the council I work for are happy to keep them in comision.
Its funny how we have come full circle with metal enclosures.
Hi JW,
Please can you explain how earthing calculation is done for unit substations on High EPR Hot sites for DNOs? Please if you make a complete video on this, manual calculations if possible or else CDEGS if you have, huge favour this would be please.
Thanks.
That's a bit much to ask, are you working outside your limits of work?
Are you even qualified?
We've still got our's. Wouldn't know what year it's from it's a pretty old one. The town i'm in was built in the 1960's. So prehaps it's from that era.
I have one of these in service in my house, built circa 1963. Makes the wiring different to current practice- the power goes via the switch to the light fitting, rather than a ring main around the light fittings. They are really great if you want to fit 'smart lighting'- a single controller at the octopus can control all the lights. Neutral available! Not rubber wiring, fortunately.
Hi John do you know when the cable went from lead to Vir?
Lead covered cables were used up to the 1940s approximately, rubber cables were used before that, there was significant overlap.
@@jwflame thank you sir
commenting for sake of 1940s Hartley time travelling design engineer; a glass window for viewing insulation condition at the bends would be useful. Alternatively, more space to allow much more wider bends & loops in cable or even terminals on all four sides to avoid need to bend cables in first place.
I've watched a lot of your videos JW and I really want to try this line of work. It is significantly cheaper, easier and less time consuming to take the domestic electrician route then the fully qualified path, but I understand there is a very large stigma attached to domestic electricians by the fully qualified community. Domestic stuff is all I really want to do, to set myself up with a van and equipment and just do work at regular homes. Do you think that is a worthwhile goal?
These are the routes for electrical training: www.electricalcareers.co.uk/joining-the-industry/training-routes/
The difference between domestic, commercial and industrial is primarily the tools, materials and installation methods used. The basics of electrical principles and electrical installation as covered by those training routes are the same.
There isn't any 'quick fix' option to only do a specific type of work, and places claiming to offer such things are selling an expensive lie.
Why would the terminal screws need protecting against loosening? In that sealed environment, why couldn't you expect them to maintain the torque they were tightened to forever?
Electrical wiring heats up when in use, and repeated heating/cooling can cause screws to loosen.
Not quite Raiders of the lost Ark, but strangely…watchable 😂
Was it still in use when uninstalled?!
No, I stripped this out and the house was mostly rewired in the mid 80s, but some runs of VIR remained until a full rewire last year.
@@paulmatthews5470 Thanks 👌🏼
Why have the two terminals on the right got mixed wiring
A switch drop.
Are the conductors tinned copper or aluminium?
tinned copper
@@ratbag359 Well that's a relief, aluminium conductors are a total pain to work with (easy to break) and have to be thicker too.
Tinned copper. Aluminium in small sizes was only used for a very short period, and that was copper clad so had a copper appearance on the outside.
@@jwflame My dad sometimes had to work with that copper clad aluminium when he was doing domestic electrical work. He said it was a complete nightmare to work with, if you nicked the conductors at all when stripping the insulation they would crack when you put them in the connectors. He had to be a lot more careful than normal, which took a lot of time. And he was still unsure how long the work he'd done would last, but then he likes to do a good job.
I have one in the shed
I know why
Ummm. A couple of questions if I may. Break of guage, over current circuit protection? And why are red and black terminated together on the right hand side? Surely not code, even way back then?
It'll be a switch drop. Cable with two red cores was available in VIR - my parents' place had it - but here they clearly had none.
For clarity: Line/live to switch on red, switched live comes back on black, switched live to light fixture on red.
Also to add to what Graham's written - the over-current protection would have been back at the fusebox. Rewireable cartridge fuses in those days.
Disturbingly the Inspectors number was missing from the brown label so Operative 85 would have to carry the can for this
There appears to be an indistinct stamp on the label (HMK 17 - placed diagonally to the right of the printed lines) which I would assume is the inspector's.
@@jeremybarker7577 Good point
Wouldn’t look out of place on a submarine.
John : "Have a look at what I've been sent Mrs Ward". Mrs Ward : "I want a divorce"
HA HA Fred flintstones lutron
No asbestos ? I am disappointed…
I thought I'd been unsubbed