Surely this wire isn't live, right?

There isn't enough clearance between the bath and the floor to get my hand down in there to take a photo, or to see what's going on.

I think the house was probably last rewired in the 80s. We had an EICR done about four years ago and the consumer unit was replaced, but the electrician didn't think there was anything to worry about. Of course he didn't look under the floorboards...
 
Mander said:
There isn't enough clearance between the bath and the floor to get my hand down in there to take a photo, or to see what's going on.
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Fair enough.
Mander said:
I think the house was probably last rewired in the 80s.
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If that is the case, then there's no way that there will be any rubber cable still in service. As has been said, that black cable looks as if it could well be rubber but, as plugwash has said, old (not-in service) cables are often not removed - until I got rid of (most of them) my house was full of several generations of various (no longer in service) rubber and lead-sheathed cables.

Kind Regards, John
 
Well hopefully that is the case. Unfortunately I never met the previous owner and we don't have that many records of what has been done. But we continue to find interesting choices.

Today we took a cupboard off the wall to prepare for some more plumbing work and found some exciting vintage wiring with a rather convoluted route to the fridge and freezer outlets. I might need to get an electrician to come look at everything again...
 
Mander said:
Well hopefully that is the case. Unfortunately I never met the previous owner and we don't have that many records of what has been done. But we continue to find interesting choices.
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Yes, that is often the case.
Mander said:
Today we took a cupboard off the wall to prepare for some more plumbing work and found some exciting vintage wiring with a rather convoluted route to the fridge and freezer outlets. I might need to get an electrician to come look at everything again...
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That's the story of old properties, I'm afraid. My house is/was totally littered with old and potentially worrying 'surprises' in terms of both wiring and plumbing when one starts looking under floorboards, within walls, in roof spaces and behind cupboards etc!

However, in nearly all cases this ancient stuff is not in-service, but has just been ';left there', and I strongly suspect the same will be truie in your house.

Kind Regards, John
 
Mander said:
Getting my bathroom redone has turned out to be a cursed project. Every few days something else goes wrong.

The new pipes that lead to the bath taps started leaking overnight, dripping through the ceiling below. Fortunately ? the floorboards are still partly up so I could see where the leak is. Conveniently there are a lot of electrical cables directly under that including this one that has been chopped at some point. Not by me!

Surely if it were live it would have already caused a problem, right? Especially since it surely got wet last night?View attachment 309754
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To me the wire looks like it’s been chewed by a mouse or rat.
 
I'm pretty sure it hasn't been chewed. There's nothing else to suggest rodents anywhere. We had rats in a previous place and it was really obvious they had been in there, not least because they made such a racket.
 
Best and safest thing to do is to get a sparky in to test things. Better safe than sorry. Be money well spent.
 
Harry Bloomfield said:
Not worth the effort, in scrap copper, to remove it.
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Sure, and it's not just 'laziness' - particularly when someone is being paid to do the work, 'time/effort is money'. Indeed, even when it's just my time we're talking about, I wouldn't bother spending time removing old cables (or pipes) unless it was very easily done (which it rarely is :-) ).

Having said this, I certainly got a 'not insignificant' amount of money when I 'weighed in' all the lead-sheathed cable (and lead pipes) I removed from all over my house when I first moved in!

Kind Regards, John
 
Give up said:
To me the wire looks like it’s been chewed by a mouse or rat.
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It doesn't really to me- it looks as if it has been roughly cut, either deliberately with pretty blunt tools or accidentally with some sort of saw or suchlike. Either way, 'the other end' ought to be somewhere, but it sounds as if it might be hidden from the OP's sight.

With rodent damage, one almost inevitably sees 'teeth marks' along the nearby bits of fairly intact sheathing, not just a 'ragged cut', and I've personally never seen a case in which a rodent has nibbled through the conductors as well as the insulation and sheathing.

This is more typical of rodents ...
1691091217397.jpeg


Kind Regards, John
 
Yes, when we had rats before it was really obvious. You could see the tooth marks.

In any event I finally was able to go out and buy a voltage detector and none of those cables under there come up as live. I'm not sure I trust that completely when it comes to the better insulated ones but the cut one doesn't set it off. So I think they must be left over. Obviously I'm not going to go cutting into any of them just in case but it seems that it is ok.
 
Mander said:
Yes, when we had rats before it was really obvious. You could see the tooth marks.
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Indeed
Mander said:
In any event I finally was able to go out and buy a voltage detector and none of those cables under there come up as live. I'm not sure I trust that completely when it comes to the better insulated ones but the cut one doesn't set it off.
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That's certainly 'promising' even though, as you say, it does not actually 'prove' anything
Mander said:
So I think they must be left over. Obviously I'm not going to go cutting into any of them just in case but it seems that it is ok.
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Yes, as said before, it's almost certainly 'OK' - but, again, there is no totalcertainty of that.

Kind Regards, John
 
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