Deteriorated cloth sheathing

[Raymond Wand]

Wouldn't of thought this possible, but a number of of outlets behind basement panelling had their cloth sheathing deteriorated by moisture coming through concrete block walls.

[John Dirks Jr]

Interesting. I have that exact same cabling in my 1962 ranch home. I wonder if I'll find the same when I get around to ripping out the basement wall wood paneling.

[Jerry Peck]

That cloth sheathing deteriorates over time anyway - moisture or no moisture - so you may find that in any location where you can see it (across the attic, basement, etc.).

[Raymond Wand]

Wiring was fine everywhere else in the house except localized areas in basement.

[Scott Cook]

When I see that Raymond mice are involved. However I can see high moisture turning this into a food source for the dreaded mold or mould word.
The stud is cut so I do believe all mold was removed before this inspection.

That's what I was going to say, squirrels will also do that, but they often eat the plastic insulation off the individual conductors also. Mice are very cautious diners. When I used to do service calls, I found more than a few squirrel skeletons laying along a set of bare copper wires that used to be romex installed in the attic.

[Ed Attfield]

I had been planning to do my own post on this topic.

I was tearing old wire out of a Tiki-themed basement rec room. Brand names Loomex and Philex 14/2 amd 12/2 from the seventies, perhaps 40 years old.

The room was insulated with 2" fibreglas batts, with the tar paper vapour barrier. Snow melt, poor surface drainage, and a wall crack had allowed small amounts of water to come in for short periods of time until I moved in and fixed the surface grading.

I found one outlet where the attached wire *looked* ok, except there were a lot of silverfish living in the area. The painted cloth cover looked good, but all of the paper padding inside was gone, and the bare ground conductor was green dust.

I stripped the cover off more of the wire to look for more spots like it. I found two.

In general, wire that was overhead was like-new, with a bright copper ground wire. Wire that was in the wall was ok except near the floor.

WIre that had been damp had crumbly paper inside, and had corroded ground conductors. The plastic insulated conductors were unaffected.

I don't know if you have tools for it, but your best external test would be to make sure the ground wire still works.

For the photos, I've taken the painted cloth and tar cover off to show the paper padding and ground conductor. The orange painted one is 48 years old and was on the basement ceiling. The silver painted one is newer and was exposed to more moisture,

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[Raymond Wand]

Thanks for the feedback.

The clients will be doing major renovations and will be using a licenced electrical contractor to remediate this situation.