My ceilimg light needs replacing but the wiring looks very old. Any advice?

 

My ceilimg light needs replacing but the wiring looks very old. Any advice?

Yes: you need to replace the wiring.
Tin-plated stranded copper wiring with rubber insulation looks like British wiring from the 1950/60s.

 

If the power wiring is as bad that place needs a complete rewire urgently!

 

Looks like 1960s British wiring, probably done in junction boxes , suggest you have a rewire contact an electrician...

 

3/029 ?

 

Not quite the worst I've ever seen. In the days before "Part P" meant than only registered people could rewire domestic properties, I helped a friend rewire his 15th century farmhouse. We found, still in use, a socket wired with spiral-wound paper-tape insulated, lead-sheathed cable, with the lead sheath used as the earth.

 

My ceilimg light needs replacing but the wiring looks very old. Any advice?

What is the wattage of the new and old lights? If you replace with LED, I wouldn't be very concerned.

It looks like you have aluminum wiring. If that's the case, be sure to use some dielectric grease when you connect to the copper wires of the new fixture. Though that's not much of an issue with low wattage LED bulbs.

You should look at some the other wiring to make sure you don't have copper/aluminum wire connections without dielectric grease and connectors rated for Al/Cu and signs of heating.

 

When, in the late 80's, we moved into my previous N London house, built in the 1930s, it still had much of the older lead-cased red & black (perished) rubber insulated cabling married to modern sockets . The surveyor completely missed that! Did the rewire myself.

 

The very first thing that I see in that picture is that there does not appear to be an electrical box for the light. Then I see six strands of bare wire and two strands of wire with failed insulation. Given those two elements there is nothing safe that can be done with that installation. The bare conductors appear to be tin plated copper, which was common many years ago. If they were aluminum the appearance would be different.
In summary, there is nothing in that picture that can be safely used for a replacement light installation.

 

I see a bit of an indentation in the ceiling plaster which suggests that there may have been a ceiling rose:
https://media.screwfix.com/is/image/ae235/28345_A3?$fxSharpen$=&wid=257&hei=257&dpr=on

 

The length of the wires showing tends to make me think it was an older style fixture. They are way to much to have been in a "ceiling rose", which is not code in my area.

 

The length of the wires showing tends to make me think it was an older style fixture. They are way to much to have been in a "ceiling rose", which is not code in my area.

It has the hallmarks of UK wiring, 1950's.

 

Regardless of any "ceiling rose" , a junction box is required. What I see is a safety and fire hazard, no matter what.

 

We haven't heard from the TS since the first post, but there is one more important point to make:
@Louiseg76 Your house insurance will contain a clause that requires you to keep the place in a good state of maintenance.
With wiring this old, and in this condition, if you do manage to burn your house down, your insurance company won't pay for it.

 

That is one of the reasons that I suggested that a junction box is needed. If there is access to the wiring above, from an unfinished attic or above the ceiling, then it may be a lot less tedious to install a correct junction box, and possibly replace that segment of wire. Either the TS or a competent electrical service person will know how and will probably use the right materials.
My very emphatic advice is that the present wiring is not suitable for re-use as it stands. And there is no hint about what all of those bare strands are for, that issue needs to be corrected as well.
And my second bit of serious advice is to be sure all of your smoke detectors are functioning correctly.

 

If it's a British ceiling, then a modern ceiling rose has eight terminals, plus earth.

1. 2 for incoming live/neutral from the fuse box
2. 2 for outgoing live/neutral to the next light
3. 2 for the switch
4. 2 for the cord to the light.

But when the lighting circuit in the picture was wired, it was done differently:

• There was no earth on lighting circuits.
• Switches were connected via 4-terminal junction boxes elsewhere in the circuit
• The ceiling rose would only have two terminals (live and neutral).

The photo shows two lives (red, but covered in white paint or artex) and two neutrals (black insulation that has fallen off) suggesting that it is one of several lights controlled from the same switch.