Wire ?

ws450r

Is it against code to use UF underground wire for inside a house?

jbfan

not that I am aware.

It is a pain to work with though

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Scuba_Dave

Yes...much harder to work with !!
Not easy to strip at all

ws450r

I agree that it is a hassle to work with. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to have to rip it all out if an inspector came. Didn't know it was underground wire until my cousin told me about it when we were installing the over the range microwave yesterday. He didn't think there were any problems with it inside a house, just a little more expensive. As long as its not out of code, I won't worry about it.

frenchelectrican

It is not a issue to run the UF cable inside the house but it will be little tougher to strip it off that all.

Merci.
Marc

Stubbie

No but why bother wasting UF underground cable for interior wiring? NM-b (romex) is very reasonably priced and can be purchased by the foot if you like at the big box.

Just get some nm .. it will look better to the inspector....

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Stubbie

Proby

Romex is not reasonably priced by the foot, it's extremely expensive. Even a 50' coil is very expensive compared to a 250' coil.

He has it in the wall already, why should he pull it out and purchase more wire?

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ws450r

The purchase of this wire was unintentional. My dad and I aren't electricians, but we know what we are doing. We just got mixed up when purchasing that particular roll. In retrospect, we should have gotten romex, but as stated, the wire was already in the wall and attic when we were doing some more work, and my cousin, who is an electrician, told me about it. We do have more work to do, and I am going to finish the roll up. I do have another 100' roll of romex, that hasn't been opened yet that we will use when we run out of the current.

It has a ground wire in it, which is what I was going for. All the current wire in the house that we haven't replaced does not have any ground, as well as the outlets not having ground either. Whoever built the house was basically running the entire house off of 2 wires. The 2 bedrooms, bathroom, and living room were all spiced off of one wire. And the kitchen was being ran off the other. We have upgraded the old style fuse box to a breaker box, with more breakers that allow us to break some of the rooms up with. We are upgrading all the electrical work that we can by replacing wires to outlets we can get to without ripping the walls out to add ground. I think that having two or three outlets in a room, that have ground, will be more attractive to buyers, especially upgrading to a 3 prong outlet, which there were none when I purchased the house (didn't catch this until I tried pluggin the TV in and started cussing myself out).

Scuba_Dave

I'd save the UF & use the NM romex
Then if you use up the NM use the UF if you have to

ws450r

Good point, but I'd hate to open a new package up. If I can get by with what I have left, I'll take it back and get my $45 back.

Proby

That's what I was talking about earlier when I said romex is extremely expensive in shorter lengths. A 250' coil is about $43.

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Scuba_Dave

Wow.....100' @ $45
I bought my last 250' for $56...the one before that was even less
To me....250' is a short length

Stubbie

Really? And there is a cheaper method than romex?

Won't hurt to leave it ... totally fine code wise, won't blame him at all if he does. Probably has the UF spliced so any usable long lengths are history. I wouldn't continue to use it though.

I simply gave him my opinion on uf being used in interior walls of a home. I'd take it out and install nm ... at least I would look like I knew what wire to use for the application.

EDIT:

And please do not forget I'm in Kansas not NJ.

__________________
" One nice thing about the NEC articles ... you have lots of choices"

Stubbie

Proby

Yes, to leave the wiring he currently has in the wall.

As I mentioned, romex is extremely expensive by the foot. It's very expensive in small coils as well.

It would make no sense whatsoever for him to pull out what he has and go buy expensive pieces of cable.

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jbfan

I went to HD one day to buy a 250 roll of 12/2.
They didn't have any, but the guy said he could cut it for me from the 1000' roll.
I asked if I was gonna pay the cut price or the roll price.
He said the cut price.
A 250' roll of 12/2 now is about $63 a roll.
The cut price would have been about $125, so yeah, they make a good mark up on the short rolls.

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