Found old rubber cable in attic, advice please

[happyhero]

Hi my daughter has moved into a new house and we have found a load of pulled out but undisposed of rubber cable in her attic. By the looks of it there is more than one house wiring bundle there, i.e. more than half a car boot load.

I used to work in building services and we often pulled out cables and scrapped them in commercial buildings as part of our job but I never really came across much rubber cable.

The cables I dealt with all had copper cores and were worth scrapping but I notice the rubber cables seem to have no earth and aluminium cores, is that what they are?

Also what do sparks do with this cable if they find it, is it worth anything like the copper?

Is it worth scrapping ie can somebody fill me in on my lack of kowledge on this stuff, I know about copper but not the rubber/aluminium stuff.

Any help appreciated.

 

[JohnW2]

... I notice the rubber cables seem to have no earth and aluminium cores, is that what they are?

I doubt it - it's probably tinned copper. Have a scrape and see what colour it is underneath.

Also what do sparks do with this cable if they find it, is it worth anything like the copper?

As above, I suspect that it probably is copper.

Kind Regards, John

 

[happyhero]

Cheers johnW2, So if it is copper, does it scrapped with stripped copper or does it have to be dealt with separately because its tinned?

 

[JohnW2]

Cheers johnW2, So if it is copper, does it scrapped with stripped copper or does it have to be dealt with separately because its tinned?

Others will probably be able to give you a better answer than me. In my very limited experience, scrap merchants vary in this respect. Indeed, my local one seems to take anything which looks like (unstripped) 'house wiring cable' without bothering to look to see if it's tinned or not! Common sense would suggest that tinned copper will need more processing (hence perhaps a lower scrap value), but that may be offset by the value of recovered tin (if it's recovered). Mind you,even at current copper prices, and even if it were untinned, half a car bootfull would obviously not make you a millionaire!

Kind Regards, John.

 

[ricicle]

Tinned copper may be classed as 'bright wire' by some merchants but others may see it as the next class of copper down (similar to busbar copper)