said by jsinaiko:I live in an old part of the city. A lot of the copper here is 100 years old. Things are hard to figure out none of it was designed to take the loads that it takes now.
Actually in many cases old wire like this is better than 20- 30-year-old wire. Back then they didn't have the technology nor cost incentive to try to make the wire extremely small so it was a much larger gauge. Later on they had the technology and copper prices had risen to the point where making the wire smaller definitely had advantages. Problem is the smaller wire doesn't hold up as well over a long period of time.