how old is this wiring?

[srob]

As you can see the ground is separate from the other conductors and is attached to the outside of the metal junction boxes. The conductors are red, black and white insulated with vinyl type material run inside a black woven sheath. 12 guage copper.  a silver coating is over the copper wire, which I think is zinc. The conductors are soldered together and then wrapped in black tape.

[ncornilsen]

That looks like a pre-curser to Romex wiring. My house, built in 1947, had that type of wiring in it... but I am not 100% sure that it wasn't replaced at some point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_wiring#Modern_wiring_materials

Reading that, it appears that the braided non-metallic sheathed cables like that came around in 1922 and were added to the NEC in 1926. They had rubber insulated conductors with a braided sheath. The rubber was subject to getting brittle, and would attack the copper, so the copper was usually tinned.

 In 1950, the insulation for the conductors changed to a thermoplastic, which was thinner and didn't have the tin coat on the copper. So, I's say yours are no newer than the early 1950's.

[srob]

That is good to know thanks for the info!

Is the 50's also when they started to include a ground wire in residential applications?

[ncornilsen]

I think that came about in the early 1960's. '64 comes to mind for some reason, but don't hold me to that.

[paddedhat]

The elderly cloth coated cables are one thing, but what's with the modern, individual conductors that are heading out of the junction box? Doesn't matter why it's happening, it's a code violation, and indicates that somebody has done some very questionable electrical work. The cloth cables are of little concern. The hillbilly cluster-F is a major flag.

[zolotiyeruki]

The elderly cloth coated cables are one thing, but what's with the modern, individual conductors that are heading out of the junction box? Doesn't matter why it's happening, it's a code violation, and indicates that somebody has done some very questionable electrical work. The cloth cables are of little concern. The hillbilly cluster-F is a major flag.

It kinda looks like that individual black wire is connected to a screw where the larger cable enters the box.  A ground wire, maybe?  Still a nasty code violation...

[srob]

I'm sorry that the pic is grainy, but yes the individual conductors are attached to the outside of the metal junction boxes as ground wires and they are old as well, with some kind of braided sheath surrounding them and no vinyl that I could see. The one on the right was painted white while the others were black. None actually enter the junction boxes, although the ground wire is attached to inside of the metal outlet boxes.

I thought that it looked strange but it makes me a bit worried that you guys with much more expertise have not seen this setup before! Do you think it needs to be ripped out and replaced? Is it dangerous?

[paddedhat]

I'm sorry that the pic is grainy, but yes the individual conductors are attached to the outside of the metal junction boxes as ground wires and they are old as well, with some kind of braided sheath surrounding them and no vinyl that I could see. The one on the right was painted white while the others were black. None actually enter the junction boxes, although the ground wire is attached to inside of the metal outlet boxes.

I thought that it looked strange but it makes me a bit worried that you guys with much more expertise have not seen this setup before! Do you think it needs to be ripped out and replaced? Is it dangerous?

It's a lot better to hear that it isn't an active 120 volt circuit somebody added, which isn't out of the realm, BTW. ( I once saw an entire basement remodel wired in lamp cord, with thumb tacks driven between the wires to attach them to the floor joists.) I would be curious as to what exactly they thought that they were grounding, and why?

[ncornilsen]

Well, it certainly isn't NEC approved now. It may have been early in the adoption of grounding conductors into the NEC codebook, but that sounds unlikely.

I don't think it's dangerous, as long as those wires aren't live. people need to remember that a grounding conductor does absolutely nothing 99.9999999% of it's existence... its purpose is to provide a direct, positive connection to a zero potential reference to cause the breaker to trip immediately, versus shorting to something with only moderate conductance to ground, which would get hot and cause a fire.

Depending where the fake ground wire terminates, that could be helpful for safety in that any wire breakage that shorted to the metal J-boxes would trip the breaker immediately. If those wires don't end up terminating at a solid ground rod or a metal water pipe (not ideal though) then they aren't doing much.