jetter1,790 posts Depends on how bad the insulation has deteriorated. The OP said the insulation shows signs of cracking. I would also guess the insulation is also hardening and has become brittle. Just a guess it wouldn’t take much of a physical movement of the cord to open up the cracks exposing the wires. If the insulation is hard and brittle the insulation may even break off and or flake off exposing the wires. Wrapping tape around the outside of the flat two conductor power cord would contain, by adding insulation around the outer part of the insulation of the power cord, but the tape would do nothing for the failing insulation covering of each conductor that separates the two wire from one another. And there is the problem. In the event of dead short circuit, therein the the hot and neutral wires directly solidly contact one another, hopefully that would cause the branch circuit breaker to trip open,... hopefully. Worse case event, and more probable, the hot and neutral wires will not make a good hard contact with one another and instead the two wires will make a loose touching connection causing arcing. Arcing causes heat and arcing creates carbon, a semi conductor. Acing will not cause a standard branch circuit breaker to trip open. It takes a dead short circuit or a continued overload above the breaker handle rating to cause the breaker to trip open. So the arcing continues and generates more heat. More heat the glue on the tape starts to melt and fails to hold the wrapped tape in place. More acing more heat the rubber or thermal plastic insulation starts burning. Before long a fire. That is why AFCI circuit protection was created. An AFCI protects from both parallel and series arcing. https://www.afcisafety.org/afci/what-is-afci/ Jim. |
