AC / BX cable · Harris County / Greater Houston
We buy AC / BX cable.
Armoured cable from a building that is being taken apart looks nothing like new stock. The bonding strip, the age of the insulation and the way it was cut out set the terms.
There is a version of armoured cable that predates almost everything now sold as metal-clad. AC, still called BX by most of the trade, is a flexible metal sheath with a thin aluminium bonding strip laid inside it, and it wired a great deal of Houston before the current code cycle. Heights bungalows, East End commercial buildings and 1960s apartments are full of it.
It comes out the way a building comes apart: in short pulls between boxes, in coils where a run was long, and in the mixed pile that a demolition crew leaves at the curb. We buy that material by the lot or by the coil, and the review leans hard on condition, because age is the one thing every foot of it has in common.
What separates AC cable from MC
The difference is in the ground path. AC carries a bonding strip in contact with the inside of the armour, so the sheath itself is the equipment ground and there is no separate green conductor. MC carries a full-sized insulated ground and uses the armour as mechanical protection. That single detail changes how each one is terminated, and it is the first thing worth confirming at the cut end.
The armour profile differs too. AC armour is a softer, more flexible interlock that bends easily around framing, while MC armour is tighter and stiffer and usually holds a rounder shape. Put a foot of each side by side and the AC looks lighter, sits flatter on the floor, and often shows a fine spiral line where the bonding strip presses against the strip.
Where old armoured cable turns up
Renovation is the main source. A bungalow in the Heights gets a panel change and a kitchen rewire, and the old BX comes out of the attic in coils that have been baking up there for decades. Retail and office strip-outs in the East End and along Telephone Road produce the same material at a larger scale, often still stapled in place when the ceiling comes down.
Demolition adds volume and subtracts care. Cable cut out with a sawzall comes back in short lengths with the armour peeled at both ends, and it is mixed with conduit, MC and whatever else was in the wall. That is normal. What matters is that the pieces are long enough to be worth handling and that they are kept dry once they are out.
One source is easy to overlook: the electrician who keeps everything. Plenty of service vans in this city still carry coils of BX that came out of jobs decades ago, and the material has moved from van to garage to storage unit without ever being sorted. That is fine. Old armoured cable does not improve in storage, but it does not deteriorate either, provided it stayed dry.
- Coils from attic and crawlspace rewires
- Cut lengths from panel and fixture changes
- Whole branch runs pulled during a strip-out
- Mixed demolition piles with conduit and MC
- Older two and three conductor cable, 14 to 10 AWG
Sorting is part of the review, not a condition of it. A demolition pile can be offered as it sits, as long as the photographs show what is actually in it.
Reading condition on sixty year old cable
Insulation is the deciding factor. Early thermoplastic and rubber insulations harden with heat, and in an attic that has seen thirty summers they crack when the cable is bent. Test it by hand at the cut end: bend six inches sharply and look for splits. Cable that fails that test is copper and armour, not a re-usable length, and it is graded that way honestly.
Corrosion tells the rest of the story. White powder inside the armour, a bonding strip that has gone brittle, or blackened copper at the ends all point to moisture. Cable that ran through a flooded wall after a storm is usually in this group. None of it is refused outright, but a lot with visible water history is reviewed as recovery rather than as re-use stock.
- Insulation that still bends without cracking
- Bonding strip present and not corroded through
- Armour continuous, with no crushed or opened sections
- Copper bright at the cut, not blackened or green
- No standing water in the coil or mud in the sheath
Do not straighten or re-coil old armoured cable to make it photograph better. The bends are where it fails.
Sending an AC lot for review
Give the conductor size if you know it, the approximate length of each piece, the neighbourhood or cross streets, and whether the cable came out of an attic, a wall or a demo pile. Photographs of two cut ends and one of the pile as a whole are enough to start, and they answer the insulation question better than any description.
If the lot is still in a building, say whether the power is off and who controls access. Old armoured cable is often tangled with live circuits in a partially occupied building, and that changes how a collection is scheduled. A single photograph of the panel it lands in saves a conversation later.
Related review paths
Questions sellers ask
Do you buy AC cable from a demolition site?
Yes, including short cut lengths and mixed piles. Demolition material is graded on insulation condition and how much of it is long enough to handle. Photographs of the pile and a rough count by size are enough for a first review.
Is BX the same thing as AC cable?
In practice, yes. BX was a product designation that became the trade name for armoured cable with a bonding strip. If the sheath is flexible interlocked metal and there is no separate ground conductor inside, it is the material described here.
Does brittle insulation rule an old lot out?
It rules out re-use for most of it. Cable that cracks when bent still contains copper and steel, so it is bought on metal content, which is a lower basis than intact cable. Mixed lots are common and are separated during inspection.
How short can the cut lengths be?
Pieces under a few feet are usually grouped rather than counted individually, and they travel with a larger lot. Runs of ten feet and up from a panel or fixture change are the ones worth listing separately.
Buying desk · Greater Houston
Got this cable in stock?
Tell us what is on the reel, where it sits and what condition it is in. A buyer reviews the lot, asks for photographs of the tag and the cut end, and comes back with a real answer — not a request to call a call centre.
- Cable type, size and voltage class
- Footage, reel count or weight, and condition
- City, and whether the site has loading equipment