Electrical Box Removing And Disconnecting Circuits

MikeT

Removed the electric baseboard heat in a home, that had individual wall thermostats, and replaced the drywall behind them and remolded the base mouldings in the home. i also removed the thermostats and patched the walls and now I want to totally disable the circuits. Can I just remove the breakers and disconnect the load wires, then put in the blanks or is there a better way to handle this???
There are 3 circuits with 2 20 amp breakers per circuit.

RobertWilber

If you have demolished the heaters and thermostats and "patched" the walls, that means that the conductors now are not properly terminated in a suitable enclosure. Just because YOU know the wires in the panel don't go anywhere safe doesn't mean the kid who comes along in 2014 will not reconnect them to find out where they go.
It is fine to abandon equipment, but you need to either demolish the wiring to a point that it CANNOT be reconnected, ever, or properly terminate both ends.
Personally, I would get it out of the panel. [Actually, I would get rid of it entirely ... I hate dead wiring components hanging around]

MikeT

I aggree I was not looking to leave them in the panel at all.
My quaestion was that I wanted to know how to properly disconnect the wires at the panel to render them useless. without pulling all 8 rooms worth of Tstats and wiring through the walls and either attic or crawl space areas.

mdshunk

I'd take them back as far as reasonably possible, and cut 'em off.

Don't kill yourself trying to get every scrap of it out. Just take them out of the panel, and start pulling staples or pulling the cables out of bored holes until you get to where the cables enter finished space and cut them off.

MikeT

Thank you MDshunk....
I knew eventually you would answer ....

Thats about what I had planned anyways just making those circuits totally useless.....

mdshunk

Oh stop. I have a fat head already. Robert said the same thing. I was just seconding the opinion.

A few code revisions ago, they did included definitions for "abandoned cable". Soon, I expect all cable meeting this definition will be required to be removed. Older office buidlings are a nightmare above the suspended ceilings. A dozen generations of various types of network cabling, wiring from 6 old phone systems, the old alarm system, etc. It's like a rat's nest above the tiles in an older office building. Can you imagine how much thick, black smoke is gonna come off that stuff if the building starts on fire?

MikeT

Sorry Robert

I must have not understood your post .... I owe you too.....

Tscarborough

In the mid 1980s, it was estimated that there were close to 5 miles of abandoned wiring in any given B-52. Can you imagine trying to work that mess?

Double-A

Can you imagine how much that weighs?

__________________
"My clients’ wishes are the center of my attention." -- David Guido, a contractor in Woodstock, N.Y.
New York Times, July 20, 2006

CE1

Can you imagine how Toxic all that wire is? The insulation on all or some of the wire was special Mill Spec and could a range of insulation including asbestos, Teflon, plastics, Kynar, etc. Plus the wire material itself could be nickel, copper, silver, gold and special alloys. Just a witch's brew of materials in the wiring.

How would you demilitarize the toilet on the thing? I cannot imagine the toxic in one of those after 50 years of use.