Material file · Residential sheathed
Buying NM-B cable from remodels and service work.
Romex in half-used coils, the ordinary residue of a kitchen remodel, a room addition or a panel change in a house that is forty years old.
Residential cable comes out of a remodel in short, kinked, half-used coils. NM-B is 600 V non-metallic sheathed cable, 90 °C in dry locations and nowhere else, never for a wet location and never for direct burial, which is why cable found in a flooded crawlspace is treated differently from cable found inside a wall.
The volume is small per job and steady across the Metroplex: a Plano kitchen, a Garland room addition, a Fort Worth panel change. A contractor running three remodels a month ends up with a shelf of partial coils that nobody wants to inventory and nobody wants to throw away.
Buy quote request
Tell us what you have
Type, conductor, voltage class and how much is on hand. Photos can follow by text or email. A buyer reviews the lot before anyone talks about money.
Prefer to talk it through? 954-740-1983 · saleselectricalbuyers@gmail.com
01 Origin
What a remodel leaves behind
A remodel produces cable in the lengths that were left when the circuit changed. A kitchen moved six feet leaves a coil of 12/2 that was cut for the old layout; a room addition that grew a window leaves three pieces too short for anything but a switch leg. Very little of it is a full coil.
The rest comes from service work and from maintenance. A panel change leaves the old branch circuit tails, an attic rewire leaves coils pulled back out of insulation, and a rental turnover leaves whatever the last person could not be bothered to take with them.
02 Gauge
14/2, 12/2 and half coils
Gauge decides which pile a coil belongs in. 14/2 is lighting and general branch work, 12/2 is kitchen, bath and the circuits that carry more load, and 10/2 turns up on dryers, ranges and small subfeeds. Mixing them in one coil makes the whole coil harder to describe and slower to review.
The 250 ft and 1,000 ft coil are the two sizes a residential job buys, so a partial is usually measured against one of them. A coil that is visibly more than half full is described as a half coil or better; one with a dozen turns left is a cut length in everything but name.
| Size | Where it comes from | What decides the review |
|---|---|---|
| 14/2 | Lighting and general branch | Length, jacket, staple damage |
| 12/2 | Kitchen, bath, laundry | Length, jacket, kinks |
| 10/2 | Dryers, ranges, subfeeds | Length, copper weight |
| Mixed coil | Cart or shelf sweepings | Sorting, count, average length |
03 Footage
Why short lengths still count
A twenty-foot piece of 12/2 looks like nothing beside a full coil, and a shelf of them adds up quickly. Residential service work runs on short lengths, so a bundle of pieces between ten and thirty feet is a usable lot rather than a bag of offcuts, provided it stays sorted by size.
Coils opened, dragged and re-tied lose more than their footage suggests. Kinked cable does not pull cleanly, and a jacket stapled through is a jacket with a known fault in it. Both facts belong in the description, not in a conversation at the dock when the truck is already there.
Bundle by size, tie at both ends, and write the size on a tag. A shelf sorted that way takes minutes to review instead of an afternoon.
04 Sorting
Residential apart from commercial
NM-B and the commercial families do not share a review, and a mixed pallet of both slows everything down. Building wire on a reel, armoured cable in whips and NM-B in coils are three different lots even when they came out of the same building during the same week.
The practical answer is three piles before the visit: reels standing up, armoured cable coiled and counted, and residential sheathed cable bundled by size. Anything that cannot be identified goes in a fourth pile with a note saying so, which is a good deal better than being guessed at during the visit.
- Keep 14/2, 12/2 and 10/2 in separate bundles.
- Set aside cable with a wet, muddy or stapled jacket.
- Note the coils still factory-tied; they review as unused.
FAQ Seller questions
What sellers ask before they send a list
Answers describe how the buying desk works. They are not an offer, a rate or a promise of purchase.
Do you buy NM-B that has already been installed?
Yes, once it has been removed and is free to sell. Cable pulled back out of a wall is described as removed rather than unused, and the review looks at staple damage, kinks and whether the jacket is still continuous along the length.
What about cable from a flooded crawlspace?
It is listed and described honestly. NM-B is a dry-location cable, so cable that has stood in water is not reviewed as though it were unused material, and a buyer will want to know how long it was wet and whether the jacket took water at the ends.
Is a partial coil of 12/2 worth sending on its own?
On its own it is a small lot, and small lots are often combined with other material from the same site. Sending it alongside the rest of a clear-out gives a buyer more to work with than a single photograph of one coil on a shelf.
How is footage confirmed on an opened coil?
By weight, by counting turns against the coil diameter, or by running it out and measuring. On a residential coil the weight method is usually quickest, since the conductor size is known and the empty spool weight is easy to establish.
Can NM-B go in the same load as MC cable?
It can travel in the same load once the two are separated, bundled and written up as separate lines. Keeping them apart before pickup is what makes that work, because the two families are counted and weighed on quite different terms.
Buy quote request
Tell us what you have
Type, conductor, voltage class and how much is on hand. Photos can follow by text or email. A buyer reviews the lot before anyone talks about money.
Prefer to talk it through? 954-740-1983 · saleselectricalbuyers@gmail.com