As background, I am familiar and comfortable with 12 and 14 gauge wiring for various projects throughout the house.

Now, I am remodelling/rewiring an old kitchen in which armored cable feeds the 50A range outlet.

When rewiring this range circuit, do I need to use armored cable as before, or can I use NM cable? If NM, is any other protection or sheathing required by most codes? I will be pulling this through wood framing, if that matters. There will be a recessed outlet, with no exposed wiring (except on the approach to the circuit breaker panel).

My local superstore has 6-3 NM Romex with what appears to be stranded conductors (as opposed to the solid conductors in the more familiar 12 or 14 gauge Romex I have previously installed. The 6-3 has black exterior NM sheathing and they will cut it for me to order.

I have 7/8" auger drill bit on hand, looks like it will be a good fit.

Any and all advice appreciated.
thanks

 

If your town allows romex in houses (most do, some don't), then you can run 6/3 NM for the range.

Make sure it is really 6/3 +G - which will have a red wire, black wire, white wire and a ground wire either bare or green. Old stoves didn't require the fourth wire - new ones do.

 

The wire I am looking at now has 3 conductors that are 6 gauge, and 1 ground conductor that is 10 gauge. The 6 AWG conductors look stranded - composed of 7 smaller wires about 14 gaugem or so. The 10 AWG ground is a single wire conductor.

Did I buy the wrong stuff?

Since it is the job of the ground conductor to carry an errant electrical current back to the source, I can't imagine a 10 gauge ground doing this for an errant current from one or two 6 gauge conductors.

 

That's the right stuff.

The ground wire only has to be large enough to allow enough current to flow to trip the circuit breaker in the event of a fault. The #10 is large enough for this purpose.