SY Cable containment

It rather depends how  it is being used. If you consider that the giblets of it are rather like arctic flex, but with an over braid and outer plastic jacket, you may argue that at least anywhere that a fatter, slightly less flexible but tougher arctic flex would be OK, so is SY, and arguably a few other places where the flex alone would be a bit too weak.
The uncertainty is how much you might rely on the braid either as a CPC or as an earthed 'armour' to allow routing out of a 'safe' zone.  Now the braid resistance of all but the shortest length is not really low enough for a CPC on its own, (the braid resistance is not a well controlled parameter) and rather like cables protected by thin foils, there is a risk that if the cable was stabbed by  a nail or similar, that the braid wires might just burn back from the point nearest the damage without actually blowing a fuse. So if you want to route it 'out of zone' into places where nail and screw damage is likely, especially without RCD protection, then perhaps it is not enough.

That said we use lots of it in test chamber lab set-ups and for RF shielding, and it is very reliable in practice. Terminating the braid well needs more than passing thought, as it does not work with SWA glands, but there are special glands, or the braid can be combed into a tail and then crimped or terminated like the other cores.

If there was a proper standard performance for the braid density/resistance it would probably raise fewer concerns.

Also some makes declare it as 300/500V rather than 0.6/1kV , but that is a false worry, as the insulation is still tested to several kV and on normal 230/400 3 phase it is perfectly fine, as above, downstream of appropriate protection, be that MCB and/or RCD.

Mike,

Hi Mike

Thanks for the response. 

To give a bit more background, I was performing some survey work at a site and noticed that additional sockets had been spurred off using surface mount SY cable. To that end, it would be RCD protected so I think it's safe in terms of the wiring regs. 

Hi Mike

Thanks for the response. 

To give a bit more background, I was performing some survey work at a site and noticed that additional sockets had been spurred off using surface mount SY cable. To that end, it would be RCD protected so I think it's safe in terms of the wiring regs.