The old days where house main earthing leads were green 6.0mm2. Ring "mains" were wired in 2.5mm2 T&E with 1.0mm2 earth continuity conductors. And the use of plastic oval conduit in plaster was common.
Is this compliant? Please see picture.
Z.
I once rewired a house that had 60s wiring or thereabouts. On stripping out the old cables under plastic capping I noted the cable runs. Where I was worried about picture nails in wall along "safe zones" some were pierced and some had missed, mostly the missed ones were where great use of diagonals or wiggly wiring was used. However many of them had been pierced along the diagonals and wigglies too where unexpected
Back to the OP.
Green was considered by many of us to be the proper earth colour. A lot of electricians did not like that new fangled green/yellow combination. Me I didn`t mind and thought it was probably better actually.
Roll foward a bit and the new fangled colours of Brown Blue in single phase was not liked by many even though they were told it was only for flexes say appliances and never for fixed wiring.
Seems a lot of the continent had black for phase 2 and also black again for phase 3. Hmmm - an accident lurking?
Then our three phases all became Brown, Black, Blue - I don`t like them, too wishy washy, Three of the six primary colours for phase such as Red, Yellow, Blue example I thought was pretty good (Red,White, Blue previous - I wonder how they got that ???) .
Years later the Europeans did admit that our RYB was actually better than Br,Bk, Gy but it`s too late now!
Cables in zones is good as a first line of defence but many ordinary people are still now aware of them.
Like on that job I mentioned that wiring routes system did not really surprise me.
They had just bought the house and wanted some extra sockets and some moving an ditto with some lighting. My reply was that it would be more prudent and economical to wire from scratch and just looking at the nail/screw holes in the walls I strongly suspected some had pierced anyway.
Then our three phases all became Brown, Black, Blue
Eh? I thought they went from red/yellow/blue to brown/black/GREY with blue for N.
Most of Europe used various combinations of brown and black for line (they'd had brown in flexes for years too) - by and large they didn't bother much about preserving phase rotation in fixed wiring - just swap a couple of wires around at the load if it turned the wrong way (thus having two lines the same colour made a certain amount of sense).
Having a distinct colour for L3 was, I'm told, a UK suggestion - and the only colours off the standard list not already used by somewhere in Europe for something else was grey and pink.
- Andy.
Sorry Andy, my bad, a typo I`m afraid. Yep Brown Black Grey, a combination of the worserest colours in my view. Nice bright sparkly healthy colours for an N I would prefer (Red, Yellow, Blue are good uns) , duller types for N , and green/yellow for earth would all do me and, I think, within the K I S S range of things.
If no colour coding existed before today then which colours might be most popular folks?
If no colour coding existed before today then which colours might be most popular folks?
Perhaps a new thread with a Poll?
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