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Retro marking cables in the German electrical Installation industry

Daniel Hardy

Hi 

I am working as a project engineer in Germany and are we installing new distribution switch gear due to age.  Currently the earthing arrangement is TNC but will be changed to TNS due to compliance.  The problem then being that all equipment is installed as a 4 wire system, with a combined earth and neutral. The Cable colours are generally brown,black,blue being the phase wires and green/yellow is the combined N/PE.

 To overcome the earthing issue we will install separate protective conductors from the main earth terminal, but, I have been informed that the green/yellow cannot be marked for any other purpose other than earth.  This seems madness as this encompasses the whole site and will therefore require for the whole installation to be rewired.  As you will all know that this is not sensible or affordable.  

so if anyone has answers to this question it would be greatly appreciated 

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    Humm tricky, BS 7671 used to allow oversleeving of G/Y other than for single core cables, but that's changed recently so we seem to have a similar prohibition across the board now. What sort of wiring system(s) are involved? Presumably not conduit/trunking so you could just draw in an extra grey and re-use the blue as N. Only other solution I can think of is to run an insulated & sheathed single alongside .. not ideal and might pose difficulties when entering ferrous enclosures, but maybe one way out? I'm not sure if the detail of VDE though.

       - Andy.

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  • 0

    Humm tricky, BS 7671 used to allow oversleeving of G/Y other than for single core cables, but that's changed recently so we seem to have a similar prohibition across the board now. What sort of wiring system(s) are involved? Presumably not conduit/trunking so you could just draw in an extra grey and re-use the blue as N. Only other solution I can think of is to run an insulated & sheathed single alongside .. not ideal and might pose difficulties when entering ferrous enclosures, but maybe one way out? I'm not sure if the detail of VDE though.

       - Andy.

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