Wiring color: red instead of black OK?

[David Nebenzahl]

I'm just wondering if something wiring-related is a no-no.

I've got a couple spools of perfectly good #14 stranded wire. Problem is, they're red, and I have a small job requiring white & black.

So would it be the end of the world if I used red instead of black? Does the NEC have anything to say about this? (I would, of course, use white for the neutral conductor.)

I wouldn't make a practice of this, as I like to follow standard/best practice to the letter. This is for a friend, or for my own wiring jobs.

[gfretwell]

Perfect;y OK. You can use any color you want for ungrounded conductors except green, gray or white.

[RBM]

The NEC does have something to say: They say red is perfectly fine, in fact every bit as good as black, even more colorful

[Steve Barker]

hot side can be any color you please except white or green.

[Doug Miller]

Close, but not quite.

The grounded conductor (neutral) must be white or gray. The grounding conductor (ground) must be green, green with a yellow tracer, or uninsulated. The ungrounded conductor (hot) may be anything except the above.

[Steve Barker]

Ok, so i missed the gray. So sue me.

[David Nebenzahl]

On 1/20/2009 7:19 PM Steve Barker spake thus:

I won't if you promise to never, never top-post again.

[Steve Barker]

OK, so sue me. Top posting makes the most sense. I hate scrolling through the same shit for each and every reply.

[Harry K]

So you are a lone outrider refusing to go along with convention.

Harry K

[dadiOH]

So why is the convention different for email?

I dislike bottom posting too, do it only because so many people get their shorts wadded up over top posts. Still wouldn't bottom post if I didn't use OE QuoteFix to automatically toss the cursor to the bottom. Bottom posting would be much less annoying if people learned how to snip.

[Ed Pawlowski]

With email, it is usually two people going back and forth with a know topic. Easy to track.

With newsgroup posting, it may be a dozen people, some not getting every post from a bad server, adding things as the thread goes along. If everyone snips and everyone follows the same convention, it is much easier to follow the subject and figure who posted what.

[Phisherman]

You can wrap the wire ends in black tape or color them with a Sharpie to indicate a hot wire. It's done all the time.

[Mark Lloyd]

OK. Bottom posting (WITH adequate snippage) is better than top-posting. Bottom-posting after more than 20-30 lines of quoted material is still worse than either. It hides the fact the post contains any original material at all, and requires excessive work to find out.

For those who'd say that scrolling down is far from "excessive work", why ASSUME there's only one post in a group (and only one group to read)?

[David Nebenzahl]

On 1/21/2009 1:44 AM dadiOH spake thus:

Good posting--including bottom-posting--implicitly includes trimming posts when appropriate, as opposed to just replying to the message, however long it might be.

And if one uses a non-brain-damaged mail/news client, as opposed to OE, then one can set up where one's cursor ends up in composing replies. No need to get a patch or add-on.

[dadiOH]

OE works just fine for me, seems simpler/easier to get a small add on - all of 650 KB - rather than another client.

[clare]

And red can be hot, even without marking. Line hot, red or black. Line neutral white or grey. In residential wiring (at least in Canada) grey is extremely rare, while 3 wire cabling (used foe split reeptacles, as an example) has a shared white neutral and a black and red L1 and L2.

[gfretwell]

Gray neutrals is usually used in 480/277 installations where a line to neutral 277 circuit will be wired with violet and gray to make it apparent this is not 120v. This is very common for lighting.

The 3 phase circuits in 480 are usually Brown/Orange/Yellow

[clare]

And other than MURBS (otherwise known as highrise apartments), very little 3 phase residential in Canada

[David Nebenzahl]

On 1/21/2009 10:17 PM [e-mail] spake thus:

So this raises some interesting questions in my mind: I don't know if the code (NEC here, in the US) allows mixing of different voltage conductors (120, 240, 277, 480, etc.) in the same conduit, raceway, etc., but if it does, then the color of wires would become pretty crucial.

[clare]

Well, if the building is wired with 208 it will not also have 240. Likewize, if it has 480/277. Except in VERY rare cases in industry where they will have several transformers providing different power for different departments.