Please would someone clarify or correct the following, in regard to UK 'modern' mains house/residential wiring.
Earth: Green or green/yellow?
Neutral: Blue?
Live: (230 volts at 50 hertz etc.) Brown?
Much appreciated. Terry.
Green and yellow
Black
Red
Your version would be as found in flexible cables the corrections would be in the fixed wiring within the building, apart from the earth which would be green/yellow in all cases. I hope you're not thinking of wiring anything not knowing such a basic concept?
SJW
Live=red, neutral=black, green/yellow sleeving=earth.
What you've got there are flex wiring colours.
Si
At present...
Well, for the moment anyway.
Those are the colours for a *flexible* cord. House wiring - ie the permanent stuff in the walls etc, is red for line, black for neutral and a bare earth conductor - which should be sleeved green/yellow at terminal points.
Thanks for the various replies and your corrections..
Several people have pointed out that 'my' colours are those used in 'flex' leads. I've seen these in, for example, computer power cords and inside some non North American and appliances imported from elsewhere.
I gather that UK 'house' wiring is;
Earth: Green and Yellow.
Neutral: Black.
Live: Red.
In reply to one concern; no! I'm not contemplating any wiring; at least not in the UK. I'm trying to sort out some info for a relative now in a Middle East location where the residences are ostensibly wired to UK standard? The appliances are from all over the place, Italy, France and Allah knows where! Typically there are two pin ungrounded 'continental Schuko?' plugs, with round pins attached to appliances. These are pushed into 13 amp square pin outlets; one method apparently being to use a butterknife into the ground pin of a UK style outlet to open the shutters so as to 'force fit' the round pins into the square sockets of the outlet! The appliance stays ungrounded and my relative has already in less than five days had a nasty 230 volt shock from the metal body on an appliance! There appears to be no proper earths/grounds on some of the outlets and the whole residence seems to be equipped with one 40 amp 230 breaker. That's only 9.2 Kva for a three bedroom residence with several air conditioners! It all sounds very inadequate and unsafe by our standards? Since my relative was 'well brought up' in regard to Canadian Safety Standards he has quickly bought some UK square pin style 13 amp plugs to rewire the appliance flex leads. But has serious concerns about the earthing/grounding in the residence generally! The plumbing is plastic! But he has discovered some sort of metal pipe in his yard buried in the sandy (e.g. high resistivity) soil!
Here, in eastern north America btw we use different colours for residence wiring. And btw the above conditions would be condemned for rewiring and reinspection before the meter would be reconnected! Normal single family residence here 200 amp at 115/230 volts. i.e. 46 Kva.
Ground; Green or bare copper. Occasionally conduit, or that flexible metal sheathed cable, is used. But in general most administrations now require an actual ground wire usually one gauge size smaller than the neutral and live current carrying conductors, back to the fuse/circuit breaker distribution panel (i.e. CU) for new and upgrade installations.
Neutral: White.
Live: Black. However when we wire 230 volts to a cooking stove or electric hot water cylinder, we use red and black, both wires/legs being at 115 volts to neutral/ground. Lighting and outlets are distributed between neutral and each leg/side of the 115-0-115 3 wire supply at the CU. The neutral is grounded/earthed once only at the main panel/CU.
Radial circuits: 'Ring mains' do not seem to be used at all. This results in a greater number of individual/radial circuits with rules for the number of outlets or the lighting load on each circuit. In residence work: Outlets typically 20 amp breaker maximum (20 x 115 = 2300 Va) Lighting 15 amp maximum. However in recent years some 'mixing' of outlets and lighting on
15amp circuits seems to be permitted. e.g. basement store room lighting and a couple of convenience outlets.Also: For a 'switched' circuit, a ceiling light for example, many administrations prefer that we use a red/black from the ceiling 'rose' down to the wall switch. The black is then permanently live and the red is referred to as 'switched live'. Or we can use black/white and mark the white as the switched live with say red tape or red nail polish a red sleeve etc.
Many thanks for the comments.
what is changing (and when)?
Twin and Earth is currently Red, Black and bare copper, and going to Blue, Brown and bare copper.... and needs to be installed with a certificate - so no DIY installs unless you can get a cert. done.... ........ AIUI ............ Nick
The colour coding of mains cabling may be changing in the UK, and some companies are jumping on the bandwagon right now. For example:
Not all work will need building control approval. There is a list on the ODPM website.
Also note that unless you submit full plans for the work you will be under a 'building notice' and so there is no certificate issued either.
Brown and bare
Ah... progress.
Dunno about the rest of the world, but I've always found red/black easier to remember than brown/blue.
When's the requirement for a certificate coming in?
Richard
not any more - in 3 phase work black will become a 'live' phase.
I do seem to remember something about cable colour changes, something to do with europe, again. Bloody Brussells.
No - the earth conductor is bare. You add green/yellow sleeving at connection points. Or rather you *should* do.
To clarify, house cable is called twin and earth - it's got an overall outer of PVC which holds it all together.
Doesn't it make sense for consumer goods being sold within one free trade area to have a common wiring standard? And the old UK one was *not* suitable - too many people are red/green colour blind, and these getting swopped by mistake is the worst possible scenario - hence the striped earth wire that anyone can identify.
You could be right, but if that rule was being applied i would have thought changing two different wiring colours would have been largely ineffective given the amount of different accessories and fittings there are. It doesn't matter what colour the cable is, it's either safe or it's not and it either fits in the hole or it doesn't! Never mind appliance manufacturing, with sometimes it seems no regard for safety or workmanship etc.. If we are meant to be all compliant and work as one free trade area then a different colour cable would be way down my list of things to change. Some people I have worked with haven't been colourblind, just useless or just plain blind, it wouldn't matter if the cables were touch sensetive or voice activated, some people quite simply have no idea anyway!
SJW
It's my understanding that the twin and earth cabling colours are changing to be the same as the colours in Flex as of April this year.
The following link gives more details:
There may be some bargins to be had from retailers getting rid of the current colours at the end of March though!
Phil
Run that by me again?
At the time of the changeover, appliances often didn't come with plugs fitted, so the householder had to do this. And all sorts of colour combinations existed across Europe.
Priorities vary. It was a relatively easy change to implement.
You try and make things fool proof. Even idiot proof. You can't make them c**t proof.
Well, if changing cable colours because of free trade rules within the EU was the case then surely it doesn't matter what colour the cables are, you can't fit round plugs in square sockets and vice versa. It doesn't what colour the cable is in the wall, and in various parts of europe they do not use red\black nor do they use blue\brown so it wouldn't make the slightest difference to anything really.
When you say 'at the time of changover' which colour changeover are you on about, the one with decimalisation or the current one? You seem to be past tense, I'm not sure we're on the same subject here!
Easy to implement if you are deciding on what to change. If you are a contractor it means you have to start condemning your own work, again. As we have all had to do before when the end result is no different but costs are higher because of one slight, minor change to BS7671.
Quite right, I do tend to manage to work most of them!
SJW
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