Colour flagging of wires

You would flag a switched live as brown, being the new adopted colour scheme, even if you leave the original live as red, the different distinction between red and brown is acceptable. In cases of multiple conductor systems used for remote switching etc, you could actually leave the switched live as black.

You would be amazed at how many times I change light fittings where the switch live isnt marked, prolly 90%. The earth wire actually being sleeved is an extreemly rare thing to find.

Several times I've come across the 'I've wired the new light in & it doesn't work' syndrome to find all three blacks joined.

Good point, I tag the cable & the black wire with red tape just to be sure.

Brown just isn't right for a live IMO. Electrickery is 'red' for nasty or 'blue' for lightning. Brown instictively means 'neutral' or 'brown earth' to me.

IMO cables should be red for 'live' or 'danger', or blue for 'lightning'. Neutrals should be a neutral colour like brown or black. Who decided on the colours anyway?

Don't find 90% amazing really - seems to concur with my experience...

Earth sleeving is certainly more common, although by no means universal.

One of the big difficulties with any harmonised system - different colours traditionally mean different things to different cultures and nations. The US use Black and White for Live and Neutral... (and for that matter we use black for live now in some cases).

I find it on the wrong wires often enough that it's worse than useless, and it's thus much better/safer not to be there at all.

I suggest sleeving wires in light switches is a complete and utter waste of time. I do it because I know what the rules say. But it tells someone who knows little about electricity nothing and it tells someone who does know something about alectricity nothing that was not staring them in the face anyway. Regards BruceB

I'd say you use the colour appropriate to the wiring colour. Although just why you'd use the old wiring in a new installation using the new colours mainly I'm not sure.

On this subject I'm surprised wholesalers don't sell Hellerman sleeving in the right colours and sizes for identification - much better than a bit of PVC which can fall off.

It needs a tool to get it on (and ideally some sleave oil). Too slow/fiddly/expensive for something the trade seems to consider as a waste of time.

Andrew Gabriel formulated the question :

I'm surprised no one uses those white slide on tags as used in panels, with letters/numbers printed on them in black. Two tags marked S and W, to make up SW for switch wire -would leave no one in any doubt.

The right size will slip on with a bit of spit ;-) - secure enough not to fall off afterwards.

BigWallop coughed up some electrons that declared:

This precise question came up on the EAL course I attended a few weeks back.

The answer according to our instructor was:

New colour cables should be flagged in new colours;

Old colour cables should be flagged according to old colours, even if the flagging is done post-harmonisation.

To me it makes sense to maintain the colours within a section of cable to suit that cable, even on a mixed installation.

Cheers

Tim

When I was redoing the lighting in a house for home-automation (all lighting points and switch cables run to a central wiring point, a bit like cat5 cabling), I found biro writes very nicely on white PVC sheath, and labelled all the wires that way.

installation?

Tell your instructor that, if I have to carry any more coloured sleeving about with me, I'm gonna' come down there and bosh him in the face. I'm goin' for crayons next time. See how they like that. :-)

I loved it when I could carry a roll of green/yellow over sleeve and that was that. :-)

And a 10p Biro does thousands of cables. :-)

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Harry Bloomfield saying something like:

For a wire which will, in all probability, never be looked at again? Get real. Such things are useful in control panels for plant, where the opening of the lid more than once and someone rooting around fixing a fault is very likely during the lifetime of the equipment.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember snipped-for-privacy@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel) saying something like:

I generally use a tab of white insulating tape and a CD marker, if it's a jb or fitting I'll be coming back to, sometimes weeks later.

An electrician I sometimes work with asked the NICEIC support desk this. In his case it was when he was 2 waying a light. There was no red sleeving on the existing switch wire and the 3 core and earth he was installing for the two way was in the new colours. He was told to use brown on the new wires (a bit obvious) and red on the existing black wire.

I know that is not a reg and only the NICEICs interpretation of the regs. It seems a logical enough approach though.

Adam

But brown does just as well. As the colour brown has now been chosen to signify a live conductor in the new harmonised scheme. But, also, the colour red can be used in a none mixed scheme to signify a switched live conductor, which gives no reference to black or blue on the switched live to any fitting, making it easier to distinguish all the switched live conductors. Brown supply. Red Switched supply. Blue Neutral.

Make your mind up.

If you have red in a non mixed scheme then you are using the old colours and only the old colours. Brown is not one of the old colours. By adding brown you have a mixed scheme.

Adam