I'm planning to fix some bodges in the lighting cables in my loft and replace some very old junction boxes.
I might take the oportunity to label the cables at the junction box ends, eg. "to master bedroom rose", "to top of stairs switch", etc.
Are there any good reasons not to do this? Presumably a professional electrician doing an inspection at a later date would not trust the labels without doing some of their own checks, but would they consider labels as a positively bad thing?
No, I think that's both fine and sensible.
"Sharpie" pens mark PVC T+E cable really well...
Biro works well too, although probably not quite as easy to use as a Sharpie.
Make sure its a good contrast colour in relation to the sheath colour....
e.g. yellow on white is hard to see.
Red works well on white
and briotish racing Green or navy blue works well on grey.
I also label my cables as well.... for lighting junction boxes I usually write:
Loop in (from previous JB or from CU side) Loop out (to next JB) "insert room name" switch "insert room name" light
Some time ago I bought an edding 8404 Aerospace Marker Pen. Find myself using it for all sorts of things. I think almost every lamp bulb in the house has its date of installation written by one!
"The edding 8404 Aerospace marker contains low-odour water-based pigment ink which is highly smudge-proof, water-resistant and lightfast. The low-corrosion formulation and resistance to many solvents and paints, led to this pen being approved for aerospace use to ABP 9-3323 Class A.
Bullet tip writes approx 0.75mm line. Black ink only."
Shame it is not available in a couple of other colours.
Just the one pen has lasted years and shows no sign of drying out.
Not a bad thing at all, and a good example of the things a thoughtful DIYer can do that would not usually be commercially viable for a pro.
When I was selling my last house, one of the viewers brought their tame builder with them to look at the place. I remember him looking in the consumer unit cupboard and commenting that "someone has taken a lot of time and trouble with that" - mainly a reflection of the fact that all the bits were labelled, including things like each of the incoming green/yellow wires to the main earth terminal indicated what they were (e.g "main gas EQ bond", or "outbuilding CU", "main earth rod" etc)
Phew, it's good to get confirmation of that from a trustworthy source ... some of the junction boxes in my house have cables labelled that way too ("SUPPLY", "LIGHTS", "SWITCH").
Oh no, now you've given me another nerdy idea for data to collect.
I have seen telecom junction boxes wired to OCD standard.
I write the installation date on LED and CFLs if they are a new make/model.
This is how I know that Crompton LED GLS bulbs last all of 6500 odd hours (in an open fitting)! Won't buy them again...
Do you have an elapsed hours run timer on the fittings too?
I'd be taking them back to the shop.
Owain
Telecoms folks are used to dealing with bundles of 1000 cables, where if you haven't been OCD, you are completely stuffed. So it tends to be instictive to label everything and lay it out very neatly.
These were on 24/7 :) This is why I'm so sure...
But either the run time was 6500 or a lot less ;)
If I could remember where... Good point though - might trawl my emails, would have been an online shop. I wonder if I still have the bulb or if I threw it away...
That might be my dream job!
1000 pairs in a cable but that's OCD. B-) Do such large cables still have lot's plain colour wires? That made you keep 'em as bundles of pairs.
Looked in any street jointing cabinets? Nice place for rats. B-) Certainly if a cable is brought out to krone blocks it'll be neat but many jointing boxes just have the cable ends "fan out" and pairs jelly beaned together in a great tangled mass.
So, do you draw little five bar gates on the switch to count the hours?
Or stuffed inside one of those giant liquorice torpedoes ...
I used to work in the aircraft industry back in the 70s. All cables used in the planes were labelled with their individual ID number about every six inches. So no matter where you found the cable in the plane you were 100% certain of what it was.
(Not easy to do on twin and earth !)
Actually, I was meaning 1000 cat5e or cat6 cables - I meant datacomes.
Usually, the original exchange and subs lines are very neatly wired to the back of the Krone blocks by the installation team. It's the jumpers between the two which quickly get into a mess, and ad-hoc subs lines which get added afterwards, because they're done by field staff on short timed jobs without the same OCD wiring training.
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