new colours in three-core SWA cable

Carl D · 2009-08-10T16:32:02+00:00

I bought some SWA cable to use in the garden. It has three 2.5mm2 cores, with brown, black and grey insulation.The label doesn't say which colour to use for what but it doeshave an new/old conversion chart.new oldbrown redgrey yellowblack blueI think brown is live, but I'm not sure what to do with theothers, because I've only used twin and earth until now.Which one is what?

Aug 10, 2009 Last reply: 5 years ago 28 Replies

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Gov. Lancelyn 5 years ago

It's quite simple really (if you're a European) The earth coloured one (brown) is live, while the "electric blue" coloured one is neutral, but if you have black and grey then 99% of UK electricians will use black as neutral because neutral has been black for the last 100 years and, as pointed out above, if you trasnslate R,B,G (red/black/green) to Euro colours you get B, B, G which is Brown (or maybe blue ) Blue (or maybe brown) and Grey! Of course if it's a 3-phase supply you can tell by looking at the indicator lights on your control panel, which are now Brown, Black, and Grey. If the black one doesn't seem to be working make sure the power supply is running, and just a reminder that the switch should be set to Red for Go or Green for Stop if it's a newer one but Green for Go and Red for Stop if it's an older one. Any idiot could have thought that up (though no sane person could!)

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Fredxx 5 years ago

Please note this is a 11 year old post.

As long as the neutral and earth conductors are marked with green/yellow and blue sleeving at each end consistently then the cable colours don't matter.

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Dave Plowman (News 5 years ago

Takes a real idiot to reply to a 10+ year old post. Especially since everyone that matters will have got used to the new colours by now.

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Andrew 5 years ago

And it was posted from a .SCH.UK url, so that means a school website

formatting link

Obviously full of very intelligent people (not)

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Brian Gaff (Sofa 5 years ago

OK as I eluded to, its discrimination against blind electricians to not have the wires marked in a tactile way of course. Brian

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Chris Green 5 years ago

alluded, eluded is somewhat different!

Now that's a good idea!

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soup 5 years ago

Many a true word said in jest. When I was doing demolitions in the army, detonating cord was white for live and a blue for training/dummy. However as a lot of army stuff is done at night, or in poor light, the cord was marked with projecting lengthwise ridges in training/dummy and smooth if live.

So you could tell if you were dealing with stuff that could go BOOM or stuff that was just plastic cord, by feel alone.

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Andrew 5 years ago

And in times of conflict, would invariably be used in the dark !

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Vir Campestris 5 years ago

The only time I saw det cord being used was a demo.

One of the things was a few turns around a concrete post which disintegrated quite satisfactorily. It does have other uses than just setting things off.

Andy

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