I had the same trouble today wiring 13A fused spur from Wylex fuse box - s'pose I should buy some of the new-fangled stuff instead of this old reel...
Shhhh, you'll have the Red&Black police on you ...
En el artículo , Andy Burns escribió:
That has to be a record, replying to a post 46 years old*, especially as it predates Usenet by about 10 years.
Of course, it's a Gargle Gropes poster. Quelle surprise.
Your timing is impeccable:-)
One of the new starters asked me today "Adam this has different colours to everything else I have seen, it's got Red & Black colours, which one is the live?"
And of course he would have been 5 years old when the colours changed in the UK.
I still think the colour change was a backwards step, as I found the old Red/Black/Green more logical. And the three-phase colour change was down right dangerous.
Only likely because you were used to it.
And a serious drawback was that those with colour vision problems couldn't differentiate between red and green under poor light conditions.
It also made no sense to have house wiring using different colours to flex
- and flex colours were standardised across Europe. Later, pretty well the world.
Not quite, as US uses Black and White for live and neutral. (and any colour they feel like for additions to the wiring!)
That's a valid point. Green/Yellow is an improvement over darkish green.
I'm talking about the good old days (TM) when even flexes used red/black/green. And people knew how to wire a plug.
and the Germans used red for earth!
But flex colours differed according to country. Made sense to standardise.
Bought a transformer from a US supplier. The 230v windings used brown and blue.
ICBW, but ISTR reading complaints back then to the effect that the new/harmonized system would be more of a problem for the colour-blind than the old one.
Red can also be used for live (e.g., in a cooker or water-heater circuit wired to both phases).
Not legally, I think, but (as anywhere) you sometimes come across incompetent work!
Load an image of old/new colours, e.g.
into a colour-blind simulator, e.g
Neither scheme looks much better/worse to me across the various deficiencies, probably should compare images with other than a white background.
thatr's why yellow/green earth was used. Anyway as for wiring the earth wasn;t insulated.
I wonde rif they allow thos ewith a low sense of smell to work on gas.
Why doesn't it make sense to have differnt colours for AC and DC. AS I think when electricity was first run into homes in the UK it was DC red & black.
I still like TMH's suggestion (some years ago) that Neutral should be magnolia.
Interesting, thanks. I ran that & got the impression the main confusion would be between the various lives --- better than confusing one with neutral or earth, anyway!
On reflection, I think the earlier post about colour-blindness & the old colours was referring to the even older system where earth was just green --- I can certainly that as a problem. I do think it's good that earth is the only striped one so it's the clearest to distinguish from all the others.
Why not cream or off-white?
It would be in the IET regs with a specific RAL:-)
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