UK mains wiring colours?

But you forget that electricians from France can come over here and wire up your house for you. Now they can do that without having to check the colour codes....

Though, unless the wiring standards and requirements here are the same as the rest of the EU, then they'll still need to check up on things before putting screwdriver to screw.

D
Reply to
David Hearn
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Yes, and vice-versa, I can go into europe and wire up anything I like, although I still wouldn't know whether the standards in that country were the same as in BS7671 so I would have to read up first, as would someone coming from France probably do if they were coming over here to do any electrical work. Technically though, anyone can do anything because nothing is actually mandatory, in england at least. You could stick a ring on a 80A rewirable and wire it with bell wire, that is the main problem. Although everthing in the EU is coming together I still couldn't say whether the wiring regulations, if they had any at all, were the same as ours in France, Germany or anywhere in the EU. There don't seem to be any EU wide regulations regarding cabling techniques, manufacturing standards and colours, and if there are they aren't as readily available as they should be. Until it is all identical the odd little change here and there won't make much difference. SJW

Reply to
Lurch

My guess is that given that the colour change is supposed to come in at the same time as the rule that all electrical work needs NICEIC certification, there will be a lot of folk out there in DIY-land buying a lifetime's supply of the old stuff... any installation work carried out using the new colours is almost by definition going to need approving, but if it's done using the old stuff who's going to be able to say when it was installed?!

David

(hmm - *thinks* - maybe there will be a market for drums of old-style cable on Ebay in a year or so!!)

Reply to
Lobster

I'm talking about the one which standardised the flex colours, which was rather more pressing, since houses don't tend to get exported complete.

And the cable change hasn't yet happened.

Reply to
Dave Plowman

I don't think the wiring colour changes are at the same time as the building regulations changes are they?

I thought the building regulations changes were supposed to be implemented in April 2004 but are likely to be delayed. The wiring colour changes are much farther in the future than that, certainly as regards when the 'old' colours are no longer permissible.

Reply to
usenet

I believe they all come in, close together. Try the IEE site to get up to minute info.

Dave

Reply to
Dave Stanton

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Reply to
BigWallop

In article , Dave Plowman writes

It may help Terry to know that what the Yanks call "Romex" is very similar to our twin-and-earth cable, apart from the colours used.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

I just had an officer round here from West Yorkshire Trading Standards in connection with a problem my daughter's having with some hair straighteners.

See: Message-ID:

She said (believe it or not) the regulation requiring standard colour coding for mains flexes was dropped years ago. The cores can be any colour as long as there is a note explaining how they should be connected up.

It was news to me!

DG

Reply to
derek

Many of the imported appliances we use have an instruction sheet stuck to the flex to tell us what goes where, so the information you got is correct. Some of the stuff we use comes from the USofA and they change colours like we change our socks, and I've seen us having to call them and ask if they are still using the grey as live or if they've changed it to red or brown again.

In a three core and earth PVC in the UK, the standard is Red, Blue and Yellow conductors with a bare copper earth connecting centre, but in most of the other EU places the three core is made up of two grey or black and a red or brown, and if it comes with an earth connecting centre you're very luck you spent the extra few Euro on the cable.

Reply to
BigWallop

It's easy: Earth=soil=brown Live electricity is like electrical sparks = blue Neutral countries aren't on any side, so have more than one colour = yellow and green. Obvious really. (For the really stupid out there, note this is wrong, and I'm highlighting what a daft choice of colours they are. do not wire using these colours for these purposes)

Reply to
Stephen Gower

That would be the one that happened before I was born then! O.K. I suppose both sides could be right, depending exactly what you're looking at. But there still isn't an actual EU standard covering everything, if someone came from within the EU came over here to do anything having some things the same and some different surely wouldn't be any more helpful than everything being different? SJW

Reply to
Lurch

The proposals are that the new wiring colours may be used from April

2004, and from April 2006 the current colour code will no longer be permitted. Of course for the next 40 years or more, no-one will have any idea what to expect in an old installation!
Reply to
Paul C Lewis

Quite. This is more-or-less how I remember them, then remind myself it's an EU standard, so they're all bound to be wrong.

Reply to
Huge

But UK fixed wiring installations are NOT consumer goods freely traded throughout the EU. (Flexible appliance cords may be, and these do have IEC colouring.) There isn't even a single market in most cable and wiring accesories, which are of different types and standards, let alone the difference in colour coding.

Changing the colour coding of NEW fixed wiring installations will make no practical difference to a single EU labour market for sparkies, as ALL the existing instalations they will have to interface with in the UK will be in the existing colour codes. Besides which, any foreign sparkie wishing to ply his trade here will find our strange, illogical, potentially leathal colour coding the least of his worries.

These changes can only have any single market benefit, if there are other far reaching chages further down the line. Of course we are always told there are currently no plans to impose anymore unwelcome chnages... (But of course that's the way it's always been with european domination - small creeping changes, which are always denied until we're told they are inevitable, and for the common good, and we have no right of appeal, as they have already been decided as necessary by the commission, and our parliment has no auhority to disagree with such directives, and anyway they won't actually have any practical negative effect on us, and nothing else will be changed without our consent... {unless of course the commission decides it is necessary to do so...})

Reply to
Paul C Lewis

What about all those electricians from Poland, Hungary, Romania etc etc who presumably can come here really soon (legally) by the ?Thousand.

Reply to
Andrew

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