Whoops - armoured cable

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A few months ago I ran 16mm swa from the consumer unit across the house to a new extension. I managed to get it from a mate of mine who had some at home so saved me a small fortune. I stripped it back to put glands on and found that its 3 core, brown, black and grey !! Will I have to take it out or can I use blue tape and yellow & green tape for the exposed ends as teh brown is already there?
 
Use sleeve as opposed to tape, sleeve the grey conductor blue used as neutral, sleeve the black conductor green/yellow used as earth. You should also earth the armour.
 
Thanks for that. For a moment I thought I'd have to take it out. It was a right pain to run through.
 
that cable is fine

use sleeving not tape

I belive the dominant convention is to sleeve the black with green/yellow and use it for earth and to sleeve the grey with blue and use it for neutral.

Remember even if you are using a core for earth you should (must in some cases) still earth the armor.
 
Tape is not really the best thing to use as the adhesive can dry up and the tape fall off. I personally use heatshrink sleeving.
 
Is sleeving the inner cores in this manner just a usual convention, or is it law ?

The reason that i ask is that i have also installed some SWA and found it to be Brown , Black and Grey once i stripped it back.

I have used Blue and G/Y heatshrink tubing to sleeve it, however my thought process went slightly differnt and I went for:

Brown - Brown for Live
Black - Blue for Neutral ( as black was the old Neutral colour)
Grey - Yellow/Green.

I could change them , but is there any point now ?
 
It is not a regulation to use grey as neutral, but it certainly is convention.

The thinking behind this is to disassociate black from being neutral, as with the new colours, black is now a phase conductor.
 
I am led to believe the reason is to disassociate black with being the neutral conductor, possibly an NICEIC thing?
 
Dunno if it's NICEIC or IET.

But it does make sense, and it's what I do - I was just being a bit mischievous above.. :lol:
 
If you have a black and a blue wire in a conduit, which one is the phase?
 
Thanks for the the info. What size sleeving unshrunk is needed to fit over a 16mm cable? 20mm ? or is the size it comes in the shrunk size?
 
I always go with the "de-neutralise the black" teaching of use "GREY as NEUTRAL".

This runs 100% true with the L1 L2 L3 of the colours in every situation also.

RED - BROWN
YELLOW - BLACK
BLUE - GREY

Where ever blue was used, such as the neutral in SWA, the neutral is 3 core fan or stat wiring etc etc etc - USE THE GREY (L3) :wink:
 

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