Your worst Electrical DIY Disasters!

[JBR]

It couldn't be yet another ruling from Brussels, could it?

No, it couldn't. How thick/ignorant are you?

Firstly, I'd like to apologise to you for my ignorance and for appearing to be 'thick'.

If I am forgiven, may I be permitted to ask the fount of all knowledge a couple of simple questions?

When I was young, red = line, black = neutral and green = earth. They seemed perfectly logical to my admittedly minute brain.

Then, quite recently really, someone in their wisdom decided that these colours, that had been in use for generations, weren't good enough. So they were replaced by brown = line, blue = neutral and green/yellow = earth.

My questions:

What was wrong with the original colours?

Who decided that we had been getting it wrong for so long? (I have no idea who CENELEC are. Perhaps you can enlighten me if I may be permitted to tag this on to my second question.)

I see that others have taken you to task for being rude to me. Nevertheless, I feel no animosity towards you because I am an atheist and we believe in turning the other cheek.

 

[winston1]

The problem was that different countries used different standards, Germany used red for earth for example. One standard was required for all and instead of using the best, arguably the UK standard, they created a new one that nobody used so as not to offend anyone.

 

[i_am_fubar]

As far as brown and blue goes. The UK has been using it in appliance flexes since around 1985, so the change wasn't totally new for us.

But the more I read into this, I would have said that JBR was correct in his 'it was a ruling that came from Brussels' as it has little to do with the UK internal politics and/or safety. Simply the desire to make several countries wiring the same, which really shouldn't be required if not for international politics.

The IET has a section that gives a hint towards the potential risks that went along with this harmonization. Specifically, now using black as a phase in multi core, rather than neutral. However, the risk is deemed 'manageable'. In part, this seems to be by making further training a legal requirement.

However, in my mind, the politicians made a call to be all chummy with their fellow EU politicians and make an emotional choice over a rational one. Failing to consider the harm it could do the average homeowner if they do the logical thing and tie black to black.

Fubar

 

[plugwash]

Who decided that we had been getting it wrong for so long? (I have no idea who CENELEC are. Perhaps you can enlighten me if I may be permitted to tag this on to my second question.)

CENELEC is a standards body attempting to harmonise electrical standards across europe (and working with other similar bodies to try and harmonise them across the world). They predate the current incarnation of the EU though not it's predecessors.

We moved to their colors for flexes many years ago and also adopted their green/yellow for earth but for whatever reason the colors of current carrying conductors in fixed wiring in the UK didn't change until much more recently (though still about 10 years ago, my how time flies).

As I understand it the colors used are a compromise, in particular avoiding the possibility of confusing live conductors with earth where old colors meet new in various countries ruled out a lot of colors.

For some reason the NICIEC picked the opposite convention even though it's the one that would be less obvious to most newcomers.

They picked it because deprecating the use of black for neutral helps break that association.

Which is pretty retarded given that we will be dealing with black neutral conductors for years to come and that single phase domestic installs (where the blue/black three-phase confusion is not an issue) are the ones most likely to be worked on by the layman.

When the stated reason is retarded you have to wonder whether the real motive was something different such as making life easier for jointers (always join red -> brown, blue -> grey and yellow -> black, no need to worry about what the cable is for) or even (conspiracy theory alert) that they were trying to make DIY electrics more hazardous to support a future ban.

Still what's done is done and forever going forward we will have to be very careful when dealing with 3-core cables used for single phase to check whether the person installing it did the obvious thing or the NICEIC reccomended thing.

 

[winston1]

Who decided that we had been getting it wrong for so long? (I have no idea who CENELEC are. Perhaps you can enlighten me if I may be permitted to tag this on to my second question.)

CENELEC is a standards body attempting to harmonise electrical standards across europe (and working with other similar bodies to try and harmonise them across the world). They predate the current incarnation of the EU though not it's predecessors.

We moved to their colors for flexes many years ago and also adopted their green/yellow for earth but for whatever reason the colors of current carrying conductors in fixed wiring in the UK didn't change until much more recently (though still about 10 years ago, my how time flies).
As I understand it the colors used are a compromise, in particular avoiding the possibility of confusing live conductors with earth where old colors meet new in various countries ruled out a lot of colors.

For some reason the NICIEC picked the opposite convention even though it's the one that would be less obvious to most newcomers.

They picked it because deprecating the use of black for neutral helps break that association.

Which is pretty retarded given that we will be dealing with black neutral conductors for years to come and that single phase domestic installs (where the blue/black three-phase confusion is not an issue) are the ones most likely to be worked on by the layman.

When the stated reason is retarded you have to wonder whether the real motive was something different such as making life easier for jointers (always join red -> brown, blue -> grey and yellow -> black, no need to worry about what the cable is for) or even (conspiracy theory alert) that they were trying to make DIY electrics more hazardous to support a future ban.

Still what's done is done and forever going forward we will have to be very careful when dealing with 3-core cables used for single phase to check whether the person installing it did the obvious thing or the NICEIC reccomended thing.

Assuming you are a Yank with your spelling of colours it must be doubling confusing for you as they have been and still do use black for live (hot) for longer than I can remember.

 

[ekmdgrf]

[code:1]
if ($colour1 eq "red" AND $colour2 eq "black") {
$colourscheme = "old";
} elsif ($colour1 eq "brown" AND $colour2 eq "blue") {
$colourscheme = "new";
} elsif ($colour1 eq "red" AND $colour2 eq "blue" AND $colour3 eq "yellow") {
$colourscheme = "old';
} elsif ($colour1 eq "brown" AND $colour2 eq "grey" AND $colour3 eq "black") {
$colourscheme eq "new";
}
[/code:1]

Did I miss anything?

 

[i_am_fubar]

American:
Color
GrAy (A for american)

English
Colour (Not lazy and dropping letters)
GrEy (E for england)

Not helped by the fact most default spell checkers and pretty much all programming languages use American spelling.

 

[plugwash]

Assuming you are a Yank with your spelling of colours it must be doubling confusing for you as they have been and still do use black for live (hot) for longer than I can remember.

Nah i'm not a yank I just picked up their spelling of color from working with GUI toolsets.

 

[JBR]

Looking at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_wiring

I suppose we could have done with some 'harmonisation'. Shame about the rest of the world, though.

I see I haven't had a response to my grovelling apology from BAS. Perhaps he thinks I was being sarcastic!

 

[JBR]

American:
Color
GrAy (A for american)

English
Colour (Not lazy and dropping letters)
GrEy (E for england)

Not helped by the fact most default spell checkers and pretty much all programming languages use American spelling.

You should try reading the Daily Mail online! All their journalists use American English spellings rather than Real English, presumably because:

1. they can't spell;

2. they don't know how to change their spellcheckers to Real English (it's so easy to do, as well).

I reckon that, one way or another, before long we'll have all adopted the Americans' ideas of spelling. Either that or German!

 

[ekmdgrf]

You should try reading the Daily Mail online!

No, you really shouldn't.

All their journalists use American English spellings rather than Real English, presumably because:

I think referring to them as "journalists" is a stretch too far.

 

[theprinceofdarkness]

Sons house in Bristol:- problem 1, he phones me and mentions that the hot water is intermittent, Oh, I say, try and figure when its coming on and going off. A week later he says it seems to be tied up with the central heating, so I suggest he gets the boiler manual and read it out to me. He gets one on the web and links it to me, so I have a gander at it and suggest he gets a torch and read out the external wiring to me. it seems that the room thermostat had been wired in series with the boiler (modern combi!!!), so no heating demand no nothing. So I just tell him how to rearrange the wiring and problem solved.
problem 2, he phones up and said when they touched the toaster on the kettle there was a big flash and a bit of a bang. I said switch of the and unplug the toaster and I will be down to sort it out.
The 13A sockets for the toaster had no earth continuity. We pulled up an upstairs floor board and discovered a bit of 2.5mm with a burn mark on it. It had a burnt out earth inside the outer covering. GREAT, found it, bypassed the section with some more cable and a couple of JBs.
Back down stairs, Still no earth!, now the cable from upstairs was buried in plaster and ran down behind the wall units, so off they came. In the wall was a bit of different (and damp plaster) so we hacked this out to discover a taped up terminal block with more burnt out earth conductors. Replaced this bit as well, Earth continuity restored!. Never really found the live to earth fault, could have been the damp, BUT the rest of the kitchen was perfectly dry. I suspect it was something to do with condensation tracking down the cable and pooling somewhere in the terminal block recess.
Frank

 

[Qedelec]

Had occasion to discover so more dodgy dig recently, thought I'd share.
Customer wanted more downlights installed in a new ceiling over stairs and other work including a CCU change.
Board had three B6 MCB's but no markings.
So for safe isolation I turned each off in turn and the lights stayed on.
Swithching them all off achieved dead working.
The cause was the diyer had lost a neutral and got the lights working by connecting the lives together and the neutrals together.

 

[tigs333]

Why can't letter be printed on the cables .. so EARTH has E .. etc.

 

[phatboy]

Why can't letter be printed on the cables .. so EARTH has E .. etc.

Having a reliance on language is probably not a good idea. Cables are sold into many countries, so colour coding is the most universal option.