house wiring wrong colour codes nearly got me

thats what got me, cause i knew there SHOULD be one, and the single black lead (not paired) resembled the other earth leads here.

the fitting is fitted with a solid state starter (blue units) that start a tube in 2 seconds, it replaced a stock BC fitting that had a daylight CF installed, the light quality is SO much better, well worth the learning experience, which is, don't trust anyone else's work

Yeah, don't trust the riff-raff. Trust RAAF though. :-)

Cheers.

Ken

No, in VB terms you learnt:

If Could_Job_Kill_Me = TRUE then Check_Carefully = TRUE If Existing_Wiring_Looks_Oddball = TRUE then MsgBox "WFT!" ApproachCarefully () End If Else Approach_Carefully_Anyway () End If

Cheers.

Ken

If you look at the standard it'll say red and white for loops to switches. red for active white for switched.

I think the red-back for switces thing comes from before that standard.

There's also blue used sometimes, I think blue is an "extra white" (eg for a ceiling fan).

yep. that metal case may have something to do with it. if the ballast failed with a short to the case it could be nasty.

Bye. Jasen

or RAFF royal air force fluckers? nah they're ok, just there sparky work that needs improvment

G'day

You can use any colour you like for active as long as its not Black, Green, Yellow or Yellow/Green - Preferred is Red however. Three phase is usually Red, White, Blue, but doesn't have to be. Thats what the Current version of AS 3000 says.

Within switchboards you can use more or less any colour for anything you like so long as its labelled, except earth is green/yellow.

Im told by some old sparkies that twin red and black TPS was often used for switching with black as the switched active - apparently was allowed once upon a time and was a convention but not any more.

And yes an earth must be carried and connected at each light fitting, regardless of what its made of. Good idea to test this however as even in new installations they seem to neglect to actually connect it which means its not connected back to the switchboard.

In large cable sizes often all the wires are black and only identified at the ends either with numbers or heat shrink colours.

Mains wiring is pretty simple in houses, but theres no room for mistakes - test everything and trust no one. Don't guess on anything, if you dont know ask someone who knows. Just because the rules say its meant to be done in such a way, doesn't mean it was actually done that way. Just think they could have been doing the wiring to whatever your working on at 4:55 Friday afternoon.........

Cheers

yeah, thats what i think has happened,, heard it on a movie but 'assumption is the mother of all fu@%ups' is true in so many ways (undersiege 2 is the movie)

ta peoples, u's r all right.

Guess next time you'll use a multimeter so you dont kill yourself or whoever buys your house... Have never trusted black house wiring, and since school days have *always* checked if any bad connections on all 240v house wiring - i.e. I Never assume green wiring is ground and black is neutral I *always* check it and have done for

The electronic starters I use start a tube in less than 0.5 secs, and they can be made with a triac and a few passive parts, really effective. If yours takes 2 secs think your tube is on way out...

Are you in IPSWICH ?

output

up

to

single

that

Stick to speaker wiring .

That is utter rubbish . ALL states use the AS3000 for wiring standards .

As far as AC goes both the active and neutral are the same and should be treated as such . If a neutral conductor is not connected properly and its under load * essentially * its alive . Always treat every wire as potentially alive .

idiots.

Am I reading this correctly. He connected a black wire, one that he had not tested at that, to the body of the fluoro. That black wire had switched active on it. The red and the other black obviously had 240 volts across them as the fluor stayed on even with the wall switch off. Did he check the wiring when he disconnected the BC? The wiring may have been dodgy but testing, even observation would have shown him something was odd.

John

That's nothing, a friend of mine the company he worked for had an apprentice start. About 6 months later he was going home in the truck & just happened to mention that the drum of red cable was a nice shade of green (or is it the other way round?). The others laughed, then stopped when they realised he was quite serious. He was in fact *colour blind* , that was the end of his career as an electrician, of course. They had to go back on every job that he had attended to check every connection.

In future everyone had to do a colour blindness test.

A true story.

Kevin Martin

Here is an extract from AS/NZS3018:2001 - this is the standard for domestic installations: //

This is from AS/NZS3000:

//

TABLE 3.5 COLOURS OF CABLE CORES Identifying colours....Function............Recommended Alternative

Earth/bonding..........Green/yellow......Green (see Note) Neutral.................... Black................Light blue Active......................Red...................Any colour except green/yellow, .........................................................green, yellow, black, light blue

NOTE: Where a required earthing conductor is not normally manufactured, a suitable insulated conductor may be used but shall be identified along its entire length by a green coloured sleeving. //

In my experience I have found a lot of electricians do wire fan and/or light switches with plain "twin+earth" and use the black to carry the switched active back to the fitting and the green/yellow (earth) is not connected. This is now illegal and possibly dangerous (to work on) and unfortunately still quite commonly occuring.

Sometimes there is a piece of red, white or blue coloured tape wrapped around the black wire near the terminations - once upon a time this might have been acceptable but the standards are now pretty clear on insulation colours.

certainly am

that

It wouldnt be an old Queenslander ?

My guess is that its a house in Leichardt or One mile .

not quite a qld'r, close but. yeah leichhardt area. theres alot of these houses around here.

That's the current convention, and it has been for quite some time. However, I don't believe it was the convention 20 years ago.

Peter