ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades New U.K. color code

And dont forget to use your brown sleeving...............and all you people out there who put black sleeving on to mark a neutral conductor, you must now go back and take it off........

leave us alone red yellow blue,, is all i know..

I ordered 500m of 2.5 T+E a few weeks ago and got 1 250m drum new colours the other old colours. Lucky i dont need it all for one job

Guys,
This has really got way out of kilter.
In times gone by a 2 core+E mean't single phase feed or switch wire (RGBlack)
And a 3core meant a strap wire between a 2 way and or an Intermediate circuit (RYB)
Also, there would be the 3 Core+E which would be a 3 phase 400V delta load (RYB+G)
Plus a Black Neutral, if it was Star connected.

Trumpy, the problem is the cowards in the UK Industry. They blame the change on the EU, when the reality is the UK Government and the NICEIC, ECA and IEE all conspired to bring this toot into force. They have been slowly bring us in line with the EU for the last 25 years.

It is a fools errand. The UK has the lowest fatality/injury rate for electricity in the industrialised world, that implies our system must be doing something right. To now make this system that same as some mickey mouse crap from the Eurozone is a joke.

You can find out more here.
www.ae3.org.uk/technical/colour_changes.htm

Hi there FWL, and welcome to the forum.

I take it we can count you as another vote against the new colors then....

There really doesn't seem to be many people in this country (outside of the IEE and other committees) who support the change. Unfortunately, this country has long since stopped being run on the basis of that the people want.

Numbers please.

C-H, I'll dig them out, I have them somewhere for the last 12 months.

In actual killed I think it may be Sweden or Finland with the absolute figue lowest number of deaths, however you need to take into account the population of a state when calculating such figures in any subject.

From memory, in the previous 12 months there are 44 cases of deaths in England and Wales being attributed to electric shock, only two of these were professional electricians, over 70% were DIY bodgers, the remainder Kids retrieving balls from substations etc and I think 4 were idiots trying to abstract electricity from overhead lines without paying for it..!!

As I said, I will hunt out the figures and post them.

[This message has been edited by FWL_Engineer (edited 05-16-2004).]

I had to look up the Swedish figures: The latest was 2 deaths/year and 200 reported non-lethal accidents. The good news is that the figures are a magnitude less than they were 25 years ago.

Anyway, with nine million people it works out to less than 0.25 deaths per million people. (Most deaths related to electricity stem from fires but I couldn't find a report of them)

If your figures for the UK are correct, 44 deaths per 60 million, it works out to less than .75 deaths per million.

Compared to traffic, one could say that there are almost no deaths from electricity.

I agree.

The real problem is the figures are also a bit misleading. Normal UK death rates per annum are about 25, for some reason 2002 (the year the figures are for) was particularly bad.

2001 was 26
2000 was 21
1999 was 27
2003 is expected to be about 24

Welcome to the board, jamesm.

The article at your firm's website [www.franklin-wood.co.uk/colour_changes.htm] with illustrations/commentary on pending phase-color changes is excellent.

I do not envy electrical professionals that will have to deal with the surely forseeable confusion and likely frustration in upcoming decades.


[This message has been edited by Bjarney (edited 05-16-2004).]