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

Paul, Wholsalers in the midlands have stocks but not the complete range. I havr writen to ECA magazine expressing my displeasure at the way the whole thing has been organised.
ECA are convinced that the change is going to plan and schedule. Mind you they dont have to shop around trying to get complete sizes of cables to carry out an installation from end to end.
I love administrators who can claim incompetance is a success. By the way Red/ Black cables now carry a 15% surcharge so I am told. Only going to be one winner in all of this!!

It does sound as though it's been badly organized. If you can only get the new colors in some sizes you're thus forced to pay the extra premium to buy everything in the old colors.

For anyone who has just joined this debate, let's point out that the IEE Wiring Regs. now state that new installs may use either the old or the new colors, but not a mixture of both.

The IEE should have stood up for British wiring on this matter, in my opinion. We should have just flat-out told CENELEC and the other committees that we already have a perfectly good system in the U.K. and will not be changing. Too late for that now, I'm afraid.

Paul,

The same applies to most other EU countries, they all had their own perfectly operable systems for many many years.

Ireland's changed over to blue and brown for single phase fixed wiring for sometime and to be quite honest it's absolutely no fuss. Even where it's mixed it's VERY obvious which is which.

where 3 phase is used the new system's equally obvious.

djk, your perfectly correct I have no problem with the change in colurs, to any self respecting spark who uses common sense and TESTS thoughrly I dont think it makes any difference what we use as colours. However when a set of rules / guidlines are laid down by I.E.E and administered by the likes of N.I.C.E.I.C / E.C.A. Ithink they should at least ensure that all the correct equipment is going to be available for use.
My personal opinion is that we in th trade are being ripped off time after time by large manufacturing companies. Lets face it we do not have an awfull lot of choice when it comes to purchaseing quality cable in this country. By that I mean wholsalers dictate what we get. With so much rubbish floating about out there in the market place I for one am always grateful that the cable I get is BASEC approved.It appears to me that at this moment lots of unscrupilouse merchants are off-loading a lot of rubbish and at a premium price I might add.

The harmonised colours will actually cause some price drops by introducing economies of scale too. Although it seems the various different fixed wiring specs, including odd-ball British and Irish standards will remain in force even if the colours of the cores change.

We may have the same colours and measure in mm but if you tried installing UK twin and earth with the undersized ground wire in most of Europe you'd be in trouble. regardless of wheather it's safe / practical or not it's a very odd standard by european norms.

I have never particularly liked the use of the very thin earth. Although, with RCD protection it's enough to cause a trip.

Where an MCB or Fuse is the only protection, I think the ground / earth cable HAS to be large enough to handle the current rated on the breaker. Otherwise, you've a potential fire and shock hazard.

I am very much in favour of ground conductors equally sized with the phase conductors.

I mean, look at the design of british plugs.. HUGE ground pin connected to this weedy little cable ... makes no sense!

Im still waiting for the suppliers to get Brown sleeving in, using heatshrink at the moment.

djk, no doubt the harmonization with cpc will come later. got to keep these guys in a pension. Sorry me being a synic again

I don't doubt that any half-decent electrician will have no trouble with the new colors.

The only place where just seeing the colors might not be immediately obvious is the case of a single-phase sub-feed coming from phase C. IEE Regs. for years have specified that single-phase branch circuits must always use red as the line, no matter what phase they are fed from, but allow a single-phase sub-feeder to use the appropriate phase color up to the final distribution panel.

Thus a single-phase sub-feeder on phase C could have been installed with a blue line and black neutral. Opening a conduit box on the new system would reveal the exact opposite, of course. Granted that as soon as you see which conductor is landed on the neutral it should be pretty obvious.

My point though is that this is yet another example of a change for the sake of "harmonization" when there was really no need to change at all. So we use a different color code to Continental Europe -- So what? I don't see that as a problem.

Agreed on the earth issue. It is somewhat strange that for years we've had reduced protective conductors in cables yet earth pins on plugs that are huge!


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 06-29-2004).]

Time for an update.

BDC in Norwich have now added brown to their range of 6491X cables (single-core for use in conduit), but there's no sign of gray yet. They still don't seem to have 6242Y (twin & earth) in the new colors.

I had another look at B&Q a week or so ago when I was forced to go in there, and they still don't have any of the new cables yet.

How's it progressing in other parts of the country?



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 08-22-2004).]

Rexel Senate have been stocking the new cables ( and mixed-usage lables ) since March/April and are now sold out of all except the least used of the old colours.

I have been using the full range of FTE and single since early May and only have a little 10mm FTE left in old colours.

Seems we are ahead of the game up here for once!!