Yeah, but look at all the space in there!

wondered if these go to a frame ground? if so someones in for a suprise! wonder where it goes? any one know?

[This message has been edited by circuit man (edited 04-07-2002).]

Color codes? What are those?

why go out and spend good $$ on red n blue , since i got's all this green left over from st patty's day, heck got's to save the $$$ for memorial day, den we git into the reds n blues, that way i know ,when it was installed, and yup you guessed it um savin those yellow , orange n browns for turkey day,ma panel will look so purty

I did a job a few years ago at a local college building here in town, and the entire panel located on one floor of the building had green wires on ALL the breakers. Now that was a mess! The first day I had to unwire some walls so they could be taken down boy to my surprise when I found all the grounds in the boxes and they were hot! Must have been a BIG sale on green wire back in the late 1960's here.

Once saw a sub panel in a commercial kitchen. Romex had been pulled through conduit to provide new circuits for some new equipment.

Each wire in each piece or romex went to a breaker.

The black to one breaker, the white to another, and the BARE!!! wire to another breaker(safetly wrapped in tape).

At each outlet, the neutral return path was through the conduit. A piece of white and green wire at box screwed directly to the box.

Apart from the green wires connected to the breakers (which is really disturbing and calls into question the competence of the "electrician" who did this) I have seen huge boxes with small circuit breaker frames such as this numerous times in this part of the country. It seems to happen during a service upgrade when an old fuse panel is replaced with circuit breakers. Rather than dig the old box out of the wall and install and fit conduit to a new, smaller box, they remove the obsolete interior and replace it with a new circuit breaker frame, then fabricate some type of cover to dead-front the panel (leaving the old box in place).

Question; Are there any NEC issues for doing this type of thing, and have any of you done this before?

I hate to mention this, too, but if you look closely at the bottom of the breaker frame in the first photo where the main lugs are located, it appears that there are other, much smaller wires double-lugged in there with the big wires (kinda hard to tell with the dead-front in place). Even if there are some type of "auxiliary" lugs under there, it seems that the circuit (and whatever the circuit supplies) has no protection beyond the OCPD which protects the entire panel.

Mike (mamills)

[This message has been edited by mamills (edited 04-04-2002).]

Mike,
I have installed new guts in old panels on remodel jobs. The installation method was in the specs and new panel manufacturer provided custom covers to mate his panel with the old enclosure.
Don(resqcapt19)

[This message has been edited by resqcapt19 (edited 04-04-2002).]

Maybe they were color blind..lol
I just got off a school job. THe last Renovation was done about 20 years ago.
Maybe the rules have changed ( LOL )but They used Black Red Blue for the 277 volt and Brown Orange Yellow for the 120 volt.
We were in for a surprise when we went to install our lighting fixtures in a few rooms..OOPS

I sent in a picture of some work that one of our maintenance guys had done. He was real proud that he had used Brwon Orange Yellow for three 480 volt pumps. When we took the pumps out last year we found that he had run all of the brown to one pump, all of the orang to the second pump and all of the yellow to the third pump. This was also the same guy that ran three white wires out of a 3 phase breaker. We actually fried a machine here because the new crew was hooking it up and assumed the white had no volts to it. After it fried they checked the white wire and it had 70 volts on it.

These are reasons to never ever assume that the color means something. Always check first.
Don(resqcapt19)

The surprise came not from when we actually went to put the fixtures in BUT after I checked the voltage. Anyone worth their salt checks before installing.
In this case it was a state bid job, the contractor i work for was told what the voltages were.

Hey, at least they're not Brown, Ornage, Yellow!

[This message has been edited by 4thYearApprentice (edited 07-13-2002).]

The way I understand it, Brown Orange and Yellow would have been perfectly acceptable. Code only specifies that Orange be used for the high leg on a Delta (if there is one) but there is no requirement for the BOY color scheme to be reserved for 480V.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

In Houston the colors for 480 volt are brown, purple, yellow, and 208 volt are black, red, blue. For a high leg set up just change the red to and orange.

1-3-5-7...touch that wire, you'll be in heaven....or maybe not,
Doc

But touching the black is really O.K.,
So long as I'm here in old England today!

What are them large cables joined to the
right of the pan unit?.
They have insulating boots on the ends
of them.
Green wires are actually used in some parts of Northern Africa, as Phase Wires, so
I am told.

I seem to vaguely recall seeing a reference to green being a phase color in an old Dutch system.

I've never been able to confirm it, but if that was the case then that might account for its use in former Dutch colonies in Africa.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 08-14-2002).]

Used to work at a research facility where, from about 1957 to early/mid 1960s had a standard 480V 3w color code was black/yellow/green with bare for equipment ground. It had all been reidentified brown/yellow/purple, but the oldtimers would cringe seeing young punks install insulated-green cable for equipment grounding{!} I looked, but never found any 4-conductor SO cord on 480V circuits to see how green was used there.