Hello all,

Heres a few pics of some T+E that i ripped out last week, (must have been at least 100 meters)





So the question is "has anyone seen this type of cable before, or is it a manufacturing fault " ?.

That is strange! Never seen anything like that.

It looks like pretty new cable, so I guess it'll be a manufacturing fault?

Never seen anything like that before. I suspect there was a manufacturing error there. I’ve only ever seen the egc tucked up nicely between the live and neutral.

Snap!

Yes, I have.

Cable such as this is common in South Africa as it offeres a higher safety factor - a nail can enter from either side and the first conductor it reaches will be 0v (well, close to Earth anyway!).

In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, the twin had to (at one time at least) be wrapped in a conductive foil so that penetration from any angle would contact Earth first. Having the earth wire on the one side ensured contact with the conductive foil (if it were in the centre, there may be a possibility the wire would stay free of the foil).

M.

Marc, I think the South African wire you are referring to is this...



It's called surfex and is designed for surface mounting. Very nice to work with BTW. I hadn't thought about it before but with all power circuits there being on earth leakage units even nicking the neutral thought the aluminium sheath would throw the breaker.

Dats de baby! Hey man, you take me back a few years! Notice too how the Earth is to one side, not down the centre.

BTW, was it not "surflex" (you typed without the 'l'). It's been well over 5 years since I played with electrickery (not my saying, but I like it!). All I do now is simply find out why things fail.

M.

p.s. it was sort of between round and flat like modern day T+E, just could not quite make up its mind what it wanted to be!

p.p.s seen the newer stuff where it is a braided earth around a twin? no outer sheath. being a radio guy my few hundred watts of RF never made it in to the juice - gorgeous!


[This message has been edited by marcspages (edited 11-17-2004).]

Yes, I too have come across it before - but not in any great quantity.

I just shook my head and made a mental note to have "one less" each night - then realised it was real and banished the mental note immediately!

I have no idea of its origin/s or rationale...

You and I must have left the 'deep south' about the same time. A quick Yahoo search on "surfex cable" showed that my memory is not too bad as can be seen here .

One thing I didn't remember was T+E in RSA as can be seen on the web site. It's egc appears to be centrally located like the usual UK ones.