ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Wire color of Type NM

Paul:
Reminds me of a client who wanted to know what colors PVC conduit was available in! I said 'gray'; she said what shade? Needless to say...she hired a painter; two attempts later...she had 'federal blue' PVC to blend in with the architecture.

Take care

Around here I've seen only white 14GA, yellow 12GA, orange 10GA, and black (in 8GA or larger... might be type SE). Are there other colors now?

John
I used EMT to put in all the lights around my pool. (18 H101s and 5 motion sensors) My screen cage is bronze (dark brown) so I had to paint it all. I ended up bending all the pipe. Putting it up to be sure it all fit, then taking it down and shooting it and putting it back up. It was a PITA but the result was worth it.

We have black and white over here:

http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index/Conduit_Pvc_Index/index.html

Blue????

Anyway, I thought this was a NECA thing with the colors - and they got the manufacturers to comply with thier whims.

A supply house I go to had an enormous amount of NM stock piled that took them 4 YEARS to get rid of. And for a while after they changed the color to yellow on #12 you would need to point out to the inspectors that it was #12 - just several years old.

I do rememer light blue NM long time ago

There was a lot of blue NM in the early 80s. I am not sure who was making it. I also saw dark brown NM in the same time period.

In late 1960s Phelps-Dodge made a blue colored NM cable. Building I saw it in was built 1968.

We used the light blue Phelps-Dodge blue cable well into the late 1970's in new work. A lot of their cable was also black. What was odd was that in many cases, the black conductor was actually brown. I don't know if this was intentional or just a case of someone not mixing enough dye into the batch.

We also used a lot of cable made by Cadillac Cable that had a green or brown jacket.

I'd say that it's safe to guess that it was just a case of manufacturers wanting their product to be more identifiable.

I turned up some unusual NM in my house, probably installed in the late 70s, early 80s. It actually had color coded copper. The white wire had a silver cast to it and the black was a deep bronze color.