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#169370 10/03/07 09:30 AM
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pauluk Offline OP
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The communal service area in some new-build apartments. With some cables neatly supported on cable tray, doesn't it make you think that the wiring from the individual apartment isolators could have been much better? frown

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Joined: Oct 2006
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I'm not sure exactly what I am looking at, but it sure does look sloppy to me.


---Ed---

"But the guy at Home Depot said it would work."
Joined: Sep 2005
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I can tell from the red fuse carriers that they are just solid links so there must be a intake somewhere else? Is that MICC supplying the cutout? If so, why the armoured cable? Is this in a plant room, one for each floor or something with the main intake on the ground floor so the armoured runs the final length to the individual consumer units?

I guess from the double live conducter that this is an Economy 7/10 setup with storage heaters.

Last edited by johno12345; 10/03/07 11:15 AM.

I took my time, I hurried up, The choice was mine, I didn't think enough
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Wow!
What a difference the new wire colours make to an installation.
It looks like someone stripped a flex and used the conductors to wire this up. smile
Are them Orange cables a two core arrangement that come out of them fuse-holders, as in phase and neutral?
Personally I would have put some sort of protection over them wires, even though they are double insulated.
That earth block on the right hand meter couldn't be any more crooked.
Just a note about cable tray, I have some mis-givings about using it with softer cables like these, the edges on the tray can be razor-sharp and have been known to cut the sheathing on cables with vibration/building movement, I've used lengths of heavy PVC insulation over the edge of the tray where the cables exit or enter the tray.
They can also give you a really nasty cut, if you don't watch what you're doing.

Joined: Sep 2005
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I reckon the orange cables are MICC 2 core.

Thinking about the new colours looking odd, tails are usually double insulated with the outer pvc being grey. I suspect that these blue and browns might be the individual cores from the armoured cable. Having said that, I have never seem armoured cable with 2 browns and a blue so they could be jointed in that trunking to the left but they still look like single insulated singles.

I have never seen a meter set up like that before, it all looks a little odd....


I took my time, I hurried up, The choice was mine, I didn't think enough
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There is no freakin' way something like that would fly here! Electrical gear mounted on combustible materials... single insulated wires exposed and on flammable materials... insufficient fastening,...

I have to take pictures of a similar new service here.
Typically it's a set of boxes mounted directly next to each other. The main box contains an HRC fusible disconnect and a set of Neozed fuses for each meter, and from this box (merely a trunk) the cables go into each meter box. At any rate, there's no exposed wiring to be seen.

Joined: Oct 2007
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It would have been a lot neater if they'd used metal isolators and terminated the armoured cable directly into them.

Trumpy, that looks like the "return flange" type tray, which has the edges rolled back in against the sides to give a nice smooth edge.

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pauluk Offline OP
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Originally Posted by adamh
It would have been a lot neater if they'd used metal isolators and terminated the armoured cable directly into them.


Welcome to ECN Adam.

You beat me to it, as I was going to say just that. Why go to the trouble of fitting the galvanized box and then running singles up to it from the isolators when you could just use a metal-clad box and gland the SWA directly into the top of it? confused It would have been much neater and the SWA could have just been cleated to the wall/panel.

The brown and blue cables struck me immediately as well. There were old red/black double-insulated cables in the 1950s/60s which had the outer sheath the same color as the inner insulation, but I wasn't aware that anything like that was being made in the new colors. I've not seen anything except a gray outer sheath yet.

I didn't take these photos myself and haven't seen the installation in question, so unfortunately I'm not able to say whether the orange feeders are MICC for sure or what service equipment is feeding these from below. I know that one of these meters is feeding an apartment on the British 1st (American 2nd) floor. I'll try and find out some more details.

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Would someone please explain what's what here for those of us that don't normally see this?

I can figure out some of it, I think. Big white box is the meter, smaller white box is the main disconnect (OCPD?). Gray box, black box, yellow cable ... ???

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Originally Posted by BrianP
I can figure out some of it, I think. Big white box is the meter, smaller white box is the main disconnect (OCPD?). Gray box, black box, yellow cable ... ???


Correct on the meter and main disconnect, although it looks like it's only a disconnect, no overcurrent protection.

The grey box is what the PoCo over here use to terminate the supply cable. The red part, as somebody said earlier, i believe is a solid link, but would typically be black and contain an 80A or 100A cartridge fuse.

The small black box is simply a joiner. They're available in one or two pole versions and are quite common where two or more panels are supplied from one service, or in this case to join up the earth (grounding) conductors.

The yellow cable is actually (or should be) green/yellow stripes. It's the main earthing connection. It's connected to the neutral (grounded) conductor in the grey block. From my (limited) understanding of US wiring methods, I believe you use a grounding screw in the main panel to achieve this?

Looking at where the cables come out of the top of the right hand isolator, there seems to be an outer layer of insulation which stops just short, and one of the browns looks black underneath. I'm wondering if they've used a 4 core SWA cable and just sleeved the individual cores, using grey as Earth?

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