Mains colour codes

[John K]

I'm finishing off the cabling of my AV wall and was thinking that flush fitting 13A sockets would look better in the decorative recesses, so I went onto my other favourite website (Screwfix) for a browse and happened to spot this in a review 

" ...I am however glad they dropped the colour markings on each terminal think what you like but if you need to wire a socket by matching the colours you should not be playing with electricity...  "

At this point I will admit to an intellectual /mental failing (I only have the one) in that even after many, many years of playing with lecy I still can't remember the new colours and which blue or brown is. 

So every tool box has a printed cheat sheet in it and I am super careful and check every time.

I have 2 questions to the Borg hive mind...

1, does the poster have a point and having a brain gap on this one thing mean I should not be playing with it? I cant make petrol but I can still drive

2, does anyone have a failsafe way to remember?  I've tried making up little rhymes but there are too many L's nothing matches with B etc

[Captain Colonial]

Brown = Live, the colour of your trousers if you touch a live wire 

Blue = Neutral, the colour of a peaceful sky with no electric filled thunderstorms  

Green / yellow = Earth, the colour of grass and the yellow of what you wee on to it to make it grow  

From left to right in the back of the plug when wiring it up, it spells out NEL

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

OK, so I'm really bad with languages, I can remember bits of school boy French, and by going there to live for a bit, did slightly better with German, but it just does reall sink in, I look at grammar etc and it's in one ear out the next, which is I have to tell myself how some people are with wiring and stuff. 

'Cause otherwise, you just know don't you? It's like remembering the wiring sequence for RJ45 sockets/patchpanels, you just know. (Which then means when you see one wired incorrectly, it just looks "wrong".

To use you car driving analogy, forget petrol, that's like saying you should know how wire is made.

Its like driving a car and never being able to remember which is the brake, accelerator or clutch, so you have a note stuck to the windscreen.

As long as you only drive somewhere really quiet, take it really slowly and don't drive in traffic, you'll just about be ok. But end up on a busy journey through a city centre and you will crash!

Same with the electricity, keep it very simple, stick to duplicating what ever's already there and you should be ok.

[Luapno]

easier with a picture 

[Stu Faulkner]

It used to be..

Red to red, Black to black  Put in the fuse and stand well back, Easy to remember

Now its Brown to brown, Blew to bits.

[Kit Car Electronics]

bluetral

[John K]

15 minutes ago, Stuart Faulkner - Shows & Events Coordinator said:

Now its Brown to brown, Blew to bits.

My ex spark dad taught me something very similar.

 

10 minutes ago, Kit Car Electronics said:

bluetral

You sir, are a chuffing hero..! 

 

7 hours ago, Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Secretary said:

Same with the electricity, keep it very simple, stick to duplicating what ever's already there and you should be ok.

Erm, too late I think... Will be a total of 28 x 13amp sockets, CAT6, coax etc in my "AV Wall" - it's moved on a bit since this picture, now into Dry-Run mode

[Davep1]

You realise that when we leave the EU we will be allowed to go back to Red and black and none of this new fangled blue and brown nonsense ....

[Sparkymart]

I bl**dy hope so especially on 3 phase where we now have phase and neutral colours reversed as the above picture shows

[John K]

2 minutes ago, Martin Rice (Sparkymart) - Cornwall AO said:

I bl**dy hope so especially on 3 phase where we now have phase and neutral colours reversed as the above picture shows

Reversing a colour is utterly bonkers. Better to change them all than to muck about like that. And while we are at it, lets make all the new colours the same sort of dull sludgy shades.

[corsechris]

I used to work with a colour blind and dyslexic wireman. He managed pretty well (mostly!), although anything bigger than a PSN40 cable used to give him the yips. In his defence, he would always get someone less chromatically challenged to check his work.

The old Post Office trunk cables used to avoid all this trouble, every conductor was white apart from one black one to start you off IIRC. You worked out which was which by position in the bundle. Thankfully, I never had to deal with any thing that bad.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

5 minutes ago, corsechris said:

I used to work with a colour blind and dyslexic wireman. He managed pretty well (mostly!), although anything bigger than a PSN40 cable used to give him the yips. In his defence, he would always get someone less chromatically challenged to check his work.

The old Post Office trunk cables used to avoid all this trouble, every conductor was white apart from one black one to start you off IIRC. You worked out which was which by position in the bundle. Thankfully, I never had to deal with any thing that bad.

Yep, worked with a (partially) colour blind telecom/data engineer, could never catch him out with wiring colours, although we all tried

The trunk cable stuff sounds terrifying, thankfully the only BT spec cables I've ever had to work with have been the typical colour coded ones.

[corsechris]

28 13A sockets??  Sounds like a job for some IEC mains distribution panels to me.....

 

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Or just use rack mount power strips, if you don't want to change plugs. The strips can always be screwed directly to shelves, or even the wall.

[Onliest Smeg David]

Always wondered if something like this would add as much to a system  as it would take away from a purse...

http://www.isoteksystems.com/products/ultimate/evo3-super-titan/