The Medway Handyman wrote:
John Rumm wrote:
One of my pet hates is lighting positions (or any other place where
wires are used in non obvious ways that differ from their colouring)
where the original installer obviously could not be arsed to flag the
wires with coloured tape or sleeving when required (e.g. the wire
carrying switched live from the switch). So when changing a fitting or
lamp etc I will normally correct this as a matter of routine.

You would be amazed at how many times I change light fittings where the
switch live isnt marked, prolly 90%. The earth wire actually being sleeved
is an extreemly rare thing to find.

Don't find 90% amazing really - seems to concur with my experience...

Earth sleeving is certainly more common, although by no means universal.

Several times I've come across the 'I've wired the new light in & it doesn't
work' syndrome to find all three blacks joined.

Now traditionally one would flag the black wire with red, or these
days the blue with brown. It just occurred to me that now the new
colours are mandatory, what is the correct procedure in a mixed
colour installation? Should one still flag black wires with red, or
should one now use brown? Appendix 7 of BS7671 does not seem to give
an answer.

Good point, I tag the cable & the black wire with red tape just to be sure.

Brown just isn't right for a live IMO. Electrickery is 'red' for nasty or
'blue' for lightning. Brown instictively means 'neutral' or 'brown earth'
to me.

IMO cables should be red for 'live' or 'danger', or blue for 'lightning'.
Neutrals should be a neutral colour like brown or black. Who decided on the
colours anyway?

One of the big difficulties with any harmonised system - different
colours traditionally mean different things to different cultures and
nations. The US use Black and White for Live and Neutral... (and for
that matter we use black for live now in some cases).


--
Cheers,

John.

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