So you think we should have stuck with red/black/green? Colour code brain teaser!

[Lucien Nunes]

I'm sitting here in my hotel in a foreign country, taking a break from servicing a piece of equipment while some Loctite sets, browsing some old threads on various forums. Colour codes always seem to be popular topics so I came up with this little puzzle for the more widely travelled sparks. As much as I don't like the harmonised colours it shows just how much chaos there was before standardisation!

It's 1960 and you are somewhere in the northern hemisphere. You stop by a building site and see an electrician wiring a distribution board, doing a very good job and obviously competent. He has connected all the cables of a particular colour, call it colour X, to the earth terminals.

You travel to a neighbouring country, where you see another electrician doing textbook-quality work, but he has connected all his cables of colour X to the neutral terminals.

You travel further in the same direction, and in the next country you reach, you watch another first class piece of installation work being done. But here, they are connecting the colour X cables to the live terminals. ('Live' is what you would have called them at the time!)

Now, supposing you were to travel much further still in the same direction. You would reach another country where they use wires of colour X. But which terminals would you find them in? And what colour is X?

 

[ChrisElectrical88]

X is yellow?

 

[sledgehammer]

God you're bored! Has the loctite worked?

 

[telectrix]

should have used the loctite on his fingers. :81:

 

[Lucien Nunes]

I daren't try it yet, it's a fiddly bit of gubbins that has to be lined up right and sealed before I can put it back in, then it takes half an hour to assemble before it can be tested to see if it was lined up properly. I think it is but I don't want it coming loose again as it did yesterday when I tried to get ahead too quickly.

X- yellow? Are you thinking of TN-C?

 

[Engineer54]

I'm sitting here in my hotel in a foreign country, taking a break from servicing a piece of equipment while some Loctite sets, browsing some old threads on various forums. Colour codes always seem to be popular topics so I came up with this little puzzle for the more widely travelled sparks. As much as I don't like the harmonised colours it shows just how much chaos there was before standardisation!

It's 1960 and you are somewhere in the northern hemisphere. You stop by a building site and see an electrician wiring a distribution board, doing a very good job and obviously competent. He has connected all the cables of a particular colour, call it colour X, to the earth terminals.

You travel to a neighbouring country, where you see another electrician doing textbook-quality work, but he has connected all his cables of colour X to the neutral terminals.

You travel further in the same direction, and in the next country you reach, you watch another first class piece of installation work being done. But here, they are connecting the colour X cables to the live terminals. ('Live' is what you would have called them at the time!)

Now, supposing you were to travel much further still in the same direction. You would reach another country where they use wires of colour X. But which terminals would you find them in? And what colour is X?

At least you could easily distinguish between the old UK colours in shadow, or in low light. The same can't be said of the new colours, that are mainly tonal in nature and tend to morph into shades of one tone in low light settings!!


Colour wise it would have been better for Europe to have harmonised with the bright RED / YELLOW / BLUE and the UK/European standard of many years, Green/Yellow earth... lol!!

 

[Lucien Nunes]

There are points for and against the harmonised colours, my main complaint is that the three phases are too similar under poor lighting especially sodium lighting. But what I getting at was that the same colour was in use in three nearby countries for live, neutral and earth at the same time, which is a bit silly. Anyway, you're only allowed to grumble once you've taken a stab at colour X.

FWIW my favourite was red/white/blue/black/green but I accept that the stripy earth is a good idea.

 

[coldyron]

Yeah, Red, Yellow and Blue just looked so much better. Nowadays, 3 phase boards look dull as dishwater!

 

[Guest111]

The reason they changed from green to green/yellow was that in poor light it was easy to distinguish the earth as it was the lightest cable.

 

[Lucien Nunes]

3 phase boards look dull as dishwater!

Stop grumbling and have a go at the puzzle...

 

[Sintra]

I'm going for red as I have seen red cpc's in Sweden and red neutrals in France.

 

[Geordie Spark]

I daren't try it yet, it's a fiddly bit of gubbins that has to be lined up right and sealed before I can put it back in, then it takes half an hour to assemble before it can be tested to see if it was lined up properly. I think it is but I don't want it coming loose again as it did yesterday when I tried to get ahead too quickly.

X- yellow? Are you thinking of TN-C?

Isn't there a kettle in your room so you can make yourself a nice cuppa then have a little nap while you're waiting for the Loctite to set?? :biggrin5:

 

[Geordie Spark]

Yeah, Red, Yellow and Blue just looked so much better. Nowadays, 3 phase boards look dull as dishwater!

I think Red White and Blue was much more .. patriotic.

 

[Mr Hehound]

Are you talking travelling a long distance here? I.e out of Europe?

 

[Silly Sausage]

X is just some shade of grey because you've got chronic colour blindness and you're using a bad tube of loctite which is giving off really heavy, grim fumes...