#12 and smaller wire

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For a small house rewire, I typically put in about 500 feet of 14-2, 14-3, 12-2, 12-3 combined. Then some additional 10-2, 10-3, and 8-3.
 
Thanks, folks. . .I’ll bookmark this for later use.

I’m asking because if you look at the ampacity for #10 and larger based on physics,
it seems that #14 & #16 could be used instead of #12 & #14,
so I thought this rule is a cash cow for the copper companies.

But with all the rules that I don’t know about in the NEC, I may be seeing a conspiracy where there is none.
 
I wonder how long it will be before the rules will be replaced by simple metric units? If ever?
 
gadfly56 said:
Never, and that's just an estimate.
Click to expand...
NEC has put metric dimensions first in most places sometime in the past 20 years, but conductor sizes still go AWG or circular mils for the most part, and often no mentioning of metric designations when it comes to conductors. Of course conuctors made in metric designation sizes typically won't have an insulation type recognized in NEC either.
 
Shame really. SWG (British BS 3737) now withdrawn some years. It was similar to AWG. But now we have metric sizes. So, for example, we have 1.0 mm which is just a simple physical size. Like 1.5mm, 2.5mm etc. On the other side we get AWG where the higher the name, the smaller the size.

AWG: In the American Wire Gauge (AWG) system, wire size diameters can be calculated by applying the formula D(AWG)=.005·92((36-AWG)/39) inch. For the 00, 000, 0000 etc. gauges you use -1, -2, -3, which makes more sense mathematically than "double nought." This means that in American wire gage every 6 gauge decrease gives a doubling of the wire diameter, and every 3 gauge decrease doubles the wire cross sectional area. Similar to dB in signal and power levels. An approximate but accurate enough form of this formula contributed by Mario Rodriguez is D = .460 * (57/64)(awg +3) or D = .460 * (0.890625)(awg +3).

Simple init?
 
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