200.6 / 200.7 phase tapping

don_resqcapt19 said:
if you are asking about identifying a conductor as a grounded conductor or an EGC that is correct. If you are talking about re-identifying a black conductor as a blue, or red, or yellow, or any other color other that white or green there is no restriction related to the conductor size.
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Also what article dose it mention that i cant phase tape a grounded conductor (white) to a ungrounded conductor( black)
 
200.7 (A) General.
The following shall be used only for the grounded circuit conductor, unless otherwise permitted in 200.7(B) and (C):
  • (1)A conductor with continuous white or gray covering ...
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The rule in 7(C) acts as an exception for cable and flexible cord wiring methods. 7(B) is for systems 50 volts and less.
 
When I was starting as a helper one of my tasks was to wrap about 60 feet of gray #6 with black tape so it had black insulation. The closest supply house was going to be hours round trip and all we had was a spool of gray and a 10 pack of black tape.
 
pipe_bender said:
When I was starting as a helper one of my tasks was to wrap about 60 feet of gray #6 with black tape so it had black insulation. The closest supply house was going to be hours round trip and all we had was a spool of gray and a 10 pack of black tape.
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I understand your situation there. I likely would only wrapped the exposed ends and not worried about what was in raceways. If it were something that would be inspected you are at mercy of the inspector to do anything with it as he has code to back up rejection of it.
 
kwired said:
I understand your situation there. I likely would only wrapped the exposed ends and not worried about what was in raceways. If it were something that would be inspected you are at mercy of the inspector to do anything with it as he has code to back up rejection of it.
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I only ever met one inspector that would bring up that stupid rule about taping smaller than #4 EGCs. And even then, he was usually persuaded with a "C'mon... Cut me a break."
 
CoolWill said:
I only ever met one inspector that would bring up that stupid rule about taping smaller than #4 EGCs. And even then, he was usually persuaded with a "C'mon... Cut me a break."
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Most aren't pulling rules out of their pockets here but in general would never let you pass inspection with this either. For one thing that just leads to "you let me do it before", and expecting to get away with it again or "I seen where you let ABC Electric get away with it on that one job".
 
kwired said:
Most aren't pulling rules out of their pockets here but in general would never let you pass inspection with this either. For one thing that just leads to "you let me do it before", and expecting to get away with it again or "I seen where you let ABC Electric get away with it on that one job".
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There are so many other things to worry about. Down here on planet earth, most people don't see how putting tape on #4 is OK, but doing it on #6 will cause a life safety issue. More likely, someone at Southwire said, "We need to make more money. Let's push a code through that requires green wire to be used."
 
readydave8 said:
Why did it need black insulation?
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This was some years back early 2000's, we needed a hot, and the older fella on the crew was convinced you could use gray as a hot, something about 'light gray or natural gray' vs dark gray, the younger J-man had to show him in the 'new' code, they still had a huge debate about it, and decided if the entire length was taped black then it would remove any doubt, and thats when thy both looked at me with a grin. It was a memorable experience.
 
pipe_bender said:
This was some years back early 2000's, we needed a hot, and the older fella on the crew was convinced you could use gray as a hot, something about 'light gray or natural gray' vs dark gray, the younger J-man had to show him in the 'new' code, they still had a huge debate about it, and decided if the entire length was taped black then it would remove any doubt, and thats when thy both looked at me with a grin. It was a memorable experience.
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NEC used to say "natural gray" but nobody really knew what that was and often used "ordinary gray" for ungrounded conductors. I think use of "natural gray" was gone from NEC by around 1996 or 1999 edition though.
 
I remember re-connecting the control wiring for a relocated lumber-yard machine (a "sticker-stacker").

There were so many wires that they used multiple shades of each color, including grays and greens.
 
kwired said:
NEC used to say "natural gray" but nobody really knew what that was and often used "ordinary gray" for ungrounded conductors. I think use of "natural gray" was gone from NEC by around 1996 or 1999 edition though.
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It was the 2002 code. Natural gray was not really a color, but it resulted from trying to make white with some old insulation compounds.
However no one really knew what it meant and anything that appeared to be gray was being used as the grounded conductor.
The 2002 replace "natural gray" with "gray" making it clear that the actual color gray is reserved for use as a grounded conductor.
Because the previous code was not clear and the actual color gray had been used for ungrounded conductors the code also added the following FPN:

"FPN: The color gray may have been used in the past as an ungrounded conductor. Care should be taken when working on existing systems."
 
don_resqcapt19 said:
It was the 2002 code. Natural gray was not really a color, but it resulted from trying to make white with some old insulation compounds.
However no one really knew what it meant and anything that appeared to be gray was being used as the grounded conductor.
The 2002 replace "natural gray" with "gray" making it clear that the actual color gray is reserved for use as a grounded conductor.
Because the previous code was not clear and the actual color gray had been used for ungrounded conductors the code also added the following FPN:

"FPN: The color gray may have been used in the past as an ungrounded conductor. Care should be taken when working on existing systems."
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I was only off by one Edition.

I remember running ungrounded gray conductors on fairly regular basis back in the 90's. Might be some of those we installed still in use.

Was typical for us to run say three blacks, three reds, three blues.....when you run out of colors or whatever but still have gray conductor available you ran a set of those as well - these were typically from motor controllers to the motors.
 
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