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Brown, orange, yellow, or brown purple yellow?

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infinity

infinity

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Staff member
Location
New Jersey
Occupation
Journeyman Electrician
hillbilly1 said:
Orange was high leg long before BOY was used as the industry standard.
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Which illustrates the point of a complete lack of any forward thinking on the part of the people who came up BOY color scheme. Either change the high leg from orange to something else or don't used BOY in the first place.
 
G

ggunn

PE (Electrical), NABCEP certified
Location
Austin, TX, USA
Occupation
Consulting Electrical Engineer - Photovoltaic Systems
hillbilly1 said:
Orange was high leg long before BOY was used as the industry standard.
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There is no real standard; different AHJs have different ideas of what the color codes should be. For example, San Antonio and Austin disagree on which wire should be red and which should be black in 240/120V split phase, and I can never remember which is which.
 
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Carultch

Senior Member
Location
Massachusetts
ggunn said:
There is no real standard; different AHJs have different ideas of what the color codes should be. For example, San Antonio and Austin disagree on which wire should be red and which should be black in 240/120V split phase, and I can never remember which is which.
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Just come back 8.3 milliseconds later and the two lines switch polarities anyway.
 
tortuga

tortuga

Code Historian
Location
Oregon
Occupation
Electrical Design
I personally don't think there should be any color codes in the code other than the equipment ground.
I would just have a part of article 110 just require each set of grounded and ungrounded conductors to be identified by phase or line and system in a distinct and consistent manner throughout a site.
 
tortuga

tortuga

Code Historian
Location
Oregon
Occupation
Electrical Design
Seems really bizarre for an AHJ to enforce color codes throughout a jurisdiction.
So in Austin what do you color code a 240/480 single phase?

I once worked on a few pump stations that specified the Kcmil wires for the service and feeders to have wraps of orange tape to identify phase. One wrap for L1 two wraps for L2 etc.
In the panels all phase conductors were orange with little wire wrap labels.
Only AC control circuits were black and or red for various functions,
24V DC control (or sensor) circuits were blue.
Yellow was for some emergency functions.
It was pretty easy to understand.

Moral of the story is always use a meter.
 
electrofelon

electrofelon

Senior Member
Location
Cherry Valley NY, Seattle, WA
I installed a new 1200A 480 service in a building that already had a high leg service, so brown purple yellow it was! I ordered in THHN colors for this job, and remembered just in the knick of time that orange was already spoken for. I like the purple, it's pretty 💜
 
C

Carultch

Senior Member
Location
Massachusetts
tortuga said:
Seems really bizarre for an AHJ to enforce color codes throughout a jurisdiction.
So in Austin what do you color code a 240/480 single phase?
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I can't speak for standards in Austin, but if it were my choice, I'd select brown/yellow/gray. Or any other two colors of the trio we use for 480V. Brown and yellow has the lowest chance of getting mistaken for a high leg.
 
tortuga

tortuga

Code Historian
Location
Oregon
Occupation
Electrical Design
I always find the times when it really matters people just ignore color codes.
Case in point I once had to do a lighting upgrade on a metal shop back when T-8's were an upgrade form T12, it had a 480 delta service and a customer owned 480Y/277 transformer/ panel for the lighting and a newer CNC machiene.
The old 480 delta switch gear had Black/Red/Blue tape on the phase wires
and the 'newer' wye system was Brown Orange Yellow + White,
The office had a single phase transformer that also used Black & Red + white.

Another electrical outfit had done some work for the HVAC contractor and pulled BOY into one of the delta fed disconnects.
There also were these long runs of 120V circuits from the office using 480V conduits part of the way for stuff like a garage door opener so you had two white neutrals and two blacks in the same 3/4 in conduit one was 277 and one was 120.
I could tell which 480V system was which by age of the conduit and wire (TW vs THHN), using a meter you could still could get confused.
.
 
S

SceneryDriver

Senior Member
Location
NJ
Occupation
Electrical and Automation Designer
Carultch said:
I can't speak for standards in Austin, but if it were my choice, I'd select brown/yellow/gray. Or any other two colors of the trio we use for 480V. Brown and yellow has the lowest chance of getting mistaken for a high leg.
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Grey is already designated as a color for the grounded conductor (neutral). Often used to denote the neutral in a 277/480Y circuit, when white is used to denote the neutral in a 120/208Y circuit.

I've also used grey to denote the GFCI-protected neutral of a circuit, to keep me from getting confused and crossing neutrals.

SceneryDriver
 
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