I know it's acceptable and common practice to use tape to color-code black-insulated conductors to identify various hots, neutral, etc. But is it acceptable, for example, to take a white-insulated conductor and color-code it with black tape to indicate it's a hot conductor?
Color-coding conductors
- Thread starter Jon456
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alfiesauce
Senior Member
when the wire is part of a system like romex yes. when the wire is ran through conduit no.
Ah yes, when using Romex for three-way switches. But that's not what I'm thinking about in this case. What I have is a 8AWG feeder carrying 220VAC to a sub-panel. One of the hot conductors (black insulation) apparently had a break in the insulation and eventually corroded/burned itself through. I need to replace that conductor. The property owner has a partial spool of white-insulated 8AWG wire on hand and the property manager wants to use that (and tape it black) rather than shell out money for some black-insulated wire.
Is this acceptable?
Jim W in Tampa
Senior Member
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- Tampa Florida
Your putting your name on this repair not his. NO
Actually, I had planned on replacing all the conductors, which is the underlying reason for this post.
Originally, I was going to take the white tape off the existing black-insulated neutral conductor and use that for the hot leg, then pull one white conductor to make a new neutral. But when I pulled the conductor and saw that it was burnt, I realized that the other conductors were probably damaged by the heat.
In any case, I'll pull two new blacks and a white. Thanks to all for your advice and assistance (and to Nakulak for the NEC reference).
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