Residential service upgrade

[LarryFine]

I could even extend this beyond labeling and say marking a white conductor with black tape to indicate it is ungrounded is also right up there with the amount of meaninglessness in many instances. IMO if a white conductor is landed on a circuit breaker and you don't know whether it is grounded or ungrounded.... maybe you shouldn't be messing with it. Black tape doesn't do anything magic here.

Agreed. I have always told my guys that insulation color means nothing without knowing what the other end is connected to.

 

[kwired]

Agreed. I have always told my guys that insulation color means nothing without knowing what the other end is connected to.

And when looking at the supply end it means even less. If it lands on a breaker (excluding neutral terminals of AFCI/GFCI breakers) it is ungrounded. Particularly when talking residential and light commercial applications.

Is possible to have grounded conductors landed on breakers with corner grounded delta systems, but that is kind of rare and tends to confuse even relatively experienced electricians at times.

 

[garbo]

a lot of labeling required by NEC is labeling that only makes sense to electricians, and sadly doesn't make sense to all of them either.

Occupants don't understand the meaning of a lot of these labels, worse yet is some of the misunderstanding of what they may mean.

I could even extend this beyond labeling and say marking a white conductor with black tape to indicate it is ungrounded is also right up there with the amount of meaninglessness in many instances. IMO if a white conductor is landed on a circuit breaker and you don't know whether it is grounded or ungrounded.... maybe you shouldn't be messing with it. Black tape doesn't do anything magic here.

Years ago one of the old inspectors wanted you to either use white paint or white heat shrink tubing to identify a black,red, blue etc colored wire used as a neutral ( ya now stupid misleading term grounded conductor ). We had 7' high 84 circuit panels where the lazy cheap contractor only placed two wraps of the cheapest low quality cheating Chinese tape two on 8' long wire. Sure in a year the cheap tape would fall off.