UK wiring style

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jumper said:
Agreed. I could care less what colors are used, although it is nice to have grounding/earth and grounded/neutral identified.

I believe the NEC had a similar screw up with grey being a hot/live conductor at one point in the past and now it is used as a neutral color.

My wife thinks all live/ungrounded conductors should be hot pink.:D
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On wives, mine likes to cook and sew. Being as we live in the UK and she is from GA, I often get called upon to do the measurement conversions - for both the cooking and sewing. No problem.
But she will also ask me about suitable spices, sauces, patterns for the little girls' dresses or curtains at which point I glaze over and my usual response is "What colour wire?"
She knows what I mean. And I love the southern belle to bits.

On pink wire.
We did have a project once where pink wire was specified. Not for the equipment itself. Just for any temporary connections that had to be made for the witness test in our works. The intention was to make them immediately obvious as not part of the permanent wiring. The job itself was not technically very challenging. But the specifications were just OTT. The customer came into my office after the order had been placed and he dumped a big box on my desk. The sort of box that we get with 5,000 sheets of printer paper. It was full to bulging and it had more files taped to the outside........
Not all UK projects are like that. It was for the nuclear industry but telling us was size and type font we had to use for manuals.....there was even a who page instructing us how and where to use commas.....
 
At least I'm not alone in showing that I am not aware of what precisely was intended. I feel a whole lot better about that..........:cool:
 
mivey said:
What about for voltage drop concerns? Are you saying we are then free to parallel conductors?
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No. I am contending that if you want to combine a bunch of smaller conductors to make them equal to a single conductor then you need to follow the rules for paralleled conductors, however, not every instance of paralleling conductors equals such an arrangement.
 
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ActionDave said:
Electrically joined at both ends is the phrase that I keep coming back to.
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Exactly. But it is not the same as electrically joined at both ends and immediately adjacent terminations, or most any other condition you may believe it includes. Perhaps the only substantiated connotation is low resistance between the ends.
 
The conductors are electrically joined at both ends. The splices at the receptacles are no more than any other splice like a wire nut, compression connector, or exothermic weld, even though the performance differs between the splices. Follow the conductors from the breaker to any receptacle and they both terminate at the conductor. The difference in lengths is an indictment, not an aquittal.

As Smart$ noted in post #12 the paralleled conductors should be in the same raceway. If not in the same raceway they should be run close together and the installation protected against inductive heating in accordance with 300.20.

Also, the paralleled conductors do not comply with 310.10(H) because #1) the smaller sizes are not permitted to be in parallel for this non-control application, #2) the conductor characteristics are not the same (mostly length).

It should be quite clear that the currents feeding one of the receptacles comes from two different directions but ultimately from the same source. That is a paralled conductor all day long. You have one circuit feeding a receptacle from two different conductors/directions.

The idea that they are not paralleled because the conductors take a different route, or have different lengths, or have different characteristics does not mean they are not paralleled but is just a further indictment against them being allowed in parallel.

From an engineering standpoint, I see minimal harm in allowing it as long as it is done within reason and there are even merits for allowing it. Of course, I could also parallel conductors of different sizes if done properly. But the question of if I could parallel conductors with reasonable safety is not the issue. The question if anyone else could do likewise is not the issue. The code simply does not allow it in this case.

If they wanted to allow it they could include an exception with any safety concerns noted, but they do not. As it stands, it violates at least 300.3 and 310.10
 
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