Use of colored wire.

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Greg Wrenn

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I have a new electrician and I started an amends department. And he is saying that you cannot use blue insulated wire in circuits to run receptacles because you can only run colored wires designated for one specific purpose. Wanting to ask what this is all about.

I have five 4 x 4 boxes with two duplex flex receptacles in each one. And I have a 20 amp breaker running the first two boxes, another 20 amp breaker running the second two boxes and a 20 amp breaker running the last one. To keep the circuits separate I ran a black wire for one circuit, a blue wire for the second, and a red wire for the last one. This new maintenance guy says you cannot do that and she can only run blue wire if it’s designated for a specific purpose. I was thinking he’s confusing designated wires for your high-voltage lines on the bus bar maybe any thoughts?
 
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rlundsrud

Senior Member
Location
chicago, il, USA
He is incorrect. Only green for ground and white for grounded conductor matters. Power circuits can be any other color. Typically black, red, blue is used for 208-240 volt and brown, orange, yellow is used for 480 but this isn't a code requirement.
 
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zbang

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Add two little bits-
If you have a "high-leg delta", then the high leg needs to be orange (110.15 and 230.56).

If the facility has a designated color code, such as 208/120v hots are black/red/blue, then you need to abide by that.


Is it possible that the person was thinking of control-panel colors? IIRC blue would be a DC lead.
 
roger

roger

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Greg Wrenn said:
And he is saying that you cannot use blue insulated wire in circuits to run receptacles because you can only run colored wires designated for one specific purpose.
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As already stated he is incorrect but for fun and our amusement ask him what blues designated purpose is? ;)

Roger
 
Jraef

Jraef

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It may not be in the NEC, but it's entirely possible that YOUR FACILITY has a standard, written or not, that they want you to follow so that the next person to open that box does not have to second guess what your color coding means or worse yet, ASSume that your colors mean something that IS a requirement to someone else.

Along the lines of "career advice":
When you are new, it's a good idea to play by the rules instead of 2nd guess everything. Once you last long enough to be the Big Dog, you can pee on everything.
 
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GoldDigger

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LarryFine said:
To be technical, the orange is only required where the circuit neutral is also available.
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To be technical but not necessarily legislated, knowing (being reminded) that the wild leg is at a higher voltage to ground can be helpful, even when the neutral is not used.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
 
growler

growler

Senior Member
Location
Atlanta,GA
Greg Wrenn said:
I have a new electrician and I started a maintenance department. And he is saying that you cannot use blue insulated wire in circuits to run receptacles because you can only run colored wires designated for one specific purpose. Wanting to ask what this is all about.
Click to expand...

I would think that "new electrician" is the key here. He was probably taught this at his last job and assumes that it's a general rule.

The only way to know for sure is to ask him about it. You will be doing him a favor because if he get this idea locked in his thinking he will look like an idiot and not just misinformed.
 
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