Wrong color wire on different systems.

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I agree that odd colors are permitted, and it's probably not a safety issue.

But I completely agree with the original poster that this is a workmanship issue. What I look for in an employee, among other things, is a sense of professionalism. A panel that has the conductors routed neatly, with an obvious color code, looks sharp. One with random colors looks shoddy. I'd start to question the work ethic of a journeyman who said to me, "Ah, man. It's just colors! Chill." Just my opinion.
 
jusme123 said:
I misread your post.
You and Don can pull all black wires for a safer install! Heck, invite Iwire too!
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don_resqcapt19 said:
Two bosses and an engineer...I don't see how anything would get done:cool:
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iwire said:
LOL

The project would be doomed. :grin:
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jim dungar said:
Other than meetings right?:cool:
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Reminds me of half the projects I have done in the past five years:

1 supervisor, 1 Fire Marshall/Inspector, and 1 EE standing around arguing on what I needed to do!!!:mad::)))
 
sirdle said:
I agree that odd colors are permitted, and it's probably not a safety issue.

But I completely agree with the original poster that this is a workmanship issue. What I look for in an employee, among other things, is a sense of professionalism. A panel that has the conductors routed neatly, with an obvious color code, looks sharp. One with random colors looks shoddy. I'd start to question the work ethic of a journeyman who said to me, "Ah, man. It's just colors! Chill." Just my opinion.
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I agree with the workmanship issue making things neat and orderly is a top priority of mine. But if there is a job here to be done and all i have is Black wire for the ungrounded conductor that is what i will use. like the one post said Electricity does not know the differance in color of the wire.
 
Barndog said:
I agree with the workmanship issue making things neat and orderly is a top priority of mine. But if there is a job here to be done and all i have is Black wire for the ungrounded conductor that is what i will use. like the one post said Electricity does not know the differance in color of the wire.
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I reckon I'd do the same thing. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of new construction where you had the time to plan out the job rather than a service call where you're just trying to fix the darn thing and get it running again.
 
sirdle said:
I reckon I'd do the same thing. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of new construction where you had the time to plan out the job rather than a service call where you're just trying to fix the darn thing and get it running again.
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Yes if you had time to plan out a project it would be nice to have your wire color coded but i wouldn't bet my life on it when rooting around someone else work. I have see alot in the place where i work at now and i take caution in every j-box i open hot or not there is alot of 3 phase neutrals and other circuits in some boxes that will bite you if you are not carefull.
 
kwired said:
There are not enough (basic) colors to have a separate color code for every possible voltage system that may exist. How would you identify the following systems and phases with colors alone if you had all of these in one facility? Or use same color code on multiple facilities without ever using same color on more than one system. Green is alread lost to EGC, white and gray are lost to grounded conductors that leaves only about 8 or so basic colors for 18 different ungrounded conductors just in this list alone. How do you identify 7 different grounded conductors in this list with only white and gray?

120/240 single phase Black, Red, White

120/240 three phase Black, Red, Blue, White, but sub high leg with Orange

120/208 three phase Black, Red, Blue, White

277/480 three phase Brown, Orange, Yellow, Grey

347/600 three phase Brown, Orange, Yellow, Grey

240 three phase with grounded phase Grounded phase used as neutral?

480 three phase with grounded phase

The colors that have become pretty much the standard for 120/208 and 277/480 are fine but one still needs to verify what they have before just looking at a the colors and assuming. That is part of why the ID method needs posted at each panelboard. Not in NEC but many industrial places have panel voltage posted in obvious place on outside of panels or on outside of discnnects or other enclosures like a machine control panel.
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I don't follow your reference to grounded phase. A neutral is pulled from transformer windings, middle point for wye, halfway between 2 phases for delta, hence the high leg. Can you give me more detail?
 
jmellc said:
I don't follow your reference to grounded phase. A neutral is pulled from transformer windings, middle point for wye, halfway between 2 phases for delta, hence the high leg. Can you give me more detail?
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There is no neutral in this system. A three phase corner grounded system has only 3 circuit conductors. You will have 480 phase to phase for all 3 phases, you will have 480 phase to ground for 2 of the phases, and you will have 0 to ground for the grounded phase.
 
jmellc said:
I don't follow your reference to grounded phase. A neutral is pulled from transformer windings, middle point for wye, halfway between 2 phases for delta, hence the high leg. Can you give me more detail?
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don_resqcapt19 said:
There is no neutral in this system. A three phase corner grounded system has only 3 circuit conductors. You will have 480 phase to phase for all 3 phases, you will have 480 phase to ground for 2 of the phases, and you will have 0 to ground for the grounded phase.
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Many people do not realize that you can ground any conductor on any system and the source will not care one bit. Ground more than one conductor and you have a problem. NEC tells us which conductor we are supposed to ground on certain systems - the only reason for this is to keep the voltage to ground as low as what is possible and practical for added safety. You could still ground any conductor you wish and the voltages between all conductors of the system will remain the same, and connected equipment will still operate the same.
 
don_resqcapt19 said:
There is no neutral in this system. A three phase corner grounded system has only 3 circuit conductors. You will have 480 phase to phase for all 3 phases, you will have 480 phase to ground for 2 of the phases, and you will have 0 to ground for the grounded phase.
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We learn something every day. All 480 systems I've worked with were 480 phase to phase & 277 phase to neutral or phase to ground. Seems if you had 480 phase to ground, you would have 832 phase to phase.

At any rate, I would wire anything from this panel with Brown, Orange & Yellow.
 
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jmellc said:
We learn something every day. All 480 systems I've worked with were 480 phase to phase & 277 phase to neutral or phase to ground. Seems if you had 480 phase to ground, you would have 832 phase to phase.
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You are assuming that all grounded systems are wye sources (i.e. an X0 terminal is available). It is possible to have delta connected sources in both ungrounded and grounded configurations.
 
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This may help, this first diagram is corner grounded delta.

In this case phase C has been grounded, the NEC requires it to be white but it is not a neutral.

image017.jpg


This second diagram is grounded Wye.

3%20Phase%20Wye%20Diagram%20A_small.jpg
 
iwire said:
the NEC requires it to be white but it is not a neutral.
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That is why the NEC uses the term 'Grounded conductor'

Art 100 definitions:

Grounded Conductor. A system or circuit conductor that is intentionally grounded.
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It does not always have to be a 'neutral' meaning a center point or other point with equal potential to all other points. Neutral Conductor. The conductor connected to the neutral point of a system that is intended to carry current under normal conditions.

Also from Art 100:

Neutral Conductor. The conductor connected to the neutral point of a system that is intended to carry current under normal conditions.

Neutral Point. The common point on a wye-connection in a polyphase system or midpoint on a single-phase, 3-wire system, or midpoint of a single-phase portion of a 3-phase delta system, or a midpoint of a 3-wire, direct-current system.

FPN: At the neutral point of the system, the vectorial sum of the nominal voltages from all other phases within the system that utilize the neutral, with respect to the neutral point, is zero potential.
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Take a two wire 120 volt transformer secondary - you ground one conductor but it is not really a neutral it is just a conductor of that system that is grounded - the grounded conductor. Same is true with a grounded phase conductor. Many of have a habit of calling all grounded conductors a neutral while most of the time this is correct, not all grounded conductors are a neutral.
 
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