Colourcode trouble

[richard.cs]

I'd be inclined to agree with a discoloured red conductor, I'd guess it was 50's or 60's and had fairly heavy gauge copper. Unfortunatly I'm not sure what appliance it's from - it's poking out of a drawer in an abandoned house and the drawer is very stuck from the damp. I couldn't manage to force it open to check.

[Radionut]

Since I've been living in France I've learned that house wiring colour coding is thus: Protective earth = green/yellow, Neutral = blue, and Live? anything else except green/yellow or blue. This can be handy as it's possible to use, for example, orange for linking two way switches or purple for switched live, etc. Our house is overdue for a rewire (it's on my todo list) so some current carrying conductors are green, others are white. A decent neon screwdriver is essential! Also they've only just started marking socket outlets with L&N on the terminals. Before then only the earth terminal was identified.

PS Some UK three phase wiring from the 60's had a white phase. I was told that this was because it was difficult, at that time, to manufacture stable yellow PVC insulation. Anyone else heard of this?

Pete

[richard.cs]

This weekend I found a brown bakelite BC pendant lampholder with an inch of two-core flex attached. The flex had one blue and one black pvc insulated conductor and an oval black pvc sheath.

[memette]

I think I have come across this combination in a pendant holder before as well, I will check if I still have it when I get round to sorting more of my things out. I won't have thrown it out if it was in my posession, but I can't remember if it was being replaced or was still in situ when I found it.
I have come across some rubber insulated three-core flat cable with red, white and blue cores, and I will photo it in daylight once it is removed from where it is,it is still in use today but is due to come out in the next few days.

[Lucien Nunes]

Red, white, blue TRS rubber cable is getting rather scarce. We have some in poor condition and I can think of a couple of lengths still in use. There must be lots of disused 15-foot lengths of it running from one landing to the next in houses wired with 2-way light switching in the stairwell, like many rubber cables destined to remain in situ until too brittle to remove intact.

The black, blue flex has probably strayed from European practice in countries where those colours were standard for installation cables. On which note I have another silly flex found during some work at a friend's house recently. Possibly from the same scenario as the Russian one with different blues, this has two different browns and a yellow. The type of PVC used also reminds me of cable from the other side of the iron curtain.

Lucien

[memette]

Hi, I now have about 20 feet of TRS red, white and blue cable in my collection-in as good as new condition.
It is still flexible, and the rubber core insulation still stretches!

I found some instruction books for an old Black and Decker electric drill (the one with the blue aluminium body), which I think are mid 60's.
Tucked in the books was a single sheet of paper with the following information printed on it in seven different languages (including english).

Special Instructions.
This machine is fitted with a cable comprising three wires which are coloured as in one of the following combinations. One of these is the earth wire as shown

Green, Red, Black = green is earth
Green, White, Black = green is earth
Green/Yellow, Blue, Black = green/yellow is earth
Yellow, Red, Grey = yellow is earth
Red, White, Black =Red is earth.

Please don't ask what the other languages are, as I haven't a clue.

I thought that this may be useful information as it proves these colours of cables were made to conform to some standard colour code somewhere, so it seems some of our odd colour combinations could be appliances made for the export market, or imported with the wrong flex fitted.

[ppppenguin]

What you have just found is possibly the "Rosetta Stone" of flex colour coding, especially if you date the drill fairly accurately. This document bypasses any faded colours and gives a snapshot of international standards at that time. Let's have a scan, some of us might be able to identify the other languages

Or they're just fooling and had a massive job lot of assorted flex with funny colours

[Lucien Nunes]

Green, Red, Black = green is earth >> old UK
Green, White, Black = green is earth >> USA, still current
Green/Yellow, Blue, Black = green/yellow is earth >> pre-harmonised European
Yellow, Red, Grey = yellow is earth >> ?!
Red, White, Black =Red is earth >> some old European e.g. German

I'd like to know where the yellow, red, grey version was used. As ppppenguin says, a scan or digital snap of the instructions would be very helpful! I can understand Black and Decker tools crossing the Atlantic (as it's a US company) and arriving here with black, white, green, or being made to cross the Atlantic and failing to do so. Strand Electric come to mind in this regard; they were allied with Century in the US and even UK-made lanterns sometimes had US wiring colours. I can also see B&D making tools destined for Europe, that ended up being sold in the UK. But it's a bit cheeky to expect the poor customer to have to decide whether the red wire is live or earth!

Lucien

[memette]

Hi, I will have to borrow a scanner to scan the paper, I tried to photograph it, but my camera is not a high enough resolution to be able to read the words on the sheet, the paper is only about the size of 1/3 an A4 sheet of paper.
I will try to get this done over easter.

One of the languages on the paper looks sort of arabic (acording to my mate, who is always right ), and we think one is french, and another is german, then there is the english one, leaving three we don't know.
I am sure someone on here can sort them out though.