25 minutes ago, Gnome said:

I'm also surprised that Cabtyre is allowed for home wiring.  My impression was it is not.

Seems like that has changed in one of the later issues.

Edited January 13, 20224 yr by P1000

Some tings seem to be a matter of interpretation. After some work about a year ago I chatted with the electrician about a COC. He said sure. I said "what about the solar system? are you comfortable with that?". He said "oh we can just put that down as an 'appliance'". 

Edited January 13, 20224 yr by Bobster

2 hours ago, Jaws said:

He is wrong. Single core GP wire like that can only be used within a wire way.  That means conduit or truncking or racking.  An open space in a ceiling is NOT a wireway.

 

 

 

Are you sure ? 

With reference to SANS 10142 ed 3.01

"6.4.5 Open wiring
NOTE Open wiring consists of single-core insulated conductors that operate at not
more than 250 V to earth;"

 

With reference to identification of wires ... the only wire you cannot use as a live ... is green/yellow.

The rest just need to be identified at the end by means of the correct colour sleeve or tape wrapped a few times. 

I do believe the blue in the picture is the earth ... but as I mentioned in another post ... without going to site and looking at the entire setup ... comments are just speculation.

 

With reference to SANS 10142 ed 3.01

 

6.3.3.2 The means of identification for an a.c. circuit may be by colours or by
numbers, as follows:
a) where colours are used
1) a neutral conductor shall be identified by black only,
2) an earth continuity conductor shall be identified by the bi-colour
green/yellow only, or by being bare. Green/yellow insulated conductors
shall NOT be used as live conductors under any circumstances,
3) a phase conductor shall be identified by a colour other than
green/yellow, green or black, and
NOTE Welding cable manufactured to SANS 1576 should not be used in
circuits above 100 V.
4) the colours may be applied at the ends of the conductor (of a multicore
cable) by means of durable colour marking (e.g. insulating sleeves or
by electrical insulating tape wound more than once around the
conductor), and
b) where numbers are used, "0" shall indicate the neutral conductor.
NOTE Where the purpose or the function of a conductor is apparent, marking is
not required.

 

 

Edited January 13, 20224 yr by isetech

With regards to cabtyre (flexible cords) 

 

With reference to SANS 10142 ed 3.01

6.1.11 Where flexible cords are used as part of the electrical installation, the
selection, installation and colour identification (see 6.3.3) shall be done in
accordance with this part of SANS 10142. Flexible cords with cross sectional
area less than 1 mm2 shall not be permitted.
6.1.12 Where flexible cords are used, the strands of the conductors shall be
mechanically protected

On 2022/01/13 at 1:10 PM, Jaws said:

He is wrong. Single core GP wire like that can only be used within a wire way.  That means conduit or truncking or racking.  An open space in a ceiling is NOT a wireway.

 

 

Thanks for posting. I remembered that a phase wire could be any colour but black, green/yellow which were reserved. 30yrs when I build my house my munic inspector accepted the green only for earth as green/yellow was a new regulation. 

Also at that time joins in a box had to be covered by those white things that you twist over the ends or soldered and insulated. These days some of them are inside a PVC with a thin ferrule. Used a lot in light fittings. 

On 2022/01/13 at 4:27 PM, isetech said:

With reference to identification of wires ... the only wire you cannot use as a live ... is green/yellow.

<snip>

1) a neutral conductor shall be identified by black only,

<snip>

3) a phase conductor shall be identified by a colour other than
green/yellow, green or black, and

<snip>

I would say it is pretty clear neutral must be black and is not allowed to be a phase/live conductor.

On 2022/01/13 at 4:08 PM, isetech said:

Are you sure ? 

With reference to SANS 10142 ed 3.01

"6.4.5 Open wiring
NOTE Open wiring consists of single-core insulated conductors that operate at not
more than 250 V to earth;"

 

There is a bit more to that section

My reading of that seems to indicate that if you use the open wiring configuration, it must be fixed (assuming the height, location, fire resistance, etc. requirement are met).  So these wires running around like a rats nest does seem to be a no-no.

Edited January 18, 20224 yr by Gnome

12 hours ago, Gnome said:

I would say it is pretty clear neutral must be black and is not allowed to be a phase/live conductor.

I wish everything was that simple ... colours of wiring in cabtyre (which is allowed) ? 

brown - live 

blue - neutral 

yellow and green - earth (not allowed to be used as a live wire regardless of end of wire marking.)

The question you need to ask ... is it a code violation if the blue wire of the cabtyre is not marked with tape or a piece of black heat shrink?

 

Then you get day/night switches which add to the confusion ... the old day/night switches used the black as the live (since been changed) 

Then you get occupation sensors ... etc etc etc which used brown - live ... blue neutral ... yellow/green - as the earth.

Then you get the bright sparks who use the bare earth wire in the twin+E for the return  .

Still the best saying that I hear daily ... "It has worked for 20 years like that, why now is it a code violation?"

Edited January 19, 20224 yr by isetech

The way I read this statement ... it doesn matter which colour you use (so long as it is not yellow/green) ... Red (phase colour) ... blue (phase colour) ... yellow (also a phase colour) ... white (now used as a phase colour instead of yellow) ... so long as it is identified using a black marker to identify it as a neutral conductor at the ends. 

 1) a neutral conductor shall be "identified" by black only,

 

 

 

On 2022/01/11 at 12:13 PM, isetech said:

Open wiring ... has a code .. .but that type of wiring would be a code violation.

Open joints taped up like that ... are code violations.

For the record ... any references to the code are taken from the latest code 10142-1-2021(ed3.01) ... released near the end of 2021.

Edited January 19, 20224 yr by isetech

On 2022/01/19 at 11:32 AM, isetech said:

I wish everything was that simple ... colours of wiring in cabtyre (which is allowed) ? 

brown - live 

blue - neutral 

^^ is probably why having cabtyre that is complaint isn't so easy.

Edited January 23, 20224 yr by Gnome

31 minutes ago, rob1 said:

As far as I'm aware, all those cables are out of not compliant - joins or not. They need to be double insulated which means either twin and earth (2x insulation) or in conduit. Right now you only have single insulation in the open in the roof. Yes you can join cables in the roof but typically you would run conduit or twin and earth into a PVC or steel box and do the join in the box. If you have a steel conduit system (less common these days), the conduit must be earthed to prevent leakage in case of poor insulation or bad joins.

I think Surfix cable are compliant. 

On 2022/02/08 at 1:20 PM, rob1 said:

Surfix - you mean twin and earth?

 

Surfix vs T&E.  Surfix has a metal shield but not to be confused with armored cable or even shielded/screened cable for that matter (links to pics for each type on the word)

On 2022/02/08 at 11:53 AM, rob1 said:

As far as I'm aware, all those cables are out of not compliant - joins or not. They need to be double insulated which means either twin and earth (2x insulation) or in conduit.

As you can see in the regulations posted earlier in the thread, you can, in fact, run wiring in your ceiling without it being in a conduit assuming a bunch of rules are complied with.  We can agree the installation picture does not comply, but the latest regulations are pretty clear that roof spaces don't necessitate double insulated wire.

Whether you should install general purpose wire, instead of double insulated, when you are installing, is another debate entirely (and IMO a resounding hell no).  But ofc there are "electricians" that will do the most YOLO job they can so they can spend as little time on a job as possible.

Edited February 9, 20224 yr by Gnome

The double insulation makes sense to me. 

 

Tbh this weekend I went and swapped out thier individually run cabele for twin flat earth. I dono why they didn't just use it in the first place. It's so much easier to work with and run. Then did redid all the joins in a pvc box. 

 

One thing that is still not clear to me is the correct method of joining cables in the box/enclosure. 

 

Is strip and twist allowed? 

Can you use chocolate blocks? 

I found some really nice Waco 3 way clip terminals which I ended up using.  

And then I remembered seeing porcelain twist caps in my mother's house. 

 

What is the correct way to join two wires this day and age? 

Depending on the application, I generally use helcon pushin wire connectors for most connections, wago 223 for connection I might need to disconnect at a later stage and the wago 224 for light terminations. 

What is legal ... mmm ... lets leave that topic for another day. 

 

19 hours ago, Gnome said:

Whether you should install general purpose wire, instead of double insulated, when you are installing, is another debate entirely (and IMO a resounding hell no).  But ofc there are "electricians" that will do the most YOLO job they can so they can spend as little time on a job as possible.

"Electrician/technician" ... words used so loosely ... there are so many levels in the electrical field ... are you referring to a qualified electrician or semi skilled electrician ... or maybe even an electrician who had a board with "electrician" written on it outside builders.

It is common for electrical contractors to drop off teams on site ... unless you are familiar with each team members qualification, I would highly recommend you request a list of the team members and their skill level. 

If you are squealing to pay R600 per hour for an electrician ... there is a good chance you getting what you pay ... a couple labourers or semi skilled left on your site to throw wires across the roof ... one of them will have a little more experience (maybe an eleconop 2 or 3)  than the others and he will do the connection. 

Looking at the pics earlier in this thread ... I would bet the "electrician" was holding a board outside builders. 

Any chance we gonna get to see a COC for the work? 

On 2022/02/10 at 7:00 AM, Zapnologics said:

Is strip and twist allowed? 

Can you use chocolate blocks? 

I found some really nice Waco 3 way clip terminals which I ended up using.  

And then I remembered seeing porcelain twist caps in my mother's house. 

There are a few youtube videos where guys compare connectors.  Overall the winner in terms of lowest resistance but still hardy were wire nuts.

Wago connectors have quite high resistance comparatively.  Chocolate blocks can crush the wire.  So I've switched to using the wire nuts although I didn't use to think much about them.

Above was just based on making a connection and then running current through the connection to see how much current is wasted as heat and then pulling on the connectors to see how they perform in terms of holding the cable.

Edited February 11, 20224 yr by Gnome