Everything You Need to Know About Electrical Wire Colour Codes
Opening up a switch box and seeing all the different colours of wire is quite scary especially when you don’t know which colour of wire you should be working on. Every colour of wire has one specific purpose. Knowing the purpose of each wire will help you keep your house safe and sound. This will also keep the electrical system in good working order and if any problem occurs, you can always call a Brisbane Electrician to fix it. Now, let us see how many wire colours are there and what are the functions.
Why Do Electrical Wires Come in Various Colours?
Colour coding is done for the purpose of setting out which wire is for what purpose. Understanding wire colours will essentially help the person working on a circuit to identify the function of each wire. Before you begin any repair make sure you learn about the colours.
What Are the Different Colours and Functions?
There are mainly hot, neutral, and ground wires. The colours are:
- Black electrical wires: Black colour wires are mainly found at any residential constructions and are ‘hot’. This means these wires carry power to the switches and channels in various types of circuits. They are not used as neutral or ground wires, as they mainly act as a medium or the carrier of live electrical currents. South Brisbane Electrical Services can help if you need to do any work on or around hot wires.
- White and grey wires: These two types of colour wires are neutral. A neutral wire acts as a connection with the neutral bus bar. The conductive part of a neutral bar is made out of metal that attracts and distributes electric current throughout the circuit. We can say that these wires help the current to return to the power source. There is the potential of getting a shock from these wires if mishandled.
- Blue and yellow electrical wires: These colour wires play an important role as live wires pass through a channel. Yellow and blue wires work as carriers of a single current circuit consisting of three or four ways switches where multiple switches are controlling the same utility. These wires are also known as travellers as their function is to conduct current between the switches and poles.
- Red wires: This is also a hot wire and is sometimes used as the second hot wire in 240-volt installations. A useful application is to interconnect the smoke detectors in smoke alarms Cleveland.
- Green wires: Green wires are used as protective measures against shock. You can see them as the grounding terminal through the outlet box. If a live wire comes in contact with the conductor, the green wire can safeguard you by sending this current into the ground.
Bottom Line
These are the colours you need to keep in mind before undertaking any repair task that will bring you close to electrical wiring. It is always better to call an expert from Electrician Coorparoo for any such job.
