Installing A Toilet Fan

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deexus

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I'm trying to install a toilet fan and I found that the cable from previous fan has 4 cables; grey, brown, black and earth.

The grey seems to neutral and black and brown to have electrical current.

Could you advise what do I need to connect as the fan has only N and L?

Should I connect the brown to the L and leave the black on the side or should I connect the brown and the black together on L?

Thank you

 
Sounds like you have removed a fan with timer and have replaced it with a fan with no timer. I would suggest that you go back and get the correct item as it was probably fitted correctly in the first place for a reason.

And as I keep saying, make a note of where the cables go before just wrenching everything off the wall and slinging it all in the skip then aimlessly wandering round B&Q looking for something that looks vaguely like the thing you sort of remember was once there.

 
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Is that following official guidelines? I used to use grey as the SL and black as the N but I'm sure I read somewhere that the IET has clarified this issue?
I use those colours as well, as I have seen others do. I know in the earlier days of the new colours NICEIC weighed in with some "guidance" which I promptly ignored.

Not seen anything from the IET, although there is no reason why I can't and if they have an opinion on 6243Y and core colour use then really they need to say that sleeving cores is unsuitable.

 
There should be brown and blue sleeving too, to identify the wires. :innocent

grey for N, black for SL so no confusion with the old black N is what I was told.

 
The big mystery to me is why we are forced to buy 3c&e with 3 phase coloured cores.

I don't think I have ever seen a situation where all 3 are actually used as phase conductors.

Wouldn't it be more sensible to have brown, blue and grey?  or even brown blue and black (as you can get with flex)?  Then we would not have this debate about which phase colour we should choose to use as N.  Arguably using the brown and sleeving it blue would be no less technically correct than any other colour.

 
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grey for N, black for SL so no confusion with the old black N is what I was told.
Which makes no sense at all as if there is any confusion then why would it being grey or black make it clearer? If the function is ambiguous then you need to test, you should not be connecting a random cable up on the assumption that someone has connected it up at the other end in a semi-standard fashion.

The big mystery to me is why we are forced to buy 3c&e with 3 phase coloured cores.
One of the biggest mysteries of all time!

Although: http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/flat-3-core-and-earth-15mm-6243y-hank-10m-a16tl

Standard Brown, Black and Blue colour coding
Well, not quite standard, but not a standard though! Maplin have a different meaning of "standard"

 
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There should be brown and blue sleeving too, to identify the wires. :innocent

grey for N, black for SL so no confusion with the old black N is what I was told.
Buy blue sleeving are you mad!?? I've had the same drum in the back of my van for 5 years I doubt I've even used a metre! :lol:

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This is from everyone's favourite scheme provider magazine* back in 2004:

' DE-NEUTRALISING' BLACK

Under the new identification colours for fixed wiring introduced by Amendment 2 to BS 7671, black is now used to identify a phase conductor, not a neutral conductor, in new installation work.

Of course, for all single-phase applications, it would be preferable to use cables marked for such use, that is with brown, blue and green-and-yellow cores.

Breaking the black/neutral association

However, where three-core cables marked in the new three-phase colours are used for single-phase applications, it is proposed that, as a convention, the black core is used for the protective conductor, the brown for the phase conductor and the grey for the neutral. This convention is intended to break the association between black and neutral. It would mean that the black core would normally be overmarked green-and-yellow, and the grey core overmarked blue or N. The brown core would not need additional marking.

Street lighting

The Institute of Lighting Engineers (ILE) intends to introduce such a convention where SWA cables with brown, black and grey cores are used for street lighting applications, the black core being used as a circuit protective conductor in parallel with the armouring to maximise circuit lengths .

Fire alarm systems

Applying the same convention to a flat three-core fire alarm interlink cable, the grey would be overmarked as the neutral and the black interlink overmarked brown.

*Not RAZZLE.

:)

 
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I'm trying to install a toilet fan and I found that the cable from previous fan has 4 cables; grey, brown, black and earth.

The grey seems to neutral and black and brown to have electrical current.

Could you advise what do I need to connect as the fan has only N and L?

Should I connect the brown to the L and leave the black on the side or should I connect the brown and the black together on L?

Thank you

If you connect the brown to the live I think you will find the fan runs 24/7, The brown is most likely a permanent live for controlling the timer circuit off the old fan. The Black is probably only live when the light is switched on. So if you only want the fan to come on when the light is turned on wire Black to L and Grey to N and put the Brown into a suitable terminal connector. If you join Brown and Black  together then the light will most likely stay on 24/7.

Doc H.

 
is it in a toilet or a bathroom? I can understand not having a timed over-run in a toilet, if it smells bad, leave the light on.

 
Never seen that before.
Also found this;

http://www.online-cables.co.uk/6243y-3x15mm--earth-te-100m-reel-1873-p.asp 

Used them before for a few bits of odd cables that the wholesalers don't stock and charge a fortune for. Also do it in 2.5mmm².

And available from Neweys. (Think that might be the non-discounted price!)

http://www.neweysonline.co.uk/basec-6243y-flat-cable-grey-copper-1mm-three-cores-%5Broll-of-100m%5D/1050371142/ProductInformation.raction

Though the irony is they say "suitable for 2 way switching" which is about the only time all 3 are actually used as phase conductors (not always but usually)
Yeah, well it is Maplin! Sent someone the other day to take back a £2 HDMI lead that they bought from Maplin for £20.

 
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I've alway understood it as sleeve grey with blue sleeving and black with brown sleeving, that way you have to positively indentify the conductors twice to avoid all confusion :^O

 
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