House wiring in mexico is good training for boats!!

[MikeP]

Or vice versa...

We have all worked on boats and found "strange" wiring. I received some excellent additional training for this in the past few days here in Mexico.

I was troubleshooting some non-working garden lights. First, it is worth noting that the house was built in 2001 so it is not an old house with ancient wiring.

I had a heck of a time tracing circuits because unlike the US, there was no standardized wiring colors. Instead of 120 volt wiring having a Black hot wire, a white neutral wire and a bare or green ground wire, I found red wires, white wires, black wires, and green wires. I ASSUMED that the black/green/white were the same as in the US and that the Red were major power feeds going to the breaker box. But none of the voltage readings agreed with this.

Well...after becoming thoroughly confused because I wasn't getting the proper readings for voltage/wire color and therefore being totally unable to find what switches controlled what (there are an insane number of light switches at the house), I removed the cover from the circuit breaker panel and looked at the wiring coming from the breakers. I expected to see red wires running to the master, white/green (or bare) running to neutral/ground, and black to each breaker.

What I found was that every color was used in every location - that is, some breakers had red wires, some had black, some had white and some had green! So there was no way to actually trace a circuit based on wire color, especially since some started out as one color from the breaker but ended up a different color at the fixture! Once I figured this out and then started checking voltage based on that, I found outlets that used every combination of wires so some hot wires were green, some white, some red, and some black. TOTALLY INSANE!

It's obvious that wiring is done based on whatever wire color they happen to have at hand at the moment with no thought whatsoever of future maintenance or expansion. Reminded me a lot of my previous boat!

 

[REBrueckner]

Sounds like what the home building/renovation TV show "Holmes on Homes" finds.
Is this ALL 120 volt or is most 220volt?? 220 volt wiring could explain some of the colors, but not the mess you describe....

 

[SunChaser]

Try this site, looks like a good explaintion of color codes

allaboutcircuits.com/vol5/chpt_2/2/html

Hope it helps

 

[SunChaser]

PS don't forget the www at the front and the /.html at the end

 

[34Hatt]

You just need a circuit buzzer. You hook one end to a outlet or wire and then can trace it!

 

[MikeP]

"Is this ALL 120 volt or is most 220volt?? "

It's 120v. Finding 220v in a house in Mexico would be like finding a penguin riding Lance Armstrong's Tour de France bike! 220 is just not used here in residences.

"Try this site, looks like a good explaintion of color codes "

It's only an explanation of color codes IF the installers elect to use those color codes as specified. In Mexico - at least in residential use - if they happen to only have coils of white wire when they wire your house, then every wire in the house - hot or neutral - is going to be white. There are no grounds used at all and if you think your three-prong socket actually has a ground...you are thinking wrongly! The Ground buss in the breaker box is not grounded to a grounding rod and none of the circuits are connected to it anyway. They don't use Romex or duplex/triplex wiring. Everything is made up of single pieces of wire.

"You just need a circuit buzzer. " Maybe so - I've never used one, just multimeters, etc. Might be a REALLY useful thing here.

 

[SKYCHENEY]

I wonder how affordable homes would be here without all of these government imposed regulations.

 

[jim rosenthal]

I think I'd rather have some idea what the wire is carrying- based on wiring codes. I'm sure of it, as a matter of fact. I've spent some time (not much) in areas of the world where there aren't any building codes and I don't want to go back. And that was in calm weather.

Your Hatteras here is wired better than your house in Mexico, Mike. As a matter of fact, your Norton Commando (with Lucas electrics) may be wired better than your house in Mexico. Now THERE'S a sobering thought.

 

[MikeP]

"As a matter of fact, your Norton Commando (with Lucas electrics) may be wired better than your house in Mexico. Now THERE'S a sobering thought"

Now THAT is really scary!

OTOH, unlike the Norton or Hatteras, the house is all concrete so there's nothing there to burn. Probably could have a complete electrical circuit flame-out of every wire in the place and the only damage, other than to the wires themselves, would be that burnt insulation smell!

 

[SunChaser]

"Is this ALL 120 volt or is most 220volt?? "

It's 120v. Finding 220v in a house in Mexico would be like finding a penguin riding Lance Armstrong's Tour de France bike! 220 is just not used here in residences.

"Try this site, looks like a good explaintion of color codes "

It's only an explanation of color codes IF the installers elect to use those color codes as specified. In Mexico - at least in residential use - if they happen to only have coils of white wire when they wire your house, then every wire in the house - hot or neutral - is going to be white. There are no grounds used at all and if you think your three-prong socket actually has a ground...you are thinking wrongly! The Ground buss in the breaker box is not grounded to a grounding rod and none of the circuits are connected to it anyway. They don't use Romex or duplex/triplex wiring. Everything is made up of single pieces of wire.

"You just need a circuit buzzer. " Maybe so - I've never used one, just multimeters, etc. Might be a REALLY useful thing here.

Mike,

I understand your problem and frustration. I tossed the color code out just in case it would help you. As hard a this might be to believe, your problem is nothing compared to some of the stuff we see. Are you plannig to rewire or just sort it out? Needless to say in both cases it's usually a 2 person project.

FWIW, take a drop light, with someone at the breaker or fuse box, go around to all the electrical outlets plug in the drop light or any lamp handy, and start turning breakers on and off, it's usually the easiest and fastest way to locate what circuit goes where.

Posting a suggestion like this is a crap shoot because you don't know the experience level you who you're trying to help. What seems simple to some is a nightmare for others. Plumbing is my downfall, the simplest repairs take all day, and at least 3 trips to the store.

We were working in Russia a few years ago, we located a short on the first floor, turned off the circuit breaker for that section, all hell broke loose, that breaker also ran the lights in 2 operating rooms.

Have fun, and good luck.

 

[MikeP]

Thanks!

No, I'm not planning to do any rewiring; I just needed to chase down the problem which I finally did and everything is working fine now. By US standards, of course it's "faulty" wiring but it's normal here and everything in the house works properly. It was just difficult to trace because the rat's nest of wire where I was able to access them had "power" at wires that color-wise should have been grounds/neutrals. I was looking for power at the Black or red wires and couldn't get any. It wasn't until I opened the elec panel and saw green, white, black, and red ALL used at various breakers that I figured out that I had to look for power at all the wires in the "nest," regardless of color.

Also no such thing as wire nuts or other such connectors here - all wires are jointed by twisting the bare ends together and elec taping them.

 

[SunChaser]

Hey man, consider yourself lucky they taped the connections, did they use electrical tape, I have often seen them use adhesive tape.

 

[krush]

I wonder how affordable homes would be here without all of these government imposed regulations.

The market would find a solution. My guess is that with no government involved, the insurance companies would requiring the house be belt to a code in order for them to insure it....kinda like hmmmm ABYC.

Not to mention, the NEC that houses are built to is published by the NFPA...which isn't government either.

Nor is pressure vessels built to ASME codes.

note: blatant use of acronyms is because google is easy to use.

 

[MikeP]

"did they use electrical tape"

Absolutely! Hey, they do have SOME pride here!

 

[REBrueckner]

Circuit buzzers, which put a detectable tone on a wire, are great tools if you trace wiring anywhere. Radio shack is one source, electronic stores in general often have them.

I found out about them when I worked for AT&T in NYC and visited some NY Telephone wire distribution centers...with dozens of thousand pair two pair, etc, cables coming in from under NYC streets....hundreds of thousands of wires massed on distribution frames (a huge wire rack) which might run hundreds of feet...

anyway, I kept a buzzer aboard my Hatt summertimes when I was away crusing, brought it home in the winter for possible use at home...

 

[SKYCHENEY]

The market would find a solution. My guess is that with no government involved, the insurance companies would requiring the house be belt to a code in order for them to insure it....kinda like hmmmm ABYC.

Not to mention, the NEC that houses are built to is published by the NFPA...which isn't government either.

Nor is pressure vessels built to ASME codes.

note: blatant use of acronyms is because google is easy to use.

Free markets always work things out. Too bad we don't get a chance to try them out more often.