Color Codes or Lack Therof

[BrucePerens]

RVIA unfortunately charges a lot of money for their standards and thus I don't have a copy.

Electrical color codes are all askew in RVs, it appears. RVIA tries to be coupled with the NEC and the NFPA so we have black as hot and white as ground in opposition to the automotive accepted practice of black as ground and red as hot. We don't seem to distinguish whether there is 12V or 120V on the circuit through color.

I am doing my solar and ham stuff in the automotive-style red-black, with red-black Anderson powerpole connectors as my main style of DC outlet per ARRL's standard. I have some cigarette lighter jacks too, although they are not that great at providing DC power to circuits reliably. The plugs tend to break the circuit on their own.

[Padgett]

a) black - hot, white - ground, red - switched hot, green - ground
b) Look for ANSI A119.5 (2009 edition is online as a .pdf)

[scrubjaysnest]

Originally Posted by BrucePerens

RVIA unfortunately charges a lot of money for their standards and thus I don't have a copy.

Electrical color codes are all askew in RVs, it appears. RVIA tries to be coupled with the NEC and the NFPA so we have black as hot and white as ground in opposition to the automotive accepted practice of black as ground and red as hot. We don't seem to distinguish whether there is 12V or 120V on the circuit through color.

I am doing my solar and ham stuff in the automotive-style red-black, with red-black Anderson powerpole connectors as my main style of DC outlet per ARRL's standard. I have some cigarette lighter jacks too, although they are not that great at providing DC power to circuits reliably. The plugs tend to break the circuit on their own.

This is why I have always been color blind when dealing with DC and AC wiring and always use a meter.

For my solar I went with red as positive since that is what the average DIY expects. I also stayed with MC-4 since I've some folks use the Andersons for ATV winches.