Discuss How common is reversed polarity? in the Electrical Forum area at ElectriciansForums.net

Welcome to ElectriciansForums.net - The American Electrical Advice Forum
Head straight to the main forums to chat by click here:   American Electrical Advice Forum

pc1966

Esteemed
Arms
Reaction score
11,835
Looking over the best practice guide to electrical inspection condition reporting the C1 "danger present" conditions are basically exposed live parts or reversed polarity. I guess the seriousness of reversed polarity is the lack of any meaningful over-current protection for faults to earth.

This forum's thread on dodgy pictures has several examples of exposed wires, etc, but how often have any of you seen a case of L & N swapped at the consumer unit?
 
It must be very rare to find reversed polarity at a CU. Whoever did it would have to be a special kind of stupid to get them mixed up.

although I have seen plenty of tails using the same colours and only a bit of red or black tape to distinguish which is which. Mistakes can happen.
 
I came across one once... I was convinced I must have made a mistake but no, it really was wrong and had been from new. It was about 10 years old.
 
and beware when fitting any schneider CU's. the terminals are back to front.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I have seen a couple of cases of wrong polarity from the DNO, also a few cases of polarity wrong at sockets.
 
I installed a 12 circuit dimmer a couple of years ago which had the outgoing terminal strip labelled back to front. The terminals were labelled L1, N1, L2, N2 etc but they were connected the opposite way internally N1, L1, N2, L2 etc.

Obviously we found it when we started testing, and in this particular case it wouldn't have been too bad as, due to a suppliers error, we had the version with true double pole mcbs intended for the mainland European market. But a lot of these dimmers get installed without any testing and I dread to think how many of the single pole mcb version were fitted before we brought this to the attention of the manufacturer.
 
I saw it once. Guy came to fit new washing machine and fortunately used a socket tester. Raised the alarm when it yelled at him.
Tails wrong way round to main switch. Had been like that since a cowboy installed new cu. cannot have been even basically tested. it had been like that for a long time.
 
Looking over the best practice guide to electrical inspection condition reporting the C1 "danger present" conditions are basically exposed live parts or reversed polarity. I guess the seriousness of reversed polarity is the lack of any meaningful over-current protection for faults to earth.

This forum's thread on dodgy pictures has several examples of exposed wires, etc, but how often have any of you seen a case of L & N swapped at the consumer unit?
PC I’ve seen lamps with the polarity crossed and it makes the screw in base live and the tip is the neutral which makes the whole metal frame of the lamp energized
 

Reply to How common is reversed polarity? in the Electrical Forum area at ElectriciansForums.net

OFFICIAL SPONSORS

Electrical Goods - Electrical Tools - Brand Names Electrician Courses Green Electrical Goods PCB Way Electrical Goods - Electrical Tools - Brand Names Pushfit Wire Connectors Electric Underfloor Heating Electrician Courses
These Official Forum Sponsors May Provide Discounts to Regular Forum Members - If you would like to sponsor us then CLICK HERE and post a thread with who you are, and we'll send you some stats etc

Electrical Forum

Welcome to the Electrical Forum at ElectriciansForums.net. The friendliest electrical forum online. General electrical questions and answers can be found in the electrical forum.
This website was designed, optimised and is hosted by Untold Media. Operating under the name Untold Media since 2001.
Back
Top
AdBlock Detected

We get it, advertisements are annoying!

Sure, ad-blocking software does a great job at blocking ads, but it also blocks useful features of our website. For the best site experience please disable your AdBlocker.

I've Disabled AdBlock