Standardisation of cables, threads, etc.

gpigeon

Neil, your cable sizing spreadsheet works very well. Thank you. I couldn't believe the amount of hidden emotion and feeling this thread stirred up. I thought we were going to have the "Boston Tea Party" all over again!
Conversion of cable sizes is no big deal these days with calculators and computers but there are a couple of other areas worthy of note.
1. Have you tried to fit a BSP pipe fitting or BSW (Whitworth) bolt to US made equipment with NPT/NC threads? Fortunately we use a lot of poly or PVC fittings these days so all we need is a slightly larger wrench. It surely must be pure "barstardry" (meant in the nicest Aussie way) for someone to come up with a screw thread that is one TPI different from an existing one. In some cases (1" npt and above it is only half TPI different). Does anyone know how this came about?
2. The US made conergy pump I am currently installing has a Black + cable and a White - cable. Logic (and the current Aussie std) dictates to me that RED is + and Black is -. So, I will connect the Back pump cable to the red supply and the white pump cable to the black supply. Not difficult i admit but illogical.
3. The comical situation is of course not confined to International standards! In Australia, for our 240 V AC domestic power we run a RED active and a BLACK neutral within the building walls but from the wall socket to the appliance we run a BROWN active and a BLUE neutral.
4. Traditionally in Australia all our switches (light and power) have been UP = OFF and DOWN = ON. In recent times, in order to comply with ISO standards all new switches / circuit breakers are UP = ON. This results in the potentially dangerous situation where half the switches on a board are down and half are up but all are ON.
Ah best to go with the flow and smile at it all. Jumping up and down wont change much. Still, it all very interesting.
That's all I have time for now! I must go to the "toilet". Oh! Sorry, I mean "bathroom" - even though I don't need a bath.
Congratulations on such an interesting forum. You guys keep up the good work.
Regards.
Bill W.

niel

Re: Standardisation of cables, threads, etc.

thank you, i'm glad you like it, but i supplied the formulas and facts while another guy put them into the spreadsheet. i used to do the calculations for everybody and knew there was a great need here for this calculator even if only to give me a break.:roll::D yes, i could've put conversions there, but where would it really stop? i've already done the majority of the hard stuff for them. it's bad enough people don't wish to learn more of what they are doing, but they want it all done for them.
anyway, i hear you on the different colored wires as our 120vac has a black hot, a white neutral, and a bare ground. (it gets more complicated when going to our 240vac and 3phase.) electronics protocall calls for black ground with red or any other colors except green to be +. btw, i don't mind the metric wrenches as i just keep going through my wrenches until one grabs on tight enough to work. this works good enough until you get some of those really tight nuts or bolts that are about seized and with these a properly sized wrench doesn't always work and i've ruined some wrenches on some of these seized items.