12Vdc wire colors

[pabusnut]

I am nearing the time when I will be pulling wire for my electrical system and need help with wire colors.

I will be using all stranded wire, run through conduits for both the 110VAC and the 12VDC. 

For the 12VDC, the question is do I use Black for negative and RED for positive like in automotive applications?
OR do I use yellow for negative and red for positive like I have seen in Marine applications?

Using yellow for the 12VDC seems to make sense to me and would certainly help avoid any potential confusion if somehow somebody got confused in the future(which would probably be me 10 yrs from now!)

As always, All help is truly appreciated!


Steve Toomey

PAbusnut

[TomC]

You can use any color you want for any wire you want-just as long as you spell out what the wire and color is for at the electrical box.  I personally still like black for DC ground and multi colored wires for the individual circuits.  Good Luck, TomC

[Boomer]

FYI only, Prevost Car uses yellow for 12V circuits and red for 24V circu

[Boomer]

Computer malfunction.  Prevost, on newer coaches anyway, uses yellow for 12V and red for 24V hot wires.  Really nice when you open up the electrical panel.

[belfert]

I chose to use red for positive and black for ground for my DC stuff.  I use the same color for both 24 and 12 volt.  It tends to confuse things a bit when I connect to something that uses black for positive and white for ground.

Dina used every color under the rainbow for wire colors.  Luckily, most wires either have a wire number printed on the jacket or on a heat shrink label.

[Cary and Don]

Our 4107 has color code for the wires as to their function.  For instance, all the blue wires might go to the windshield wipers, all the yellow wires might go to the headlights, markers, and turn signals.  The engine control wires will all be the same color.  Of course, they have a huge assortment of patterns in each color.  We are going to try and use a similar system on wiring the Neoplan.  At least you have a clue what a wire does when you see it somewhere.

Don and Cary
GMC4107
Neoplan AN340

[Slow Rider]

Where are you going to source the wire for the Neoplan?

Frank

[Joe Camper]

I would decide the color based on the colors the chassis d/c stuff is on my bus and go with DIFFERENT colors from that.

[JackConrad]

    I went a different route. I used grey for DC ground since there are no grey wires on our coach (OEM or added by us) except 12 volt ground. This insures nothing else gets connected to ground and ground never gets connected to a hot terminal. 12 volt hot are somewhate color coded (lighting circuits are yellow, water circuits are blue, engine control circuits are green, brake circuits are red, etcf) In addition all wires are labeled and most importantly, wireing drawings and list were made at the time we wired the bus. This is very important, because you WILL forget.  Jack

[pabusnut]

Thanks for all the input!

I have decided that I won't use black for ground on the 12VDC system, and may go with gray as Jack did.  Since everything will be in conduit(blue smurf), I will be labeling both the wires and the outside of the tube.  My system will not be complex, as I am leaning heavily towards simplicity and functionality.  I have some friends who have access to those nice computer programs that generate legible wiring diagrams, so I probably will call in a few favors to have my "as built" sketches turned into legible drawings.

Steve Toomey

[Bill B /bus]

I used a color system as follows: Brown is 12V or 24V ground, red is 12V positive, Yellow is 12V positive for the heating system. Fairly simple.  Jack is 100% right is writing down everything and labeling the wires. That sold the first coach when I showed the buyer the book of wiring diagrams and lists of wire locations, where run, and terminal board location.  It was work but I didn't have to remember what I had done 5 years ago.

Bill

[Ed Hackenbruch]

You guys take all of the fun and challenge out of it. Make them all red!   Years ago the company i was working for was doing the ground work for a high dollar subdivision for a resort area on Maui. One of the things that we had to do was run a sewer line across two fairways on the golf course. When they came across the conduit for the wires for the sprinkler system for the course, the course bigwigs said to just cut thru it. Turns out that all of the wires were red.....and there were something like 50-60 of them.   They had a guy sitting there on a 5 gallon bucket with a radio  and several other guys with radios out in different areas of the course for a week while he was hooking wires together and finding out what sprinklers on what part of the course came on when they turned on power to them. They had to get it to where all of the sprinklers in a certain section of the course came on at the same time, as some areas got more water than others and it was all on timers. They told me later it was one of the worst decisions that they had ever made there.   If they had cut the conduit and put two tags on each wire and then cut the wire between the tags, one guy could have put all of the wires back together in an hour or two.

[eddiepotts]

On my prevost I have a large chart on the panel door that has what the wire is, the number on the wire, the number to the connection on the panel, then the number wire where it goes. It makes it real simple to trace things down.