How Important Are Industry-Standard Wire Insulation Colors?
Or, why am I always seeing red?
November 27, 2013
Question: I got lucky recently and caught an end-of-season distress sale on a boat that I’ve wanted for some time but did not feel I could afford. I’ve been through it pretty thoroughly to see that everything is in proper order, but ran into something that's really eating at me.
The insulation on the ground wire should be green, but there's no electrical problem here.
The photo above shows one the sending units for my depth sounder. The red wire you can also see attached to the metal tab on the side of the sending unit appears to be a ground or bonding conductor. My question is, how come it’s got red wire insulation on it? I always thought that ground wires were supposed to use green insulation. Is this going to create a problem anywhere down the line?
Answer: Good question. It looks like the builder of your new boat ran out of green wire on that day. The good news is that this oversight won’t necessarily cause any electrical problems (although it could cause confusion that might lead to problems). The possibly bad news depends upon how extensively the builder carried this error throughout the boat. This is the sort of detail that a marine surveyor will focus on and criticize, and in the end it could impact the resale value of your boat. My advice is to check for any more of this on your boat, and if things don’t look too extensive, replace the red with green insulated cable where needed. On the other hand, if you are planning on keeping the boat for a long time, you could go at this in a piecemeal fashion. It’s really more of an annoyance than a safety or functionality problem.
