Getting Rotation

[Lineman North Florida]

There is a big push where I work to get us to standardize the way we mark rotation on overhead 3 phase services, I have always marked red, white, blue, blue being the high leg, that is the way I was taught, some of the younger and a few of the older mark black, red, blue, blue being the high leg. I know how to mark it both ways so I am not asking for a class on the phase rotator, just want to know how it is done by some of the rest of you. Thanks in advance for your input.

[johnbellamy]

This is a sensitive topic to me, I beleive it is narrowback driven.

I will say I mark red, white, blue, Red for the high leg if a wild leg is present.

I also take the time to make it a clockwise rotation, just swap white and blue and indentify leg's accordingly, but that is just me, I also do my own checking even if some previous marking are present, but if the bank is damaged by storm, or just damaged when I get there, I will match the markings that where there. 50/50 chance.

Bottom line if you are teaching, make sure they understand that you can mark them anyway, any color's , as long as they write down how they reference it. Example: Red, white, blue, clockwise, left to right, you can mark your legs one, two , three, clockwise, left to right, as long as the person taking rotation, writes down what he did.

The whole not marking a leg white, is because on the narrowback side, white is neutral indentification, but that **** is on there side of the meter, and if you cannot identify your neut, you have no bussiness doing this work.

It piss's me off, but I have covered that before.

[CPOPE]

It's hap hazzard in my part of the country.

Red black blue or one two three. neutral is white
at 277/480 brown orange yellow. nutral is gray

The white and gray neutral identification are a narrowback industry standard per National Electrical Code

Had a problem checking rotation where one gentleman marked with his meter red white blue with correct rotation and a second crew went to re-connect and although connected same spun backwards.

Lesson learned use the same meter to check rotation because all are not identical.

Here is the rotation meter we mostly use.http://www.testitfirst.com/site/972962/product/K-3%20PSI
http://www.storesonline.com/images/common/imagewrap.img?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_electric_power#Color_codes

[wtdoor67]

Always marked them left to right, red, white & blue. Wrote it down as it appeared. CC or CCW. No matter the voltage. Let the electricians mark theirs as they wish. Fortunately some irrigation pumps have a lock on them preventing idiots from running them backwards. A lot of industrial motors have an arrow on the housing indicating the desired rotation.

Used to do oil field cutovers. If the pump was running just wrote down the direction left to right. If it wasn't running we just punched the button and noted the direction and then shut it down until finished and punched it again to verify.

[Lineman North Florida]

John Bellamy that has been my thought on marking a leg white for years, if a person is not smart enough to identify the neutral they dont have any business up there. CPOPE, I guess I have been lucky through the years as I have only seen rotators that came from the factory with red, white, and blue lead, pull the rubber boots back and red will be stamped A phase, white would be stamped B phase and blue would be stamped C phase, as far as the rotators not checking out the same, I would have thought that would have probably been in way they were hooked up. We to mark 277/480 brown, orange and yellow.

[CPOPE]

John Bellamy that has been my thought on marking a leg white for years, if a person is not smart enough to identify the neutral they dont have any business up there. CPOPE, I guess I have been lucky through the years as I have only seen rotators that came from the factory with red, white, and blue lead, pull the rubber boots back and red will be stamped A phase, white would be stamped B phase and blue would be stamped C phase, as far as the rotators not checking out the same, I would have thought that would have probably been in way they were hooked up. We to mark 277/480 brown, orange and yellow.

If we wern't lucky you wouldn't be here. True all the rotation meters come through with the leads marked. grab two different meters from different manufactures and see what you get. I only rember the situation because it was a bag job on the lineman. Everybody thought it was his screw up but when we checked out the meters on the various trucks it was inconsistant. You can find two meters spinning diferent directions hooked up same way.

Check this link out on the color coding in different parts.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_electric_power#Color_codes

So we agree no problem for a line worker marking white. It screws with the electrician because they think it is the neutral. I guess I'm just lazy mark only red and blue leaving black as the color of the insulation. My area doesn't typically mark the phase white. If you are marking red white blue you are carrying three rolls of tape vs red black blue only carry two rolls. A person is not smart enough to identify the neutral don't have any business up there and don't trust anybody elses markings. After hooking up door knock to verify things are spinning correctly/

Has anybody out there used this phase rotation meter? It's an oddball.http://www.hdelectriccompany.com/assets/files/prm_im.pdf

[darrell kuhn]

wow--------

[Heavy]

Never used one like that myself, we use the one that looks similiar to a hockey puck.

[graybeard]

If your talking o/h sec our qaud comes with 2 ribs and 3 ribs and one smooth. We mark the smooth orange and that will be the wild. On prmy we've been red, white and blue A,B,C or 1,2,3. The company requires that the right hand line side of meter box be orange and the wild. What the narrows do on the load side I don't care.
If we have to change anything, we take our own rotation and mark red white and blue left to right. Always use the same rotation meter to check when done and take our marking tape off befor we leave.

[lewy222]

Well now I am curious. I have never played around to see if the rotation changes with a different meter. I wouldnt think it would. Typically the meter used to check rotation at the beginning of the job is still in the bucket at the end of the job and is used again. We also mark red, white and blue, and check rotation. I agree with the rest...if you cant identify the neutral then you should be on the ground. We are not responsible for rotation on new services so it is only the upgrades that get marked.

[OLE' SORE KNEES]

1,2,3 Red ,White, Blue............Blue being power Leg...........Don't pay attention to ribs anymore on quads,they've changed it too much............
1-2 smooth,
smooth 2-3,
...........nothing stays the same so I check voltage and rotation and go from there.
Change rotation on lighting legs on Open Wye Delta or Close Wye Delta or any legs on Wye-Wye...........

[Pootnaigle]

JB is purty much on the money here.Always use the red lead for a high legs.
I remember years ago when doin a massive conversion We went thru and marked every 3 phase bank so then when other hands from outside our network came to help us get er done they would be at least a step ahead. Seems like they subscribed to the other scholl of thought and used white for the high leg. Basically that caused em to make up several banks wrong and getting the hi leg crossed with a lighting leg.......... smoking some customer equippment. Seems to me that if you looked at a 3 phase weatherhead waiting for a hookup you would know that the one marked with red tape was the hi leg. Why would anybody use anything other than red for the same thing? I spoze common sense aint so common afterall.

[Lineman North Florida]

Well this has opened my eyes to the fact that it is definately done different ways in different regions of the country,but it does seem that there are more people marking RWB ie color of rotator leads. I had never heard of red signifying high leg but as someone said earlier I believe when I looked at the metercan to identify markings it would have become evident to me which one was the high leg, and it is a requirement where I work for the electrician to land the high leg on the right side of the metercan, they land theirs in the middle in the panel on the inside of the house. Please keep the info coming if there is more to add, I appreciate your time.

[markwho]

When checking rotation we read, red,white,blue left to right. Red being phase 1,white being phase 2 and blue being phase 3. If I can I usually check rotation at the meter cabinet. When we do new 3 phase installations our meter men check and mark rotation inside the cabinet as a record. High leg is marked red and goes all the way to the right in our meter cabinets, center phase is usually marked blue. The inside guys need to place the high leg in the center of their mains per NEC. I believe though it doesn't matter much to us, they also follow code and use certain colors for certain voltages, I.E. orange,yellow and brown for 277/480 and black, blue and red for 120/208. That way they know right away what voltage they are working with.
We may use any color tape for identifying phases and we mark them 1,2,3 with as many wraps on the corresponding phase. we will do this for 3 phase primary cables and secondary alike.
The only time I ever saw a discrepancy with a rotation meter was when we were working with a private electrician who had either replaced or lengthened his leads and swapped them when he did it and was too lazy to fix it! needless to say he was a real piece of work and I loved breaking his balls. He has since passed, God rest his soul, but his name lives on.
One thing that we try to do whenever possible is keep our three primary phasing consistent in regard to position on the pole. When connecting taps for bucks and laterals we keep the south wire and west wire phase one, the center position phase 2 and the north and east wires phase 3. When remembering we refer to it as Smith and Wesson as being no one. It makes it nice to roll up to an accident pole and know what goes where with out double checking. We took over some territory from our neighboring utility where that wasn't the case. Had an accident pole all over the place one day and had to write a schematic of what went where so we would maintain the correct phasing and rotation. We also had to have a couple of places where we had to roll the phases (not Pretty) to have the phasing and rotation correct when we did the cut overs to our system.
We also never use white alone and reserve it for the neutral.

[johnbellamy]

As far as High leg, wild leg, power leg, 208 leg on the right, is you are probably useing direct metering, not CT metering.

The meter's must have that leg on the right or the new meter's will not register a display, I have never seen a high leg marked blue in any situation, Red and even orange, by the ground hugger's side, But that is why we do our work, and let them do their's.

And Poot, at least they didn't hook the white to the neut., but it was probably a bare neut, not coastal Quad, Alot of crazy **** out there, do your own checkin, alway's.

[Lineman North Florida]

Markwho, hear what you are saying about knowing how primary phases are rolled on a system, A phase is always top phase on vertical construction and is either South or East on horizontal construction in our system, except bundled hendricks cable is a different, have worked out of town on storm work and asked how the phasing rolled and was told they didnt know they would have to trace it back to the sub, I laughed and said O.K.:eek:

[Highplains Drifter]

Always marked them left to right, red, white & blue. Wrote it down as it appeared. CC or CCW. No matter the voltage. Let the electricians mark theirs as they wish.


I am with you on this just keep it simple.I see way to many lineman trying to over analzye marking rotation.

[Lineman North Florida]

I am with you on this just keep it simple.I see way to many lineman trying to over analzye marking rotation.I understand what you say, the purpose of me starting this thread was because for years I have had people telling me that we were not following industry standards and just as I suspected from what I have read on here and seen at differrent places that I have worked there is no industry standards that everybody follows as far as colors that are used, this is were common sense should come into play as far as I am concerned. Thanks for all your replies it should help me in my argument.

[Pootnaigle]

I certainly agree that there should be some kind of standard, industry wide. I,ve never ever heard of using blue on the hi leg. And until I read this post I assumed everyone used red exclusively on the high legs.( other than the dumb ****s that came to help us). I spose if the same guy is doing the phasing and making the final connections its a moot point what system you use but when more than one guy is involved I bleve some serious discussion is required.

[lewy]

I agree with Highplains & Wootdoor keep it simple, on u.g. just mark your X1, X2 & X3 RWB or whatever you want & take note of the rotation or on the overhead mark it RWB or whatever & make sure it rotates the same way when your done. This all seems like real basic stuff it can only go 1 way or the other. If you are taking a lighting service off of the bank up here it would be for a different customer & you would have to be aware of it & mark accordingly . On a side note If your phasing on the primary side is correct your rotation will be correct, but just because your rotation is correct does not mean your primary would be in phase

[Lineman North Florida]

Let me give you all one more thing to let you know how this really all got started, found a rotator on a bucket truck that had the white lead taped black and I asked what that was all about and they said they were rotating black , red, blue not red white blue and the rotator already had red and blue so they made the white lead black. So this fella the way I see it is going to a service and getting rotation the way I see it BAC, I am going to come along behind him and see black red blue and I am going to hook my rotator up red, white, blue ABC there lies the problem and as far as I am concerned the problem is someone not understanding rotation more than anything. I have been building banks in this system for over 20 years and can determine the rotation before I ever close it in on new construction, its going behind someone else that does something like this that is the problem,hence trying to establish a standard. 10 years ago this was not a problem, lotta new people, lotta crazy ways of thiking.:rolleyes:

[CPOPE]

Let me give you all one more thing to let you know how this really all got started, found a rotator on a bucket truck that had the white lead taped black and I asked what that was all about and they said they were rotating black , red, blue not red white blue and the rotator already had red and blue so they made the white lead black. So this fella the way I see it is going to a service and getting rotation the way I see it BAC, I am going to come along behind him and see black red blue and I am going to hook my rotator up red, white, blue ABC there lies the problem and as far as I am concerned the problem is someone not understanding rotation more than anything. I have been building banks in this system for over 20 years and can determine the rotation before I ever close it in on new construction, its going behind someone else that does something like this that is the problem,hence trying to establish a standard. 10 years ago this was not a problem, lotta new people, lotta crazy ways of thiking.:rolleyes:

EXACTLY right. Same thing happend to me years ago. After much head scratchin and finger pointing we determined The manufactures do not have a standard on the meters. Vendor a rotates this way vendor b the spins the other direction with same colour markings. Hence you need to verify with the same meter used to make the marks.

Lastly using white on a phase marking low voltage is BAD. Narrow backs trust that white is neutral. Please standardize on Black Red Blue or One Two Three. I know some of us could give a ****e about their safety but if you are marking white as a phase and they screw up re-connection because they trust your marks and think white is a neutral you got alot of explain to do.

When you are doen with your work take off your tempoary markings so it doesn't screw up the works. I suggest your standard direct the worker to their own phase identification not anybody elses.

When you assume the guy ahead of you marked it right. ASS U ME

Sucks to not have faith in sombody elses work but a safe bet to re-check or verify

[loodvig]

I have to say that I never knew different meters gave different readings!

[mainline]

I've always marked rotation RWB clockwise. That is pretty much standard here. We have aerial quad with a bare neutral so the white tape thing isn't really a big deal. Underground, the narrowbacks hookup the secondary side on commercial accounts. Its a stupid practice, but that is the way it is.

[wtdoor67]

I cannot believe there is no manufacturer standard on rotation meters. Probably got hold of some that some wise guy messed with. If there was no standard then imagine the amount of them that would spin opposite one another. If they were just made helter skelter then all kinds of hell would be raised. Some clown messed with it.


Guy told me he hung a pot once and it was 480 but labeled 240. How many times you hung one on a changeout, hooked up the leads and closed it in and then checked voltage? I expect some are gonna say they "always" check the voltage before hooking up the leads. BS.

[Pootnaigle]

WEll I dunno what kinda rotation meter yall use but a Knopp has 3 leads marked red(A) white(B) and blue(C).. Ive seen some of the newer electronic ones that only have a black red and blue lead. I learned with the knopp and always used red on the wild leg,or on the grounded phase of straight 480 delta with a grounded leg. Ive used the electronic ones but they are a ***** to read in direct sunlight.They even make one that willl tell you how to rotate motor leads with no voltage present by hooking up to an isolated motor and then after marking em removing the meter and use it on the incoming line . Then its just match up the 2 and presto yer done on the first try.

[CPOPE]

http://www.triosmartcal.com.au/images/kyoritsu_8031.jpg
http://www.electro-meters.com/Assets/jpgs/AEMC/Motor_Transformers/2121.06.jpg
http://www.test-meter.co.uk/images/uploads/Original-KEW8031F_500.jpg
http://www.knoppinc.com/images/K3web.jpg

[wtdoor67]

Only ones I think I've seen used are Knopp. The instructions state if you place the red lead on A phase, the white lead on B phase and the blue phase on C phase, you will get clockwise rotation. That seems pretty standard.

[Lineman North Florida]

EXACTLY right. Same thing happend to me years ago. After much head scratchin and finger pointing we determined The manufactures do not have a standard on the meters. Vendor a rotates this way vendor b the spins the other direction with same colour markings. Hence you need to verify with the same meter used to make the marks.

Lastly using white on a phase marking low voltage is BAD. Narrow backs trust that white is neutral. Please standardize on Black Red Blue or One Two Three. I know some of us could give a ****e about their safety but if you are marking white as a phase and they screw up re-connection because they trust your marks and think white is a neutral you got alot of explain to do.

When you are doen with your work take off your tempoary markings so it doesn't screw up the works. I suggest your standard direct the worker to their own phase identification not anybody elses.

When you assume the guy ahead of you marked it right. ASS U ME

Sucks to not have faith in sombody elses work but a safe bet to re-check or verifyCPOPE You may have misread my post or I may not have made it clear enough, I found a rotation meter that someone had TAPED the white lead BLACK, they wanted to rotate black,red,blue and figured they already had a red and a blue leg all they needed was a black. That is why I said that with that rotator I think they will be getting rotation BAC and when someone else comes around behind them ie hook up a service they disconnected and sees black, red, blue, they are gonna hook up their rotator red,white,blue and they are gonna be getting rotation ABC. We only use the Knopp meters and never had a problem until this incident, that is why I said it is a problem with someone understanding 3 phase rotation more than anything, hence trying to establish a standard, ie dummyproof the job. Re-read my last post, also I dont know anything about other brands of meters but I sure would have thought that they would spin the same if hooked up the same unless they had been messed with.

[CPOPE]

You were clear, I think I understand.

The Knopp rotation meter comes through red-white-blue a-b-c
Your buddie tapped his meter white lead black to accomidate the narrow back standard of white being a neutral.

The new markings go black-red-blue B-A-C thus rotation screwed up.

Fact where I am we use different meters than narrowbacks that have a different color code and their ain't no standard markings.

There is a risk to the narrow back if we mark a liveleg white and I tend to be over concerned with safety and if there is a screw up on the narrow back connecting neural to phase somthing is going to smoke.

Wish you luck.

B-A-Bay
From "The Three Stooges"

B A Bay, B E Bee
B I Bickie Bye B O Bo
Bickie Bye Bo B U Boo
Bickie Bye Bo Boo

C A Say, C E See
C I Sickie Sye C O So
Sickie Sye So C U Soo
Sickie Sye So Soo

[tramp67]

I try to check rotation before and after when possible, with the same meter. If it's an unknown rotation, usually someone can be located to bump a motor to verify rotation. So many utilities, so many different ways of marking. Reading all these posts, I've seen most of the methods in my tramping. My preference, and having started as a narrowback, is red, white blue on 120/208 and 120/240 systems, red being the wild leg on the 120/240. This helps the wild leg to stand out, and using the white tape helps when one of the colors fades or is otherwise unidentifiable, versus using black, same color as the insulation. On 277/480, brown, orange, yellow, same goes for those oddball 240/480 services, with orange being the wild leg, matches the narrowback colors. My favorite primary phasing is South and West phase being A, North and East being C phase - Southwest Arizona. The rolling corners, I like the center phase high, like REA specs - one of the few REA things I like. The only reason I like this way is you can stay consistent with "neutral high" systems, as well as "neutral low" systems.

[6121202]

The canook is wright no color 123 black tape

[johnbellamy]

What about small access point's, 1,2,3, ain't easy to mark.

There are all sort's of places to take rotation, Guy's say they want a standard, from what point on, what about all though's excisting banks, and old marking's, go back and mark them all?

Let's leave it to the guy's doing the work.