That wiring diagram from my mentor burned me bad today

My old boss Jerry told me to always trust the panel's internal diagram over the wire color codes. I ignored that today on a DSC system install near Chicago because the wires were all neatly color coded. Turns out the previous guy had swapped the zones around and I ended up with a false alarm on the first test. Has anyone else learned this lesson the hard way?

2 comments

2 Comments

ward.anna4d ago

Trust the panel diagram every time, learned that one the hard way pulling wire in a 1970s house where the blue wire was actually the ground. Colors mean nothing after a few years of some guy with a roll of tape and good intentions. At least your false alarm was on a test and not at 3am with the cops showing up.

linda_reed3d ago

I get what you're saying, but I'm going to go the other way on this one. Colors are way more reliable than panel diagrams in my experience. That diagram is only as good as the guy who drew it and half the time they're hand-drawn sketches with coffee stains on them. I've seen panel labels that were flat out wrong because someone swapped a breaker and never updated the list. At least with wire colors, you can trace it back to the manufacturer's code, and if you're smart, you test everything with a meter before you trust anything anyway.