The Little Things

Today my only real job was to wire the new Oven. Not a big deal as I know enough about electricity to be careful and keep myself out of big trouble. The wiring harness that comes from the new oven was standard 240 volt - white (neutral), black (L1) and red (L2) along with the standard bare copper ground wire. The old oven however had five wires going to it - green, white, red, yellow and beige (maybe orange - it is faded). I stapled all these wires to a board to minimize sparks, flipped the breaker on and started testing. The green was obviously ground as it was tied down to the oven cabinet. One down. The white turned out to be neutral as it should be. Two down. The yellow tested out to be one of the "hot" leads and the beige the other. I got 120 volts between the white and the yellow and 120 between the white and beige. Beige to yellow gave me 240 volts so that proved everything I needed to make the new oven work. I have no idea what the red was for and really did not care so I turned the breaker back off and taped up the red and put it aside. The cable from the new oven was too short to reach the box that the old oven was wired from so I installed a new box at the end of the new BX cable and ran the old BX cable that used to go to the old oven to my new box and connected everything together. It may not be "code" color wise, but it works and it is safe. I still have no idea where those colors came from. If anyone knows, let me know.