sparks
ELECTRICAL NEWS
august
2013
Getting to grips with SANS 10142–1 by Hannes Baard
Starting over again at the beginning…
HOW many times have you thought: “This is it…
yep, it is all over… it’s finished (a task, project,
holiday, experience or whatever) and I’ll never
experience this again – this is the end…” only
to realise that you didn’t actually start at the
beginning at all and there is still so much more to
explore and discover?
Take my columns, for instance. They started at
the ‘beginning’with SANS 10142-1, page one, and,
after a few years of writing and explanations, they
finally came to an end with the publication of the
July 2013 issue of
Sparks Electrical News
.
You see, my goal right from the start was – for
various reasons – not to carry on much past
Clause 3 – the definitions. So, I thought about
this and began to reminisce – even considering
that I could have done it better, somehow – but I
said to myself: “
Nou ja
, what’s done is done!”
But, then dear friends and neighbours, I
realised that this was not actually the end
because I had not started at the beginning but
rather somewhere in the middle… perhaps
even somewhere towards the end! In fact, when
I embarked on the clauses and definitions of
SANS 10132-1, it was really nowhere near the
beginning!
You see… I had jumped in at the ‘deep end’
(so to speak) and skipped over the ‘mother of
all standards’ in terms of our electrical lives: the
Occupational Health and Safety Act (Act 85 of
1993) – and even bypassed the Electrical Installa-
tion Regulations of 2009.
“Electrical Installation Regulations?”some of
you may well now ask.“But I thought that we had
been busy with the regulations for the past few
years?”You would be wrong, unfortunately. We
were busy exploring and considering ‘a code of
practice’– the result of that ‘mother of all stand-
ards’, the OHS Act. So, here we are then, right back
at ‘the beginning’and perhaps it is a good time to
put a few things into proper perspective…
Why do we have standards then?Well, to work
to a standard just makes life that much easier. The
OHS Act, national and international standards are
there so that we have a yardstick whereby we can
gauge whether or not two similar installations or
pieces of equipment are in fact ‘the same’or if they
differ so much that one of them does not comply
and has to be rectified, discarded and/or replaced
with the other one.
Consider this: If you, as an employer (or
manager, foreman or whatever), have to send
someone out to do a job, you would need to know
that the guys you send out to different jobs would
have some kind of standard to work to so that
you could assess the jobs afterwards. Or, if you, as
an artisan, have to go and do a job without any
detailed instructions from the boss, who expects
you to do the job properly and technically correct
when it is compared to another job by a total
stranger in a different part of the country...
To be able to do this, we need some kind of
standard – or framework – to work to… and this is
where the OHS Act and SANS 10142 come in.
Following is a rough timeline from the begin-
ning of our South African standards to illustrate
how things evolved over the years:
In 1941, Act 22 of 1941 (Machinery and Occu-
pational Safety Act – also known as the Factories’
Act) was published. Then, in 1946, the first edition
of the Standard Regulations for theWiring of
Premises by the South African Institute of
Electrical Engineers – the ‘red book’– was pub-
lished. In the early 1970s, the ‘blue book’and
Eskom’s regulations (supply authority regulations)
were adopted as the standard to which electrical
installations should comply.
Regulation 226S in March 1974 addressed earth
leakage units/protection for the first time and,
from 1978 to the early 1980s, SABS 0142 was com-
piled and finally published as a Code of Practice
with a set of installation rules that formed the
basis for all new electrical installations – except for
mining operations.
It was only many years later that surface opera-
tions on mines would be incorporated as part of
the ‘standard electrical installations’. Even today,
the electrical installations that form part of min-
ing operations (open cast or underground) is
excluded.
Act 6 of 1983 (MOS Act) was the last of the
so-called Factories’Acts and, in 1993, the new
Occupational Health and Safety Act (Act 85 of
1993, as we know it today) and its regulations
were published. During the early part of the 2000s,
SABS 0142 (the old ‘green book’) was replaced by
SANS 10142 and was also no longer referred to
as a Code of Practice or Installation Rules but as a
Standard. Although many people still regard it as
a set of ‘installation rules’, which is not necessar-
ily wrong. Nonetheless, it is now referred to as a
National Standard.
SANS 10142 now comprises two parts: SANS
10142-1 (Part 1: Low-voltage installations) is in-
tended for single and three-phase electrical instal-
lations up to 1 000V normally found in residential,
commercial and industrial installations.
SANS 10142-2 (Part 2: Medium-voltage instal-
lations above 1kV ac not exceeding 22kV ac and
up to and including 3 000 kW installed capacity)
is mainly applied in electrical reticulation and
distribution systems.
From next month, we will look at this structure
in more detail and follow this ‘standards trail’from
beginning to end.
10
contractors’ corner
