And now to Simon, and his tedious accusations of avoidance, evasion, diversionary tactics, changing the subject etc.
The point I have been trying to make is that just because a question appears on the face of it to be simple, and just because you say it has a simple answer, or a choice of a small number of simple answers, that might not be the case.
The question “When did you stop beating your wife?” is, in terms of grammar, the subject it’s examining, the words that it is using pretty simple. A child could understand it, and could understand that the answer required is a date, either absolute (an actual calendar date) or relative, e.g. a number of days/weeks/months/years/whatever ago.
In terms of grammar, the subject it’s examining, the words that it is using, the answer it requires, it is just as simple, straightforward, easy etc as
“When did you last go to the cinema?” or “When did you stop going to the gym?”.
But as all of us, or possibly almost all of us, realise, “When did you stop beating your wife?” is not a question you can answer with a date. And it doesn’t matter how many times I tell you that you can.
Maybe you really don’t get that, or maybe you do, but don’t want to admit it.
But I’ll let you into a little secret – nobody believes you when you say that I’m using diversionary tactics when I try to get you to grasp the concept that just because a question appears on the face of it to be simple, and just because you say it has a simple answer, or a choice of a small number of simple answers, that might not be the case.
The reason that question can’t be answered is because it is based on a false assumption. And that concept is relevant to all of this because you are making assumptions which might be false.
When you asked the analogous question about power supply modules, you complained that my answer was “As expected, diversionary tactics. Avoiding the question asked by answering a different one”. But it wasn’t – it was another attempt to get you to see that if you make assumptions they might be wrong, and the question you’re asking cannot be answered as you claim it can, or doesn’t actually work as an analogy.
For sure, if you know that the requirement for power module redundancy is N+1, then when N=1 you need 2, and when N=2 you do indeed need 3. But what if the requirement really is 2N? (As it might well be – the example I gave you was a real one).
If all you have is an example where N=1 and there are 2 you cannot tell from that if the redundancy requirement is N+1 or 2N – they look the same. So if you don’t know, and assume it’s N+1 and you are wrong in that assumption, the requirement when N=2 is not 3, it is 4.
If all you have is an example where N=1 and there are 3, does that mean that the requirement is 3N, or 2N+1? You don’t know. When N becomes 2 does the requirement become 6 or 5?. You don’t know.
Why is this relevant?
Because you don’t know what the “redundancy” requirements are for a HI protective connection for a ring final. You are making assumptions based on a theory of yours about what they are, and extrapolating to a solution which might be wrong.
You don’t know that the requirement is not that whatever happens to one of the “two individual protective conductors”, there will still be a protective conductor left which still has all of the redundancy that the protective conductor of a ring final would have if there were no HI requirements. In short, you don’t know that the requirement is not 2N.
Finally, and staying with what the regulations “say”, we come to your assertion that “If you cannot highlight the word "ring" in that text then regulation 543.7.1.203(iii) does not require the PEs to be rings. There may be another eg which does - but it's not 543.7.1.203(iii)”
I note that you have avoided answering my question on that by the simple tactic of just ignoring it. I won’t revisit it, but I will ask you another one.
Let’s take the scenario where you’ve installed a circuit with HIE – ring or radial, it doesn’t matter, and you’ve done it with whatever number/size/shape/etc CPC(s) you think is/are needed, that doesn’t matter either – the only assumption I’m making is that you want to comply with BS 7671, and you’re happy that what you do complies.
So the question is:
For your CPC(s), what colour sleeving or other markers will you use to identify it/them, throughout its/their length and/or at the terminations, and why?
So there’s that one I’d like you to answer, and the one “When did you stop beating your wife?”, or with that one you could say that you now do get the point about “simple” questions not always having a simple answer.
Now, I can’t demand you answer my questions, any more than you can demand I answer yours, so if you choose to ignore those, there’s nothing I can do, but in that case I’ll probably decide to ignore all of yours.
Or you could try again with your accusations of avoidance, evasion, diversionary tactics, changing the subject etc, but I don’t think you’ll find many people agreeing with you.
