15a Lighting Cable in Rain

[Propit]

Hi all. Apologies for the silly question but I'm not a technician.

I recently worked on an event in a marquee. Some of the tent lighting was supplied in the following way:

An indoor 13a plug was plugged into the wall. This cable ran outside and had a 15a rubber socket at the other end. This was connected to another 15a rubber lighting cable which was then connected to a theatre light in the roof of the marquee. One of the 15a connections (plug to socket) was outside and as it was a rainy night there was a point where water was literally running down over the connection.

When this was pointed out to the rigging technician he said it was fine as both the plug and socket were rubber. Is this right?? I'm pretty sure they were only normal 15a cables.

Don't you need 16a blue stuff to make things waterproof? I'd appreciate a response if anyone with knowledge can be bothered!

Apologies for not having the tech knowledge. I hope this makes sense. Thanks for reading!

[ImagineerTom]

No it's not "right" or "ok"

 

For waterproofing discussions we don't talk about the materials but instead use the standardised "ip rating" system. As a rule of thumb you should NEVER use something outdoors (and it's also hard to justify using something in a marquee that isn't) at least IP 44 rated (bigger the number, the more "proof" it is) even then this is only effectively splash-proof / rain proof. I've yet to encounter a 15amp connector that had anything close to an IP44 rating.

[Propit]

Thanks. That's pretty much what I thought!

[paulears]

To put this into perspective - we were playing at a festival on the South Coast. In the pit between the stage and the barrier was a bubble machine. It rained, and one of the host radio station marketing girls was standing there looking at the rubber 13A connector that was being rained on. She thought this was bad news and went to disconnect the bubble machine. The water inside ran to one end, shorted out the terminals and pop - the protection cut in and all the power went off. Luckily, she said "It was me", so the power people knew what had caused the trip. If she had left it alone, the water would not have tripped out the power until it was more full! In this case the grounds and RCDs did their job = but this could easily have had a different outcome. Your technician is an idiot, and a potentially dangerous one too!

[Wingwalker]

Without going rah rah rah, 10 points to Gryffindor for spotting the error - well done.

 

 

Your technician however should be hung out to dry!!!