You might remember that I’ve had some interesting electrical findings with the house that we bought last year, not least a melting terminal block that was hot to the touch.
Since the wiring is “complicated” with multiple, poorly-marked tableaux, I figured I’d better survey it out properly and make sure I clearly understood where everything was going and that it was safe. All in all, was definitely a mixed bag with most of the original house being ok with the major concerns being a couple of earth faults and too many sockets on the kitchen breaker (including two external sockets ).
The newly converted studio apartment was a different story altogether with two main circuits for sockets, one having 22 sockets and the other having 12, both on 16A breakers. I haven’t dared look at the cable diameter yet.
The number of sockets is absolutely overkill so I could probably just remove some to align it with the norme rather than rewire but we’ll see.
The other is the washing machine circuit which not only has the washing machine but 9 other sockets including 4 out in the abris.
Understanding your pain, I bought my signal generator with me to try and locate a couple of hitherto un discovered circuits. I put in the new board and a fair bit of new cabling connecting up the common circuits, I have two that did not work afterwards so I must at some point try to locate where they were previously connected but it definitely wasn’t how it should have been.
Under the current version of NF C15-100 your kitchen needs it own special general socket circuit of 6 outlets, at least four of which must be above worktops.
If more sockets are required they can be part of more general circuits, with their attendant capacity limits.
Obviously you still need the individual specialised circuits for large appliances.
There is no reason not to have general outside sockets on a circuit that also supplies interior ones but this only allowed if the outside sockets are fixed directly to the same building. If they are separate (e.g. in an abri away from the house then they must be fed separately, & also via a différentiel that only serves outside stuff, & not anything internal.
The same logic applies to lights as well.
So it’s not actually the washing machine circuit, just one that has the thing plugged into it
I’ll bet you it’s not via a Type A différentiel either…
Indeed, though it is marked as dedicated to the washing machine.
Give the man a coconut.
And I’ve discovered why there’s an earth fault in the bedroom. Even though the sockets are three pin, with an earth cable attached, it’s not evident that the earth actually runs back to the tableau (or anywhere else for that matter). I’m guessing that, in the distant past, someone has gone through the motions of upgrading the old two pin sockets.
When we were restoring our house which had been owned by Brits for many years, one morning the French electrician called me into one of the bathrooms and told me the lighting and electric point could never have worked. Knowing that friends had stayed with us and had successfully used that bathroom I said the electricity to the bathroom HAD worked. That was a mistake on my part and he got cross with me. Obviously as a foolish old English woman I didn’t know what I was talking about. So I said I’d ask my husband (who wasn’t there at the time) and honour was satisfied and peace restored.
The wiring to the house was done many years ago using English wires and whoever did it had just done a loop to the bathroom from an adjacent room and he’d removed the old wiring before he realised what was going on. It didn’t go back to the circuit board, much to our electrician’s horror. (He was pretty miserable anyway and obviously hated doing our house.)
I have seen, when going to client’s properties with OH over many years, some real horrific wiring and accidents/fires waiting to happen. So many brit owned properties were bodged with UK fittings,cables,three pin plugs and those extension leads where you can have upto four things plugged in, used for the big stuff like washers, ovens etc and even some local friends had their chauffe-eau plugged into one of these multi leads, OH told them off and re-did it properly as he was insured and qualified to carry out electrical works here . One woman kept getting electrocuted when she touched her washing machine, her husband had tinkered with the electrics in the house and added his own version, OH refused to work there until an electrician made it safe again. The brits obviously did not know or realise that french electrics is totally different.
@JohnH
Weren’t the electrics included in the Reports one gets before buying…???
anything deliberately misleading is illegal…
worth checking, if this really is a surprise…
Well, yes, but not particularly detailed. My understanding is that reports can vary from a detailed look at every area of the installation down to “well, it hasn’t caught fire yet”.
At the end of the day, I knew enough at the time to take a view before making the offer.
I’ve seen that so many times. How anyone can install something that creates a false sense of security is beyond me.
Only 4 you reckon…?
It’s not really the differences that are the problem. The main problem is lack of any proper electrical knowledge or grasp of physics. Those who bodge in France would bodge in any country.
However, I also do agree; there is a tendency to treat French electrics as if the system is so flawed that any bodge will do, whereas current regulations are far & away better than the UK.
Proper earthing is the single biggest issue in France. In the UK people are used to having an earth supplied as part of the supply, whereas the TT system used here in France means that each installation needs to create it’s own earthing arrangements, which must have a sufficiently low resistance (>100Ω).
The “live” washing machine may have simply been static generated by the spinning drum discharging to earth through the first person to touch it afterwards. If the appliance was earthed properly that static would not have been present as it would have had a path to earth.
It will always be a discussion point but I disagree, once the French had a system it was marginally ahead of the UK regarding interrupteur differentiels and our rcd’s but that has been addressed in the previous two updates to the wiring regulations. Both are good from the safety point of view but both have issues with using pvc covered wiring but low smoke cable being much more preferred in the UK for istallations but not all. The regular inspections and arc sensing circuit breakers take it up a bit higher still.
I have a physics background to Degree level, and would like to do a lot of the electrical donkey work myself during ongoing construction projects, getting it all signed-off in due course.
Is there a manual available, preferably in English, that explains the French Regs?
“A friend of mine once built a canoe. He spent a long time on it and it was a work of art.
Almost the final phase was to fill both ends with polyurethane expanding foam.
He duly ordered the bits from Mr Glasplies (an excellent purveyor of all things fibreglass) and it arrived in two packs covered with appropriately dire warnings about expansion ratios and some very good notes on how to use it. Unfortunately he had a degree, worse still two of them. One was in Chemistry, so the instructions got thrown away and the other in something mathematical because in a few minutes he was merrily calculating the volume of his craft to many decimal places and the guidelines got binned as well.
He propped the canoe up on one end, got a huge tin, carefully measured the calculated amounts of glop, mixed them and quickly poured the mixture in the end of the canoe (The two pack expands very rapidly).
I arrived as he was completing this and I looked in to see the end chamber over half full of something Cawdors Witches would have been proud of. Two thing occurred to me, one was the label which said in big letters: “Caution - expansion ration 50:1” (or something similar) and the other that the now empty tins said “approximately enough for 20 small craft”
Any comment was drowned out by a sea of yellow brown foam suddenly pouring out of the middle of the canoe and the end of the canoe bursting open. My friend screamed and leapt at his pride and joy which was knocked to the ground as he started trying to bale handfuls of this stuff out with his hands.
Knocking the craft over allowed the still liquid and not yet fully expanded foam to flow to the other end of the canoe where it expanded and shattered that end as well.
A few seconds later and we had a canoe with two exploded ends, a mountain of solid foam about 4ft high growing out of the middle, and a chemist firmly embedded up to his armpits in it.
At this stage he discovered the reaction was exothermic and his hands and arms were getting very hot indeed. Running about in small circles in a confined space while glued to the remains of a fairly large canoe proved ineffective so he resorted to screaming a bit instead.
Fortunately a Kukri was to hand so I attacked the foam around his hands with some enthusiasm. The process was hindered by the noise he was making and the fact he was trying to escape while still attached to the canoe.
Eventually I managed to hack out a lump of foam still including most of his arms and hands. Unfortunately my tears of laughter were not helping as they accelerated the foam setting.
Seeking medical help was obviously out of the question, the embarrassment of having to explain his occupation (Chief Research Chemist at a major petrochemical organisation) would simply never have been lived down. Several hours and much acrimony later we had removed sufficient foam (and much hair) to allow him to move again. However he still looked something like a failed audition for Quasimodo with red burns on his arms and expanded blobs of foam sticking everywhere. My comment that the scalding simple made the hairs the foam was sticking to come out easier was not met with the enthusiasm I felt it deserved.
I forgot to add that in retrospect rather unwisely he had set out to do this deed in the hallway of his house (the only place he later explained with sufficient headroom for the canoe - achieved by poking it up the stairwell.
Having extricated him we now were faced with the problem of a canoe construction kit embedded in a still gurgling block of foam which was now irrevocably bonded to the hall and stairs carpet as well as several banister rails and quite a lot of wallpaper.
At this point his wife and her mother came back from shopping…
Oh yes - and he had been wearing the pullover Mum in law had knitted him for his birthday the week before.”
Very funny though, I suspect, about as likely to have actually taken place as the “well I was hiding in this 'fridge” shaggy dog tail that was posted recently
Yes, that takes me back! I well remember being involved in making some fibreglass canoes at School, and pouring in the 2 Pack foam mix. As you said, highly exothermic. It was a successful project all-round.
But back to my Ask…
I’m well acquainted with UK Wiring Reg’s from being under the bonnet, and appreciate that I need to accommodate the French Reg’s into the design of my new floors and walls as they go in and up, just as others have.
So where do I go from here? Do I have to develop a special handshake and roll the trousers on one leg up?
I was a member of the Tingha & Tucker Club - maybe I still am?
Still much talked about but NAFAIK, haven’t been paying quite so much attention lately. Still dont have as many electrical house fires put down to ring main circuits as the French have on radials . Our consumer units are growing ever larger though but we still use a lot less copper wire.
I remember visiting Bondaglass in Crystal Palace to buy my two pack foam for a 16ft deep vee speed boat. Fortunately I couldn’t get that in my hallway so it was done on the drive. The stuff used to expand at the rate of a warm can of cola given a “little” shake, fortunately the chap from Bondaglass gave quick briefings on using the stuff but he did have a few good yarns to share
).
. Our consumer units are growing ever larger though but we still use a lot less copper wire.