Wiring Installation

Labelling electric cables

A well deserved rest

The installation of our new electrical system continues apace, with lots of the new wiring now in place.   For those of you not familiar with French wiring regulations, there is a maximum of 8 sockets or 8 lights to a circuit, with separate circuits for washing machines, dishwashers, ovens, extractor fans, etc.  There is also a minimum number of sockets for each room type (living, bedroom, study, etc) and then extra sockets if any rooms are above a certain size.  The regulations also require that each main room has a phone and television socket.  We will put up another posting in the near future covering some of these rules.

ABB Consumer Unit France

The upshot of this is that the distribution panel is enormous, and enormously expensive, with up to 50 circuits from it.

In the next couple of weeks we will get EDF to convert us from a 3 phase (400 volt) supply to the more normal 230V supply.

We are happy to be seeing the back of the 3 phase supply as it adds complexity and danger.  The complexity is that we are supposed to manage the load across the phases by using a balanced load on each circuit.  Clearly this is not possible as we don't know where each circuit is nor could we necessarily balance the load even if we did.  The danger is that there is the potential for there to be 400V available at a socket, which could quite clearly be fatal.

Once the conversion has taken place we will also cutover to the new distribution board, which replaces the old fuses with modern circuit breakers.  You never know, we might just have a little glass of something to celebrate.