Toads At Home

As avid followers will know, at the beginning of May we put a box in the ground in which to put the earth connection for our electrical supply.  Since the picture was taken we have put a lid on it so that it looks like a square manhole.  Nothing exciting there.

As we walked past the box this morning though a little head popped out of the cutout that acts as a handle.  "There can't be anything living in there", exclaimed Mrs Riotlife as I lifted the lid to show two toads.  One of them was small, dark and almost smooth so we think that he was very young, while the other was much more toady; brown, warty, baggy and about twice as big.

It is incredible that they can get in and out of the hole as it is about a foot deep with vertical concrete sides. Though having watched them climbing fence posts in the past we know they are very good at scaling vertical surfaces.  It is excellent that they have found somewhere safe to live as too often they live somewhere that is not safe from us, like under the car wheels.

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.

EDF Guys

The EDF Guys returned today to entertain us some more with their aerial acrobatics.  Oh, at the same time they did fix the powerline 25m up in the air.  Like the old adage says, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I will let the pictures do the talking.

Pylon ready for inspection

Pylon being inspected

Connecting the safety wire on pylon

Checking the voltage

Tightrope walking on a pylon

Reparing the electrical cable

Outside Socket

Digging a trench with crowbar in solid rock for outside socket

Digging the Trench

Yesterday, we dug the trench for the cable for our outside electrical sockets.  Because the ground is so hard and dry I had to use a crowbar to break up the earth but luckily it only needs to be a narrow and shallow trench.

The picture doesn't show it clearly but it is about 10 metres from the house to where the sockets are going.  There will be sufficient soil dug out to almost fill the builder's bag on the left of the photo.

Why Not Solar?

We are going to put the sockets next to the wooden stake so that they can be used for a fountain in the pond, for lights or for power tools.  We had hoped to use solar to power the lights and fountain but it is not cost effective to do so and there is no guarantee that there will be enough sun to charge the batteries.   We will leave the little solar lights around the pond as they are quite effective but we do want guaranteed light as we would hate for us or someone else to inadvertently walk into the pond.

Next Steps

Next, the cable will go into gaine to provide it with some protection, but as the gaine is thin plastic it won't stop a spade going through it in the way that an armoured cable would.  It seems strange to us that for safety reasons we are restricted on the number of lights or sockets that can be attached to a circuit but we can bury normal cable just a couple of inches below the ground.

Before we lay the cable we will put some sand into the bottom of the trench to remove any sharp edges, then the gaine plus cable will be laid in, followed by a bit more sand and then red warning tape to remind us that there is a buried cable there.  We will finish off with soil and grass seed.

Putting our earth connection in place

In France, unlike in Britain, the electricity supplier (EDF) does not supply the Earth (ground to the Americans) connection.  This means that we have to put in our own earth connection from the main distribution board to a spike in the ground.

So, earlier this week we purchased a 5 metre earth cable, a 1.5 metre metal spike (piquet de terre) and an insulated earth connector (borne de terre).

Driving in a 5 Foot Metal Spike

Driving earth spike into the ground

On Wednesday I dug a hole through the 30cm (12") layer of rough stone that formed the old courtyard when this was a working farm.  Once I had gone through this layer, we were down to lovely soft clay which meant that driving the earth spike in for most of its 1.5 metre length was relatively easy.  Here you can see our friend giving the top of the spike its last hit!   Our main concern with doing anything below ground level here is that the mains water pipe comes across the courtyard but, being an old farm, there are no records telling us where.  We have to keep going but every time we do something in the ground we expect there to see a massive fountain erupt.

Connecting the Distribution Board to the Earth Spike

Luckily for us the previous owners had put a light where our pond is now, which meant that there was a conduit coming from the electrical distribution board to outside.  We fed the new earth cable through this conduit, and then connected one end to the main electrical distribution board and the other to the borne de terre.  We then connected another earth cable between the other end of the borne de terre and the earth spike. 

Voila, we now have an earth that meets the French electrical regulations. 

Finished earth connection

The photograph shows the concrete surround that is required to protect the earth spike, with the borne de terre attached to its side.  We will finish this off by putting a manhole cover on the concrete surround so that we can walk around safely.

The borne de terre needs to be accessible as for the testing the circuit is broken between the two isolators and the resistance tested. When I understand a bit more about this I will put up another post with the explanation.