Re: your guitar, as a colleague of mine said when I said I didn't have time at work, he told me 'you have to make time' 🤨😅. I likewise have a guitar that I should know how to play by now, seems I also have an inability to make time 😂
Welcome to France from a Scot in Tulle! Question for you - does you being in Marseille have anything to do with a video ad I saw on the YT vid I watched before this one? The link in the right panel mentioned MaPrimeRenov, but the ad itself featured several clips of you (Jordan, in an Artisan Electrics shirt, no sound), so I thought I'd ask.
Hi, Welcome to living in France. Bon chance 😂 I am from Scotland originally but living in France for 22 years. I live not too far from Marseille in a town called Manosque. I have just moved to a lovely old Provinciale house with a lot if interesting electrics. Feel free to contact me if you would be interested in a visit as you mentioned in the video. Cheers Andrew.
The circuit is cable from street =>blade fuse=> linky meter => RCBO selective 500ma , you can open the "exit side" of the RCBO but not the fuse box. the seal is missing here. The led driver is illegal in the consumer unit, it's not attended to put anything else than RCB , circuit breaker, relay, but definitely not a led driver ! The bussbar on the top row is attend for use with screws, the bottom one is the right one, it a push fit but have retaining clips to lock the bussbar in place. With linky the adjustable main RCBO is not adjustable any more. It was previously used to set your power subscription. they were all set at the highest current the line feeding the house can bear. The subscription level is managed by a breaker (a simple switch) in the linky. The switch will open only if the current is over your subscription but as it's not equipped with any arc extinguishing system, the linky is smart enough to keep it close if it's a short circuit or any condition that will damage it if open. The protection for short circuits is provided by the main RCBO, and if the RCBO fail the delayed blade fuse will open the circuit at last resort. Type A are a bit more expensive than the older AC one, but now the difference is so slight that you keep only type A in stock and install only A type. It came mainly with the development of induction cooking device with high power diodes that create high DC voltage with high power. Note that the breakers are type C and not B like in UK
I wondered about that main fuse cover as well. Here in Germany anything in front of the meter and the meter itself have to be sealed. I somehow assume it is the same in France. I think you could see the green seal (In French I think it is something like Plómbe, originating from the old lead ones) on the Main Switch.
@@alexanderkupke920 The meter 'linky" plastic seal (no more leaded seal) is hidden behind his removable clip front cover. As the breaker is after the meter, and is no more a limiter for the subscription power, they don't matter if it's sealed or not, it can be to refrain people to mess with "always live" part at the input side, the output side was never sealed as it's the customer side.
@@alexanderkupke920 there is a reason for that, the RCBO in France is divided in two, the upper part belongs to the company which manage the power physical network ENEDIS, so no touch so they have a seal. But the down part belongs to you and you can open it at your own discretion, fortunately by the way because you could not test the residual current breaker otherwise. In that case you make it trip creating a line-ground fault
@@GeneralKenobi69420 En Angleterre avec un BAC+3, tu as le même poste et mieux payer qu'un ingénieur en France qui a un BAC+5. Après au États-Unis le salaire est élevé mais le coût de la vie aussi
The DTI (Dispositif de Terminaison Intérieur) is the point of demarcation between the telephone network and the interior wiring, so that’s where the network operator responsibility ends. The other little box is just a television antenna splitter. There’s another box you can get which lets you terminate RJ45s from around the house in a small patch panel (up to 16 ways) and also has space (and power outlets) for a router/switch. The Linky meter is a smart meter send 10 minute interval readings back normally via power-line carrier to an aggregation point at the substation. They can also be fitted with 4G modules if needed. The meter also detects if you’re using more than your contracted kVA and has a built-in trip switch which you can reset if you go over the limit. It can also be remotely switched off if you don’t pay your bills!
We have kind of a similar system in Italy, since the 2000. If you pull from the meter 10% of more power than what the contract allows it will trip, up to 30% more for 3 hours (for a standard 3kW meter it means you can get 3.3kW forever and 4kW for up to 3 hours), after that it will disconnect after a couple of minutes. When they introduced it it was very annoying, especially coming from the old meters that just had a thermal switch that was not that accurate and you could have easily got plenty over the limit for a couple of minutes. With the electronic ones it's annoying, if you use your air dryer and forgot you had the washing machine on, you will have to go reset the meter (that for newer regulations has to face the public street, so you have to get outside). Of course people can just pay to augment the limit to up to 6kW or 10kW (more you need to go 3 phase) for a couple of euros of fixed cost more at month, but you know, people don't want to spend money and prefer to do mental calculation on what appliances to activate and when to save 10$ at month.
@@alerighi People managed to trip their supplies even in the old days of mechanical meters and thermal cutouts. Mamma's got dinner in the oven and sis takes a shower? Darkness in the whole flat within a few minutes. Happened to me when I stayed with a host family in Torino in 2002. I was quite amused when I saw someone from the host family take a picture off of the wall in the hallway to reveal the meter and reset the mains!
@@Ragnar8504 haha that's an interesting alternate reality as somebody from the US. Around these parts usually it would be something like the doorbell is sharing the circuit with the microwave which is sharing all the outlets in the kitchen because it's an older house and it's sharing the bathroom outlet because you're not gonna use that at the same time. and then you got dinner in the microwave and somebody rings the doorbell while you're in the bathroom and you trip the circuit. Crazy to think that there's a momentary whole house limit. I guess we're spoiled over here with a 200 amp split phase 240V main breaker and only occasionally very rarely Protection at the meter.
The Netherlands has very specific requirements for the main consumer units: a standardized "meter cupboard" (meterkast). It is not perfect, but nowadays the regulations say even where everything needs to go NEN 2768[1]. The base plate is also standardized 2100 × 750 × 310 mm. That is where the main cable of the electrics but also (often) gas and always water come inside the homes. I also like Hager. In the Dutch regulations it however limits the amount of circuit breakers per RCD to four.
I dunno but the old ones were wood in south africa and now steel with some kind of plastic or enamel paint, mostly whit or grey black was the color of the switches cause its like a plastic that doesnt melt as easy as white plastics i think they added carbon @@kittsdiy
The Brazilian standard is closer to the EU than the British. Basic supply is 1 phase 127V for very small houses in very poor regions. Due to the electric shower with up to 7500W, most residences have at least 2 phases allowing 220V. Three phases is frequent if residence is not so small. Rural areas have 1 phase splitted in the middle making 127+127 = 254V! It is frequent to see just one distribution line for the transformer that has the other side connected to the ground and the neutral. Hope neutral never disconnects in this installation! There are 2 states where the phase neutral voltage is 220V. All Brazil is @60Hz
Love to know the cost of the double pole circuit breakers with the push fit connections and is there a single module rccbo version, probably asking too much now, no rings there though
@@williamlowther7051 on major brands (Legrand / Schneider / Hager) it's around 8-10€ for circuit breakers. More like 30€ for 3-Phase + N. Rare amp values (like the 2A used for command circuits) come at a higher cost, can be 12-15€.
I’m a French Electrical Engineer who lives in Marseille, if you need further explanation I can provide you some. French regulation for electrical installations is called NFC15-100 and if I recall well Legrand has made an awesome guide which explains everything step by step with schematics and pictures.
I think MCB with both N and L are very rare system in most of the Europe. In my country (Croatia) 16A/2,5m2 for sockets and 10A/1,5mm2 for lights is a norm. For households B type MCB is used. RCD 30mA for Bathrooms and "wet" rooms and 300mA for the rest, although newest standard is 30mA for al purposes. in 99% of houses Type A RCD is used.
@@nikicamalezic5388 You can also use 16A/2,5mm2 for sockets and 10A/1,5mm2 for lights in France, but you won’t be able to stack as many sockets/lights on the same circuit. For instance it’s 8 sockets max on a 16A/1,5mm2 circuit while you can go up to 12 on a 20A/2,5mm2 (general case, for wet rooms like kitchen and bathroom it’s different)
@@Sakiut25-1804 Thank you for Info. 1,5mm2 can handle 18A max and 2,5 26A, so using 10/20A MCB as you said is fine. But usual installation in Croatia is little different. We are more conservative on the safe side :) We usually do two circuits per room 16A/2,5 sockets (up to 5-6 sockets per MCB) and 10A/1,5 for lights except where we need more circuits like in kitchen for appliances. Every room has separated circuits. House socket are max 16A rated so that is also why 16A MCB is used. 20A MCB is usually for circuits with direct connections.
@@nikicamalezic5388 In newest installations the conditions are almost the same here: one socket circuit per room, usually a 16A/2,5mm2 one and at least two separated 10A or 16A/1,5mm2 light circuits. The proximity between French and Croatian installations makes me wonder if maybe there’s EU regulations about domestic electrical installations
@@nikicamalezic5388 In the Netherlands MCB's with both L and N are quite standard. It's even mandatory to switch both Line and Neutral because of two reasons: 1. Many (but not all) residential buildings have TT System grounding like in France which means Neutral and Earth aren't connected and we rely on RCD's for ground fault protection. 2. In the past we had 127/220 Volts meaning some buildings didn't have a line and neutral but got 2 of the 3 line wires to get 220 Volts. We don't have separation between lights and sockets so basically most circuits are B16/2,5mm². For RCD protection we have up to 4 circuits on one Type A 30mA RCD although new installations are usually fitted with Type A 30mA RCBO's on every circuit.
We have that system in Germany too, it's called Hager Quick Connect. It's not one earth block shown in this video, they are two block connected together with a link that is located between the third and the fourth screw from the left. And on the left and the right ends you can see the unused and open holes for the links to add more blocks if necessary. Hager also manufactures them in blue. You can get them in different sizes, with or without screws. The push-fits are rated for 1.5 to 4mm², and the screw terminals for 1.5 to 25mm². Rated current is 63A. The blocks cost round between 6 and 15 Euros, depending on the size. The links cost 34 Euros for a set of 10. The difference is, that you won't find type AC RCDs here anymore. Only in older installations. They have been banned for new installation in 1987. The fuses official designation is NH fuse, but they are usually called blade or knife fuse. They are used because they can isolate a short-circuit current of up to 120kA. NH is German and stands for Niederspannung Hochleistung (low voltage high power). They require a special tool for insertion and removing them. Not to be operated by lay persons, because that system has no precautions preventing the insertion of a fuse with a too high rating. They have an optical indicator showing when the fuse is blown.
aren´t the AC RCD´s banned even since 1983? either way it is highly recommended to change them out immediatly mostly to an type A but i would always take at least an type F because of all the appliances today that have an vfd in them and of course when you have an EV or PV system in the house best solution would be an Type B but they are still very expensive, where the F is only ~20€ or so more expensive than an type A
@@TheFlow2006 Nope, in 1984 it was introduced that "circuits in a room containing a shower and/or a bathtub must be protected by a 30mA RCD". The type AC RCDs approval, according to VDE 0664 was revoked. And no VDE certification, no installation. The mandate for VDE certification comes from the regulations released by the DNOs (Technische Anschlussbedingungen or TAB). Type F is usually not necessary, type A is sufficient. For special dedicated circuits like EV or PV, I would use the recommendations of the manufacturer. They tell you what devices for protection need to be installed. If the EV charger has an integrated protection against DC faults you usually only need a type A RCD in the supply of the charger. And the thing is, you won't get type F RCBOs, only RCDs. You then require an additional MCB.
In the UK we use term HRC or High Rupture Current for fuses like main cut out fuse. Typically 60 amps, so won't blow 'instantly' [0.1s] untill around 880 amps, but typically can resist 80,000 amps for like 0.0001 seconds without exploding to badly and creating secondary fire
If you want to learn more you are more than welcome to join me in Normandy. I Moved to France to start an electrical business in France after 10 years on the tools in the UK. Always happy to help you about
In our installation, it's not even possible to partially lift the cover with a seal on. Every accessible component in front of the meter is sealed not only for safety reasons, but to prevent anyone from stealing electricity.
Eastern Europe: there is a panel with a sealed meter at the street front and there is one or more distribution boards inside the house; we can do anything in the house (with qualified electrician, in theory), we can also turn on or off the breaker that is after the meter. Basically after the sealed meter the electricity company has no control, nor do they need any control.
Looks similar to the panels in Germany (well, "Hager" is a German brand, after all). FYI, the covers don't have to be screwed back in after you put the cover back on, just push on the screws !
The round hole for the back box are they available here in england yet , I first saw them in germany back in the 90s so much easier to use you can still have a square plate on the front
In Australia, they have banned the use of Type AC RCD's/RCBO's. Type AC RCD's are designed to detect AC residual current leakage currents, but aren’t able to detect leakage currents coming from more advanced technologies and appliances producing non-sinusoidal leakage currents, generating pulsating DC residual currents or slowly rising, slowly falling DC residual currents and halfway residual currents. Because of this, the need to improve the level of protection, transitioning from the minimum velocity Type AC to Type A as a minimum. The RCBO's here do not switch the Neutral wire, only the active.
Our norme (regs) called NFC 15-100 up to 8 disjoncteurs (mcb's) per Differentiel. This panel is not in conformity with the latest normes actually. Plus we mostly use type A instead of old AC now mostly. As soon as you have switching power supplies (in almost everything) they can have fault condition that delays tripping in type AC. The regs for height: main on/off AGCP 500ma in this case 1.8 meters max, 0.90 min and the switch panel TGBT is 1.8 max and 0.9 min but 0.5 if there is a door. People have to be able to access it in an emergency to cut power and this includes to some extent elderly and disabled. The box VDI with the DTI can get quite sophisticated sometimes. You can mount routers and switches in them too. Cables or conduit, depends on the job really.
Hello! Welcome to you in our old country!! Cumulus is the water heater, is a funny name but we know what it stand for😊 I'm french by the way, I'm please to see a youtube star from other country to see and lived in my old France! That warm my heart, thank you! Have a great and lovely adventure here!✌️
"DTI" is "Dispositif de Terminaison Intérieure", the telco demarc point where the copper phone line ends. the test is a test RJ11 where they can plug a tester device. this particular model appears to have a 1 to 4 phone line splitter (the 4 RJ plugs at the bottom of the device). the consumer unit it to be installed in the "GTL" aka "Gaine Technique Logement" which is a floor to ceiling reserved area with a minimum 60cm width and 25cm deep, that is supposed to be accessible at all times. in new construction, the main breaker is to be installed between 90 and 130cm from the finished floor to allow access to handicapped people. breakers themselves are to be installed between 90 and 180cm maximum for similar accessibility reasons. as for the A and the AC, there are some rules in the norms about what cicuits are to use what type. you can use F types everywhere too, though, if you have the cash. "cumulus" is the water heater. the contactor is for the "Heures creuses" relay from the meter street -> blade fuse -> meter -> 500mA RCD.
I am a Ex-Royal Artillery Comms instructor 1999-2013 and I am currently a Senior Network Engineer (Cisco etc..) and Telecoms Engineer. I have never seen anything like the DTI box. I really like it very smart It's going to give me something to look up today.
Good point about consumer unit location. When we got married in the 70s we moved into a new council house. The consumer unit was just inside the front door at a reasonable eye level. Four years later we bought our own house (a Victorian jobby) and were told the house needed rewiring. So I put a simple fuse box in the cellar to replace the old consumer unit and copied the rented house by locating the new consumer unit just next to the front door, with appropriate twin & earth and auxiliary earth cables linking the two. So when I was away for work my wife could reset any tripped RCD/MCB without scratting round. I do now have a mini-consumer unit in the cellar so the link cable is protected by an MCB and the cellar lights plus cellar power outlets are powered from down there too.
" in the 70s [...] a new council house. [...]Four years later [...] (a Victorian jobby) " And that is a large part of the problem, I think. We've got a tremendous range of ages of installation, and consequently wiring to different standards. In some respects the intense ground fighting in WW2 had a beneficial outcome in that almost everything had to be re-wired to a significant degree, in a fairly short period of time, to a single standard (per country/ region). My first exposure to domestic wiring was when we moved into a Victorian house in the 1970s, and while trying to get the electrics to some sort of manageable state (e.g. replacing "round-pin" sockets with the "square"-pin ones, we discovered large runs of single-strand solid wiring with thoroughly perished rubber (not plastic - it burns differently ; Dad was a plastics chemist ; it was rubber, not plastic) cables, separate cable for live and neutral, going everywhere. We figured this was probably from a DC wiring system - some of the junction "boxes" (metal screw strips nailed to wooden boards, under floors and buried in lath-and-plaster) had polarity signs on them. No way, of course, to tell which was live and which was neutral. Literally, Victorian - we knew the house had been built by a local builder's merchant, so may have been packed with cutting edge technologies to see the old century out (1800s). The wire bell-cords to the servants quarters in the attic had been replaced with some of this positive and negative "white heat of technology" stuff, so the housemaid could be summoned to the drawing room *by electricity* ! Somehow, I don't think there will be much of that left on the continent. But there's still some of it left in that house, because we had a week when Dad was off work for the move, then he had to be back to work and we had to have a working house. And there was no budget for a sparky (nor any legal need). 50 years later I look at Dad's house, think about when I'll have to prepare it for sale, try desperately to remember what went where, and when ... and fear we've got no choice but to get the whole place gutted when we have to sell it. Nightmare!
@@a.karley4672 Our house had several runs of rubber/cloth insulated wires running in hardwood battens. They were clearly machine made with two grooves and a nailed on lid. A couple of years ago I think I removed just about the last of it when I did some work in one of the bedrooms. I believe that wiring had been installed circa 1910s. The house was originally lit by gas but must have been vacated around that 1910s date for some major work including some re-plastering and many of the floorboards must have been removed and replaced. There was also some rubber insulated twin wiring buried in the plaster but that was a later addition. One thing. I'm glad that I didn't have to wire with multiple radial circuits because there is little space to transition to the front 'posh' end of the house to the rear where hired help might have worked. Around 1995 I ran two six square mm T&E cables for a heater and a twin fuel cooker and that was hard work
I\ve seens a consumer unit in a Hungarian flat in a panel building that presumably is single phase and only has a whopping three B16 MCBs. No RCD or fancy stuff, the meter is elsewhere, presumably in the basement. In another building - a small vacation home - the whole house is behind three C16 MCBs followed by the 3-phase meter. Again no RCB or fancy stuff- and that's a fairly recent install. So the British consumer units may not be perfect - but there''s worse.
I live in France. The DTI is a RJ45 socket for the telecoms engineer to plug in ADSL test meter. Not used for fibre but if you have a separate landline then this is what is used. The black panel with the cutouts is for network hub/switch normally with CAT6 cabling. Fibre the telecoms engineer like to run this directly to the hub via a green outlet. The Linky smart control is virtually mandatory now. You don't have an option and it is supplied by EDF/ENDIS. So if you change energy supplier it just done digitally with no house call. The busbar protection have been cut too short. You can still touch the live and neutral where it has been shortened. You can buy special covers. The 2A breaker is for the small feed for the HC going to the relay for the hot water. The electrician has not got the correct circuits on AC and A.
This obviously depends on how widespread Frances DSL rollout is (And I've not really ventured into the more rural parts of France)...But I like to think that someday a telecoms engineer will be going into a long unoccupied property to prepare DSL service for a new resident, will open the cupboard where the DTI is, and uncover a long-forgotten Minitel terminal - Still connected - And in full working order (If Minitel was still operational)... ☎🖥😁 (Just hoping to goodness for the sake of the person responsible for the bill - If the terminal had been left powered-on and connected right up to the end - That it hadn't been left on a *3615* page... 🔞💸😉)
@@dieseldragon6756 well, in fact rural parts of France mostly have fiber available 80% in rural areas, and 86% overall have acces to optical fiber. France has the highest rate in Europe and copper extinction has started.
@@pizza_diavola-bx4op France does communications and connectivity *very* well, there's no denying that...And where we Brits were still wasting millions of Pounds every year shipping millions of Pounds of telephone directories out to millions of households around the UK, what did France Telecom do? They dropped the phone _books,_ gave every subscriber a Minitel terminal and free (I assume) access to Directory Enquiries...Soon to be followed up by much easier and cheaper booking of holidays, plane and train tickets for a short data session costing much less than a voice call! 🇫🇷💯👍 And when the rest of the World came into the Internet, France had already been there for at least twenty years. If that isn't the most literal definition of « _advanced_ » I don't know what is! 🏆 Granted, we also had our own equivalent (Prestel) which also supported colour and introduced the first public e-mail service...But at a cost of at least 400£ (4100FF/500€) for the equipment *plus* something like 10£/mo (101FF/12€50) for service, that was destined to fail from the start in an era when most households weren't even earning 100£ a week! 💸
This is quite common in Austria and Germany as well, the only thing i´m quite surprised is that this flat does just use 1 phase feeding. Normaly households should have a 3 phase suply for better grid balance....
@@MrElofix I live in North Germany in an small village. All houses here got 3 phase by default. If a kitchen stove is electric it is wired to 3 phase. A flow water heater , if installed, has 18, 21 or 24kW power, flow water heaters a wide spread common. In my house, the incomer ist fused with the here mentioned Blade fuses (NH ) 3x 63A and the master breaker in the meter box limits my power consumption to 3x50A. The DSO run a TNC-S system. The house is build 1950 and got 3 phase from beginnig. In 1990 I renew all electric, plumbing and heating The meter box and the incomer were replaced due a small fire in my cellar in 2020. I replaced all MCBs against RCBO. Most circuits ar 16A B , some 16A C, lighting 6A B. To separate sockets and lighing circuits are not mandatory but is recommend. In some places you can came across the outdated 127/220V supply. The N is not distributed but bonded to earth. The all consumers are on 2 phases, so double pole CBs are used. So if you test a socket you measure 127 V against earth and 220V between the holes. How I wrote, very rare but present. A friend of mine in the city of Essen lived in a flat with such installation.
in most apartment buildings the phase balance is made by connecting different appartments with sigle phase to the 3 available phases in the distribution column. Many people here in France even when they have 3 phase like to switch to sigle phase to avoid phase balanc, save on subscription costs and electrical equipment. It's common to have 45A sigle-phase in France.
@@pizza_diavola-bx4op Same in UK. An apartment building will have three phase with each apartment alternating on the phases. It is rare any supply is less than 60A in the UK. Some very old houses in remote locations may have lower amp supplies. Apartments tend to be 60A while homes 100A.
In addition to @johankorten2797, in the Netherlands the wiring is placed in conduit (mostly not flex), and the common circuits are distributed in a star form from lightpoint to lightpoint to the switches and outlets. So when the wiring needs replacing you don't have to break the walls open, you just pull new wires from box to box. Lighting and common outlets are on combined circuits ( 16A). Also we don't have ring circuits like in the UK, so no need for glass-fuses in every plug. I do find ring circuits are outdated and could be a fire hazard, if the ring has a break somewhere. The location of the cabinet with the meter- and distributionboard needs to be within a couple of meters (I thought 3) from the front door of the residence.
32A circuits are extremely useful and flexible though, and they do not have to be rings either and can be implemented as radials. It means that in a location like a kitchen you do not need separate circuits for things like microwaves, electric kettles, dishwashers, air fryers and so on. It makes things simple. Also, it means that something like a thin flexible cord on a table lamp can be protected by a more suitably rated fuse in the plug (such as 3A) rather than a 20A breaker. The reason the fuse in the plug system was adopted post-war was that the previous round pin standard had different sized plugs and circuits for different functions. Thus low powered devices would use small, 2A or 5A plugs on radial circuits with a 2A or 5A central fuse. Higher powered devices would be on 15A radials. It was deemed by the designers of the system that it was more flexible to have a single sized plug but without forgoing the extra protection of having a fuse sized for the type of appliance in use. Thus BS1363 and the fuse in the plug idea. That was an enabler for 32A (and more powerful) circuits, but it was not the only reason. Of course, this was designed before MCBs, RCDs and so on, but it remains a very useful feature which enables BS1363 plugs to be used on just about any rated circuit (it's common to have a 13A socket on a 40A cooker circuit for instance).
@@deathonawhitehorse If you maintain it correctly it certainly can work and can be safe. But most people are not qualified for this, and will not notice when there is a break in the ring. In my opinion, ringcircuits in domestic environments are outdated and there are better/safer solutions nowadays.
Ring circuits can use less copper which was a very important consideration during the Second World War when they were first adopted as a common wiring solution. Modern practice, I hear, has returned to favouring radial circuitry,
How accurate that statement is where consumer units are installed. I am a retired electrician now 77. My unit is too high and was in a cupboard untill i removed the cupboard to expand the kitchen 20 years ago when I moved to Wales. What i found behind the old wylex consumer unit was frightening. Meter tails had been extended using 15amp. Connector blocks and well melted. I replaced the consumer unit and Tails. Certainly an eye-opener this is. This is far superior. I am out of touch now with uk standards as been out of the trade too long. No longer do private jobs , I am capable, but a definite No. Thanks for the video. We learn something everyday.
Oh, forgot to mention, the white box above the Linky should have seals on it, the supplier uses it to shut the supply down for meter work etc. Used to be a solid neutral link and fuse for phase. Three phase low current supply is quite common.
@@iainkay3630 For single phase installation the phase color is always black, no matter the phase use. For 3 phase meters, colour code is European, so your right for 3 phase installations
8 місяців тому+1
if it's like in Belgium the only mandatory colours are yellow/green for PE and blue for neutral. Neutral must be blue, blue must be neutral. The phase wires and light switch wires must be any other color. Back in the days phase conductors were red and black then it evolved to black-blue(-brown(-another black)) while now and since a few decades they are conform to HD 308 with blue-brown(-black-grey) and cables made for 3-phase supply without neutral do not have the blue conductor anymore, which makes things far more simpler and safer.
The colors of the phase in the electrical panel are not specific to that of the neighborhood transformer. In France we often use red, black or brown. It depends on the electricians and the age of the installation, on old installations we often find black and on more recent installations red.
Lets be fair, if your doing a brand new build install then the box has to be in an accessible place and that has been the case for a few years. The gubbings of the box can either be split load (safe as houses) or RCBOs which is also safe as houses. Give it a few years and itll all be AFDDs. And others have mentioned cost is a major factor on install.
Hiya, I moved from the UK to Biarritz in western France. Welcome/bienvenue ! My electric cupboard looks very similar to yours. By the way, if you take the green front off the Linky you will see some signalling terminals on the lower right - these are where the wires to the water heater contactor come from and how the water heater gets switched on and off for the heures cruse via the Linky (not a time switch). Mine also has space for the internet router, RJ45 cables to each room and a power outlet to plug the router in to. It is all very neat and tidy. Even the doorbell transformer is in the electrical panel alongside the breakers.
Its awesome that france considers home networking space as part of its electricity installs and bundles them all into a neat package. We're definitely very behind on things like that.
I remember wiring a house up in France 30 years ago using Hager breakers, it was decent stuff, they did DIN rail mounted time clocks for lighting etc back then too. The trouble with the consumer unit that low is that it’s also easily accessed by kids too! I’m in the UK in a 19 year old house and the fuse box is reachable for an adult within reason, is there a set height here? Note the French don’t do ‘ring mains’ they never identified the live and neutral at the wall socket either and some plugs can be inserted either way around do live neutral reversed. The French tend to run single strings from sockets back to a breaker, makes for a lot of wires at the board.
I seem to remember they introduced a standard for L and N at sockets recently, N on the left if I'm not mistaken. Only earthed plugs are polarised, all non-earthed plugs fit either way, which renders the fixed positions in the socket rather useless, especially considering most appliances these days have double-pole switches and the ones that don't (table lamps, etc.) are most likely to be class II. I assume dedicated circuits are required for most larger appliances, as in pretty much every country with socket circuits
We in the UK need to put the ring circuit to bed and loose our adversion to 3-phase in domestic premises. We also need to be less concerned with "polarity". With the euro 2-pin non-polarised socket, polarity can't be guaranteed to the appliance, so who cares if the ES lampholder is wired live to shell? What kind of person would stick their fingers in a lampholder, ES or BC? Another continental european thing is the trend for all insulated class 2, no metal, no earth required.. In my experience only places like kitchens and damp areas such as bathrooms have the CPC taken to a socket. Washing machines in bathrooms? No problem, sockets by sinks not an issue. 3-phase cookers no issue, This way the supplier can dispense with the 100A service fuse. and use something more appropriate. 0.75mm2 flexes protected by 16A devices, no fused plugs with 3A fuses here. A few years ago, there was a committee looking into why UK hospitals and other public buildings are so expensive to build compared to the European counterparts, you can see why on the elctrical installation side. All our regs are supposed to be harmonised with the IEC, really? In the UK we are over engineered and it produces very little benefit for the end user. We have very little standardisation with everyone condeming everyone else's work, making the industry look like a bunch of cowboys. Consumer unit "upgrades" are a good example., remember wi unit fires ? Very rare with traditional fuseboards and rewirable fuses.
@@ericthelan2188 This! I have the same feeling that the UK is a total outlier in many ways (not just the sockets). This means, that many really good solutions can not be sold in the UK (solar inverters, induction hobs), while the industry in Britain is saved from competition and does not innovate at an international rate. Also, it is quite interesting to see how few UK sparks know anything about DALI and KNX, which would be often a life-saver for rewire projects.
@@Ragnar8504 Federal Republic of Germany here! At Bundespost (state post company [government own]) since around 1920 at SCHUKO [SCHUtzKOntaktsteckdose] (literally safety contact power outlet) they use the standard that from front view are left is neutral and right is phase, up and down is saved earth / cpc. My teacher in electrician company works there for many years after this electrician people worked around overall in West-Germany so it started to be a "standard" here. They influenced it with work in every colonies and working as teacher into other countries where we Germans was be after the second world war. So do you can found the Schuko around the world if they not use the British system. 😂 So we use N-L at every modern installation in mostly the houses. If you marked N same the musicians do in musical equipment do you can put in right too, other is that the power cord "hanging down" hardwired on the plug if it produces inside European Union.
@@OldLordSpeedy That's a Bundespost tradition but not an official standard (VDE or anything). The only official consensus seems to be that you should keep all sockets in one house the same. Asking "Neutral left or right?" is a good way to start a flame war among Germans on the internet. Some people say "L on the left" and others "R (from the old phase designations RST) on the right". Both equally correct, unless your employer has specific company guidelines. The best theory I've ever read was that you should install horizontal sockets (turned 90 degrees) phase up so it takes longer for the water level to reach the phase in case of a flood. As if those 19 mm were likely to matter.
Belgium here: I have a new apartment (2021) with 3 phase 20A supply. I have 3 rows of breakers (most double module) with screw terminals. This is 3x400v+N. Some homes still have 3x230v, but that is being phased out. Residential is normally always TT earth. 3 phase to induction heater and EV charger in parking garage. (Unfortunately no data cable to EV charger) Everything else is single phase, although I have gas radiant floor heating and a mini-split system for AC. A large heat pump would likely have been 3 phase as well. Separate breakers for almost everything you can imagine. Max of 8 loads per breaker (double outlet counts as 1 load) by code, I have 4 socket circuits. Wiring is all singles in tubes, 2.5mm² for sockets fused at 20A, 1.5mm² for lights, fused at 16A. It's required to have a 300mA main RCD for normal loads and 30mA for all "wet" loads. They are always daisy-chained, but never the selective type, so if you do something seriously wrong, its almost always the main RCD that trips. I wish we would move over to RCBOs instead, so the trips are localized. Other than that I quite like how it's done here, especially compared to the videos I see from the UK :O Also: In apartments, the meter is almost always in a technical room in the basement. They moved to standardized wall mounting plates a long time ago, but with the new smart meters, that's even less messy. From the meter, it's a mains wire up to your breaker panel (consumer unit), usually on the wall of a small room where the all of the technicals are done, usually next to the washing machine.
RCBO double pole protected are crazy epensive .. a normal braker is mabye 8 to 12 euro .. RCBO wil proably cost 50 euro ..and has to be dual pole protected ( reason if because still lots of 3X230V in Belgium ) . But yes for slectivity it would be nice ..but has no sence if you have 300mA standaard ( non selective )RCD ...chances are big it wil trip also ( in uk there is no MAIN RCD )
@@kittsdiy True. Although Siemens makes them VAT inc for 30€ (Conrad), and I suspect price would go down if they weren't a specialty item. But given it's normally a one time cost and usually the time is much more expensive than the material, I would at least like to see this available for sockets. Or maybe we can replace the 30mA system we now have with RCBOs instead and keep the normal stuff on a separate 300mA RCB. Anything but the "trip all of things" scenario we have now...
@@Dries007BE nope that are RCD's .. still need a fuse behind it .. RCBO = RCD + MCB combine in 1 device . And those are expensive in Belgium and not very common . ( 45 a 65 euro at conrad siemens and are also 1P+N .. so probably not ok for inspection in Begium ...
@@kittsdiy On Conrad they have the Siemens 5SU1356-6KK16 for example, which is an actual RCBOs. If you look for "differentieelautomaten" at zelektro or elektramat, they also have them, with varying prices, but 25€ seems to be the cheapest option. But you are right on the 1+N thing, so maybe it should only be allowed in situations where it makes sense (3x400+N for example). Although I admit I don't quite get why this would matter too much, there must be a reason why they're marked as L and N instead of 1 and 2.
I’ve have certainly never understood why in the UK double busbar consumer units aren’t standard since boards are now fully populated with RCBOs, to me fly-leads to the neutral bar is a bizarre arrangement and untidy.
French electric regulation is RFC 15 100. You can find very comprehensive pdf summaries on Legrand and haguer’s websites. Very easy to read and understand
The Netherlands and Switzerland do not differentiate between socket and light circuits. Wires are in conduits and rings are not used. 3 Phases are common for residential installations. The MCBs are double-poled, mostly 10 or 16A and there are multiple RCDs. In Switzerland, the meter and the main fuse must be accessible from the outside, the consumer unit can be anywhere. In our case in the cellar. The main fuses are not sealed. These are round fuses that are screwed in. The amperage is also coded by the diameter of one end, so you could mount a smaller fuse in the holder, but not a bigger one. In the Netherlands, RCDs have been mandatory since 1960 or so. Another interesting component in Switzerland is the STOTZ (Stromstoßschalter). It is a bi-stable switch that is used to control lights with multiple switches, for example in corridors. One pulse switches on and the next pulse switches off. So, instead of DT and cross switches, you can have any number of momentary switches in parallel. The weirdest installation I came across was in the 1970s in the inner city of Delft (NL) Here, the phase and neutral were at 110 Volt relative to earth. This required consumer units with a fuse in the phase and in the neutral.
Well it's stupid not using ring circuits. and massive radial ones can cause fires as they are like extention cables and when they are using it too much will go on fire like and lighting circuits should be only a certain size (sq metres) if not could start a fire due to so many lights on in that circuit and that's being a good electrician as in the future of these circuits it can be modified or made bigger and that's how it causes fires and problems and people should know that like 👍
Our rules for electricity in residential is NF C 15-100. Old houses have also ugly electricity installation like UK, with fuses. The DTI is for testing old cooper PTT arrival (phone and ADSL internet). Useless now with fiber connection. Coaxial TV repartitor, is compulsory but also useless now with fiber and TV by internet. Ethernet dispatch and 2 16A sockets are compulsory for Internet provider box and other (like Fiber converter we call it PON/ONT). Number of ethernet outlet is based on number of rooms (see NF C 15-100). The biggest flaw in french installations is the lack of neutral in light switch, we go from breaker with phase, then to the switch, then DCL (central point of the ceiling for the bulb), then go back with neutral to the breaker. Not very upgradable for smart control lightning.
If you were to hop over to Germany for a bit, I could show you around some new, fairly new and ancient 3-phase units in one place. And show you how those label windows on these breakers are used properly. ;)
In central europe Poland we do similar, but our power meters are installed in outdoor cabinet on house wall if power service is overhead or in property border in cabinet if service is underground, also our electrical distribution grid works in TN-C system, rarely in TT, residential gets three phases L-N 230 L-L 400V. If i good know, France using usually TT system with 133 volts to ground and 230 phase to phase which need double pole breakers in house panel
Same in Loithuania. A few decadeds ago power meters were also inside homes, but these days they are moved away into separate boxes to either property boundaries, or the closest power pole if within one's property
@@AsXSn I assumed that was just a leftover from old times. In Austria you had fused neutrals well into the early 1980s, in a then-standard 220/380 V TT system.
in Germany the main Fuse of a House will be external in a special Compartment if the Provider needs to shut power off. the Meter is always in the House. Sometimes with the needed Fuses in one box (in small Houses to save some space) but mostly as a main Distribution. if you have two or more flats in a house you will see a Sub Distribution in every Flat.
I think the ‘cumulus’ circuit is there for the EDF to be able to remotely disable the water heater during peak demand periods. I vaguely recall that there was such functionality built into the ‘geyser’ (as we used to call it) circuit when I was a youngster living in South Africa
In France it's pretty common (depending on your subscription) to have cheaper electricity during the night and/or around noon. The "cumulus" (which is the name of a range of water heaters from the brand Atlantic) is connected through the contactor and works only during these periods I think it's possible but it's extremely rare that EDF uses that way to reduce power demand during peaks
The 2A breaker is to protect the contacter which turns the hot water heating on depending what hours are cheap rate on your contract. Heurs Creuse is cheap rate and heurs Pleine is full rate. In my case the hours for heurs Creuse start at 23:36 and end at 07:30. If you push the buttons on the Linky you can see instant current consumption, kWh for day and night, maximum current ever drawn for the house and the linky is already setup to measure how much you've injected back into the network if you have solar panels. This is under Index Injection on the Linky.
The EDF will send a signal low/high price at fix times. Times at witch electricity is less expansive depends on your subsciption contract. The little 3 positions slider on the contacter is for: 0=Always OFF, Auto=automatic switching, 1=forced ON. On some contacters The forced ON will automatically switch back to Auto when finished heating or low price signal is sent.
hi really nice video and like to have a external input about our electrical system ^^ on your main breaker (the Bako one) the fuse can be set to something between 15 and 45 amps. it was set up by the electricity provider (Enedis who is in charge of the puplic electrical network up to houses) but now with linkys being mandatory, they are all set to the max and the linky is configured remotely to the plan you’re using ^^ if you’re interested about how the linky works and how it’s implemented i recommend you the channel Monsieur Bidouille who made a video in Enedis labs (only automatic subtitles avaliable tho)
In Germany, most households have 3 phases.230V to neutal/400V Phase to Phase. With the Hager system, you can split the 3 phases alternately between all circuit breakers. You should perhaps take a look at that.
Yep. We always terminate our cables with WAGO TopJob S or Phoenix PTI 2,5-PE/L/NT installation clamps, to separate the cabling inside the cabinet from the building. It makes it so much nicer to bring a unit you wired, labelled & tested in the workshop onsite and just push in the wires.
I am from Marseille and I can say your installation is very clean, electricity in this city has ton of issues cause of old unmaintained installation on old buildings
I'm portuguese, I live in france I live in London for 6 years as a handyman. In the UK you have third world level electric installations, it's scary how dangerous it can get
Também eu! It's amazing how such a developed and rich nation has awful electric installations. My flat in the UK is from 1997 and its electrics are on par with my parents home built 60 years ago My flat in PT, which was subsidized by the local council - so built cheaply - has a much better consumer unit than the ones I've seen in new builds. It's appalling.
@@papatango5085I have just had a house built in Portugal and the consumer unit looks similar to the one in this video, with some differences as I have a solar system with storage and a backup box fitted. There’s also separate panels for the heat pump and hot water cylinder etc.
@@papatango5085 Looks a lot like what's depicted in this video, but (in Portugal) the Smart Meter also has the limiter and the 500mA RCD incrporated. In this way, the grid operator can remotely change the parameters of your contract (power limitation, bidirectional for solar injection into the grid, etc...). With that said, I asked my supplier of cable the other day, if they sell more black or more brown electrical cable and he replied: By far more black. So there's still a lot of shoddy work to be found. IEC 60446 became law in 2006 (Portaria n.º 949-A/2006) and that mandates that single phase cable runs should be brown and blue cable. Not black and blue.
What i don’t like is how close the line and natural bus bars are together, you could say it’s not an issue because the incoming supply is protected by a 500 mA RCD, but what if the RCD becomes faulty and gets stuck in the on position ?
I think this French system is what we use in Eastern Europe and also in Germany. The only difference is we use quite a lot of single pole MCBs (shared neutral) behind RCD (or RCBO) instead of dual pole MCB, also triple phase is quite popular in some areas where single phase is limited to 32 Amps and triple phase is the only way to get more than that.
The DTI box is the connection between the national phone network and the local network inside your place. The "test" plug allows to check if an issue comes from your network or from the outside world (if your equipement works when connected to it, the problem is in your place).
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Remember the earth regime of domestic installations is mostly TT in France like in many other countries on the continent. Double-pole MCBs are a must in TT installations as you could have 127 V between neutral and earth in some situations. Also, the habits in France, Belgium etc. to work on a circuit is to trip the MCB of the said circuit. MCBs have the "sectionneur" function = isolation switch function, shown with a T-shaped contact on the switch symbol, and are double pole so you're safe to work on that circuit without needing to switch off the whole instlalation or a whole row of the consumer unit. Also an interesting ting : there is a [S] symbol on the main switch : the RCD function is delayed so the RCDs in the consumer unit will trip first and will trip less circuits. The main switch must be an RCD because of the TT earth regime, again.
Good point, doesn't this mean that the UK system, apropos earthing, is superior?
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@@thebamplayer a TT system where neutral isolation is not mandatory means that the neutral of the single phase is always a real neutral, tied to the earth at the DNO side. In Belgium we have this weird 3x230V distribution system installed after WW2 to spare one conductor in the street distribution, which means single phase houses and apartments get either L1-L2 or L2-L3 or L3-L1, one of which of these conductors is then considered as neutral in the installation... while it is not the neutral at the DNO side... But in other places the distribution is a real 3x400V+N where the neutral is a "genuine" DNO neutral... So, to avoid any confusion and keep things simple, we have dual pole RCDs and MCBs all over the country.
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@@icarossavvides2641 a TN-S distribution system needs more conductors in the street wiring, which one could consider as "inferior". I think there is no superior/inferior system, there are different systems and depending of what was more important or what were the constraints at the moment of the decision, one system is more suitable than another in a dedicated situation, at a defined moment in history. Elsewhere or later on, the decision could be different.
German TT Systems uses 3 phases and a Neutral, which is connected with the generator neutral, but you have to build your own ground. So the neutral is connected to the middle of the Y wiring at the transformer secondary. Our Phase to Phase voltage is 400V and Phase to Neutral is 230V
Yeah our Cabinets here in Germany mostly look like that as well, though of course it can happen that in older houses you will find stuff like, screw fuses, Cables without ground wire (but that are houses build before the 60-70s mostly), but generally speaking every house that was build after like 1970ish, should look very similar.
Hello, In France, AC type RCD are allowed for everything but appliances with inverters like EV charger, washing machine, induction hobs... For these A type (or F or B) RCD are mandatory. Also there is a rule saying you can't have more than 8 breaker plugged into one RCD, which is not enforced here 😅
That's the point, inverters are the only likely source of DC leakage, although some think any switching mode power supply might as well, which means at least every desktop computer should be on a type A RCD.
@@Ragnar8504 EVs are also a source of DC leakage, but the DC detection is usualy done in the wallbox. At home, I only have type A and type B RCD, not type AC as they are useless now.
I'm surprised that you could take off this cover of the main fuse... I'm an electrician in France, you have no right to touch anything before the lower part of the isolation switch / RCD 500mA. If you remove the green cover from your 'linky' (this you're allowed to do) you can acces the contact for the 'heures creuses', which is the cheaper electricity by night if you subscribe an option to get it (than for the day you pay more!). It's just a simple contact NO, commanded by the provider of electricity.
Here in the UK we do seem to lag behind the rest of Europe in a lot of ways. I agree with you about our consumer units are all too often located in the most ridiculous places and can be very difficult to work on. The panel you show here is very neat and accessible, why didn't they just put 2 type A RCDs in to cover all possibilities. I like the double pole MCBs which make testing and fault finding so much easier but I think all RCBOs would be better than the 2 RCDs, like we are now doing in the UK.
Our railways are certainly lagging behind the French by at least four decades! They released the 300km/h (186mph) TGV in 1981...And 42 years later we're *still* clipped at a comparatively stationary 200km/h (125mph)... 🚄🇫🇷💯💨😇 (The sole exception to that is HS1...But HS1 is built to the French standard, and the only British built trains which use it are cross-channel variant of the TGV... ❤🔥)
@@dieseldragon6756 It's been obvious for years that our hierarchy prefer our country to be an investment bank lining their pockets with easy money rather than an industry powerhouse. Plus we totally lack skill base labour forces, The country is strangled from all directions. The government are very stingy with their incomes (like banks are) And are slow on the uptake for change - unless it greatly benefits their coffers in the short term. People wave around the term "Broken Britain".. Well, It certainly is! Not in the literal sense (yet lol), But we are far removed from what we used to be and from the rapidly changing world around us.
And when I was a kid back in the 60s it was the opposite way round. Our home in the UK was a haven of safety compared with my relatives' place in France. That's what 40 years of no longer investing in your country and its people does. Thanks Maggie!
@andrewwithers4843 Yes, but in a new install, part M of the Building Regulations states access requirements and accessible location for the consumer unit. If it's just a new consumer unit on old circuits then it's almost certainly going to go in the same place, though I have had one replaced in a previous house and I asked the electrician to move it in a more accessible location while he was about it... and he did! This video is comparing new with old and people are saying new is light-years ahead of old and then acting surprised.
In Italy type A are used for outlets and appliances while type AC is used for lighting. Anyway those RCD only switches are crazily overloaded! That unit according to Italian rules is unsafe (our unit must be safe regardless what the meter has as a breaker) so if the power company replaces the MCBO with a switch the unit must still be safe
I think you are assuming all houses are like yours. The electrics you have look brand new. You can't compare to old victorian houses in Britain. I bet some of the old Gites have crap electrics too.
There is absolutely no reason old houses have crappy wiring. Sure, it can be difficult to renew wiring in old buildings but on the other side of the channel they put decent wiring in since the 60’s at least. If the wiring is older than that it has been time to do something about that several decades ago. And even with questionable wiring in the house, it is absolutely inexcusable to have a crappy breaker box. It’s cheap and easy to make something decent out of that.
In The Netherlands the consumer unit must be indoors, protected against frost- water- and wind, and on the same floor as the front door. It must be placed in the same space and not more than 4,5 meters from the front door. The reason for this is that in the event of an emergency, the fire brigade easily can shut off electricity and gas At new building sites the 'meterkast' is normaly the first to be placed.
If French/German boards *are* acceptable under UK regs, I think I might've just found a safer upgrade for my 14th edition CUs... 👍 (Just don't tell a certain Mr. Farage... 😉)
When I bought my Dutch-built boat, the mains electrics consisted of two 10A trips which sent out a cable to a double socket. From there another cable went out to the other side of the boat with a plug on the end. The plug was permanently live. I replaced this with a 12 place box with a 40A RCD taking 2 places. There are 8 trips for plugs around the boat. The last two places are taken by 2 16A trips connected to the input sockets, one on either side of the boat so the side next to the quay can be connected. Since the nonconnected socket will be live, the trip for that side has a warning light connected indicating that the trip should be switched off. One cannot be too careful when electricity is involved.
hi there, nice vid about the french elektrics, i'm next door in belgium. i am an electrical inspector btw :). its interesting to see how the french do it. here in belgium you are not allowed to use a type AC DIfferential (RCD) only a type A or in some cases when you have battery you have to use a type B. i wonder what other rules are different in france since our elektrical grid is based on the french, like in belgium you have to have since 2023 1 differential per 8 wall outlets. and dedicated line for washing machine, oven, and everything over 2600W. also the differential in belgium has to be max 300mA instead of the 500mA. anyways like to see elektrics in other country's :)
yep and also the neutral is not protected ( just switched together withe the live ) i believe in these fuses .. we cannot use these in Belgium for example .
The 500mA differential is the main breaker. It is loosely to protect from fires while the Consumer unit RCDs are to protect people. The main differential disconnector is also a failsafe in case the consumer unit RCDs fail.
@@johnburns4017 we have the same in Belgium 300mA RCD type A ( but not with mcb inside ) in the same consumer board. At the meter we have normal mcb of 40.A in case of single fase
@@johnburns4017 unless i'm missing something they do different in france, the 500mA always indicates that it is a differential and does not protect againts overload, unless it is a breaker/differential combo, ( also a differential and a RCD is the same thing). i think the french do the same thing as in belgium first in line is the main breaker from the meter, then its the differential/RCD and that has the 500mA indicator.
I am surprised that they are still using split load boards and not RCBO's. Double pole RCD & adjustable MCB main switch is an excellent solution to the incoming supply. All RCBO's should be double pole imho. I have used the push in terminal bars before in NIGLON consumer unit and they are the way forward! Good video, cheers!
Double pole is just useless as you alway have the neutral at the earth potential, so can't have a huge flow of current if it touch earth. Double pole is mandatory when you have 220V between phases, and you have 110V to ground in the "neutral" as this is not happening anymore as all is upgraded to 230/400V. RCBO are really overpriced and llosing just the half of the house if something get wrong is not a big thing to deal with. And as all overcurent protection cut the neutral, it's easy to flip all down, the reset the RCB and flip the rest up one by one until the RCB cut to locate the fault. As it's TT and not TN an eath fault is never a short circuit.
@@lapub. RCBOs in the UK at least are not particularly expensive and I for one find it massively inconvenient to lose half the circuits in the house. I did not, for instance, appreciate the loss of power to the refrigerator and freezer when I was away from home due to water getting into the PIR detector on an external light.
@@TheEulerID The cheapest RCB is 25€ while a simple breaker is 5€. There is "minimal mandatory" configuration and "recommended" one. So you can have RCB dedicated for freezer and fridge "Hpi" that are less prone to false triggering but cost 200€, you can dedicate one for the outside and so on.
@@lapub. I can get MK RCBOs in the UK (retail) for £14.40 inc VAT (17 Euros). MCBs are £2.88 inc VAT, or around 3.5 Euros. My fairly new MK consumer unit (steel enclosure) with 10 RCBOs cost £179.94 including VAT, although adding surge protection was another £32.82 including VAT. So about £210 or 250 Euros. When the requirement for a couple of RCDs and the larger enclosure required for a split-RCD configuration is factored in, then the full RCBO configuation is about £70 more. Frankly, over the life of the unit the cost is trivial. It costs me £70 to refuel my car. That is for a 4 bedroom detached house with an exterior detached double garage with power.
Very interesting on the new stuff it would be interesting to see some of the older properties wiring. That's some commute you've introduced for yourself !!
@@johnburns4017 One thing that constantly amazes me even in fairly new wiring is singles in trunking. It's legal over here only if the trunking can't be opened without using tools, and regular old trunking definitely can.
@@johnburns4017 Memories of my first trip to Paris (mid 90s) include cafe toilets where the (Hopefully!) neutral leg of the light was wired through the lock on the door, as the light would illuminate as soon as the bolt came into contact with the hasp. I very quickly adopted the habit of (un)locking the door with a few layers of folded toilet paper as insulation... ⚡ Nothing to do with perceived danger, mind you. I was just aware that I don't have nearly the same degree of _Resistance_ as the French. 🇫🇷💯😇
I'm english and did my apprenticeship in germany and we mainly use hager. Though I'm always impressed with what you guys do i always see consumer units and certain things done in the UK and I'm kind of shocked at how some standards/practices are.
You should look at a 30+ year old house in the Netherlands or Germany😜 electricity in the house you shown was still an afterthought. Something interesting you could look at is ABB Busboard.
In the Netherlands the consumer unit is in its own closet in the hallway (the "meterkast"), together with all other utilities. I didn't even know that wasn't standard everywhere. I think that's the best way; very convenient and accessible, but not being ugly or taking up space in the living room or kitchen or something like that.
My daughter's house is three years old. Consumer unit in the hall is steel, with relevant RCDs and separation of upstairs, downstairs, garage and exterior curciits. My house is 50 years old and has electrics and plumbing in the garage that look like a plate of spaghetti. I've rented old houses in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Malta. They all had dodgy electrics. Why the "national disgrace" message? New houses have more modern electrical installations than old houses? Who'd a thunk it?
Having a split-RCD CU is a step backwards for me from separate RCBOs. It is, however, about time that CUs with dual bus bars for line and neutral with RCBOs were the standard. Dual pole would be nice of course. Putting an LED line driver into a CU is a no-no for me. Having separate circuits for dishwashers, microwaves and so on strikes me as a very expensive and inflexible system compared to simply plugging in or hardwiring into a 32A circuit. That's lots of extra wires, extra breakers and limits locations. Some will complain about ring circuits, but it's perfectly possible to use 32A radials in kitchens. I should add that just because the water heater is rated at just 1500 watts doesn't mean that it costs any less to run. It just takes longer to heat up. Water takes the same amount of energy to heat, whatever the rating of the heater element (leaving aside heat pumps - a different issue). What does make a difference is being able to use cheaper rates using "smart" technology. nb. are those rather steep, narrow, open stairs without a guard rail within regulations? There isn't even a handrail on the wall side. We obsess about the danger of electricity, but deaths due to falls from steps or stairs dwarf them (731 deaths due to falls from stairs or steps in England and Wales in 2021 for instance).
Having that many RCBO's would make that board blooming expensive? There are rules on the number of plugs and lights per circuit, and likewse the number and rating of circuit breakers per RCD. The number of RCD's is then governed by the size of the property. Dishwashers and Microwaves don't require a dedicated circuit. Though it is recommended for Freezers, Dishwasher and tumble dryers. Washing machines, Cookers, Ovens, boilers, hotwater tanks and radiators should all have direct circuits. Though you can put two rads to a circuit breaker. Ring mains are considered dangerous and illegal in the UK sense of the installation. Horses for courses, though it is true that a 120m2 house in France, uses km's of wire these days, which does indeed make it expensive.
@@Charles-pz6ux As european plugs do not have fuses, then they cannot use high powered circuits, which are are very flexible as far as the consumer is concerned. In my kitchen I don't have to be concerned which combination of appliances is plugged in where, as the circuit can deliver 7 kW. That simplifies everything. Also, it doesn't have to be delivered as a ring. Sometimes a 32A radial is used in a kitchen. Often the only dedicated circuit in a kitchen is for the cooker (although a few might have a dedicated fridge/freezer circuit, albeit with a socket) . The enabler for that is the fuse in the plug, which means that the overcurrent protection on the final leg is that appropriate to that appliance and cable.
I thought a RCD was a fancy new breaker and I googled it and they are just GFCIs . I don't see any AFCI breakers at all. I have a separate apartment that I built above my garage and it has a bathroom and a kitchen. On the kitchen countertop the code requires 20 amp receptacles. They must be split. Each plug is 120V but from the top to the bottom receptacle is 240. ( I build a plug that plugs into both to power my wife's massager device from Ukraine.) So in bedrooms you need all the receptacles to be ACFI and for the countertop you need 2 double pole 20 amp breakers ganged together so that a fault on top or bottom of one socket will trip the other socket in the receptacle also. So I need two double pole AFCI breakers and they cost about $200 each. The inspector eventually told me that to get around all of this , that I don't have a kitchen , it is just a serving area, because I don't have a stove. Now I want to put in a stove so I also need AFCI and GFCI combo breakers. They do have these but just single pole. I think I can put the ACFI breakers in and have the actual receptacle as GFCI. I would also like to upgrade my service because I only have 100 amps and I need 200 amps with all the circuits and now a new double 40 amp for the stove. I can't believe how compact the breaker boxes are in Europe. Mine is just huge. My wife has an apartment in Dnipro Ukraine and it is all aluminum wiring and she had the kitchen redone. When I got there for the first time to look at it , the kitchen light didn't work and the long hallway had one light and was dark. The living room light was an old ugly fixture. The electrician was not called back to fix the kitchen so I just did it myself. I took EE and wired my own house in Canada so I was kinda competent. I fixed the kitchen wiring and then added two more lights in the hallway and put a new living room fixture in that was nice and bright. She only had 4 crappy breakers above her front door. 240 V one for the oven. I couldn't believe such a small little box. Then the wall receptacles were few and far between and humongous. The outlet bars you could buy were gigantic. The wall switch was complicated also. I am glad they designed the North American plugs and switches to be so compact and convenient. You need a receptacle every 12 feet in any room. Ukraine seems to have no such code , or they didn't in the past. In Canada the wires have to be in the center of studs , the studs are usually 3 1/2 inches and this means when you drive a screw into a stud you won't penetrate a wire and create a short. If it is less than that , then the wire needs to have a piece of metal covering it to stop a screw. In between the studs, the wire should hang kinda loose so that any accidental wall penetration will just push the wire aside and not penetrate it. The wiring in Ukraine and UK from what I see doesn't worry about this. At my local Home Depot, I talked to the guy in electrical dept. and he actually sat in on the committees that worked out the electrical code for US and Canada. Canada has 20 amps on kitchen counters and the US requires only 15. They couldn't get the Americans to increase it to 20. There are now many differences between Canada and the US and when I buy stuff I have to make sure it has ULC and not just UL. When you go online shopping you have to zoom in on the pictures to see if the C is actually there. American stuff is sold to Canada and it is buyer beware. I notice the 14/2 wire in the US is not rated for Canada and I bought some for my house in Florida and it is more flimsy. Canada needs special plastic for -40C.
German: Hauptverteilung - Main distribution Unterverteilung - Sub distribution Bureaucratic German: Niederspannungshauptverteilung - Low voltage main distribution Colloquial Zählerschrank - Meter cabinet Sicherungskasten - Fuse box
Personally (From a British perspective) I find it quite descriptive - Everything in and south of it is consumer adaptable¹, everything north of the main switch should be left entirely to the professionals. 👍 (¹ - Assuming you have the due competency to do the work. It's consumer adaptable as in _„The competent consumer may install additional circuits if required“_ (e.g: New shower/HVAC circuit) as opposed to _„The equipment is designed to be usable by anybody with no prior training“_ (Plugs, switches) 😇)
It is mentioned in the comments elsewhere. N frame fuses (NH etc.) then sizes in series of zeros like hornby trains. Higher current devices come in bigger bodies. There is a range in each size thouhh. Various curves (class) are available which iirc differ from the BS series quite a bit. We had a compressor supplier insistant (in the UK) that they needed "semiconductor fuses" to protect the inverter of a 60kw screw compressor despite an adjustable thermal breaker in the DB to the machine and a fused switch local to the machine. Our local fuse specialist supplier pointed us in the direction of N frame fuses and a "whoner" carrier. A 3 pole thermoplastic affair that goes together like an old knife switch. Much like a cut out it could be used to isolate a circuit but not for disconnecting a load. Very compact and easy to fit. I think at the time each fuse was £80. They do have indicators on each fuse at least. The rupture time can be far shorter hence the "semiconductor" aspect. Imagime a shoot through on an inverter bridge or recitifire failure. Providing a dead short beyond the cable/supply capacity. Now wait for the fuses to heat up and eventually pop. Or go for these things that blow in milliseconds. Just the the induction heater i have here to repair that took out a ring main and the plug fuse rather than a suitable selective fuse in the device. As for the double pole breakers.. can the plugs there can be made in either ploarity and don't have fuses in them. The breakers protect the devices as well as the installation. (Foregoing internal fuses). Besides. I rather like having switches on my outlets.
This is not meant to be antagonistic but as you recently had your business go through a parlous state (whilst you were travelling the Far East) that resulted in having to make redundancies I would have thought you would not have been in such a hurry to work relocate in such a short space of time.
Great video as usual. Like you i investgate everywhere i go to see how they do things in other countries. i am IET eng, but not electrician. i lived in Wroclaw, Poland for 7 years. My rented flat was about 15yrs old and had a metal fuse box in the wall, with double rows rcd, easily accessable. But the internal wiring in the flat was very rough and ready, but better than a lot of old English houses. i think that we can all learn from each other as there are some good points from many EU counties and UK.
Other than the location, this consumer unit is just like the one in my house in the UK, so not that weird really. Given that this is the standard requirement these days, there can't be that many homes in the UK that don't have these now.
@@Thurgosh_OG It may be the standard regulation, but that's for new installations. When new regulations come out, nobody jumps up and says "I must upgrade my wiring". Thousands of older properties still have older units - they only get replaced when problems arise. Until very recently, my house (built 1882) still had a fuse box.
It depends: If the wires are on the railway, it runs on the same side as in the UK... 🚄⚡😉 (Except that the French system is 150% faster, 30% cheaper, and has tractive performance on impossibly sharp gradients that we can't match on the flat! 🙃)
I suppose France works like the Belgian electricity; we have 2 main types of circuits for humid environments like kitchen, bathroom who are on a 30mah "residual current circuit breaker"; and there is a 300mah for other rooms. These are devices that measure 'loss' current in devices and switch off extremely rapid. In Belgium we also use a very strict laws for electricity, it is called AREI (in Dutch), it is available online. Our normal home electricity installations look like the cabinet you have in France.
By the handwriting, the electrician who wired that panel was either a woman or he brought his wife to do the labeling. Mine looks like it was done by a physician.
In the Netherlands we have meter box regulations Regulations for the position of the meter cupboard The meter cupboard must go directly from the door of your home or building through a hall or hallway are accessible. The distance between the entrance door of the home/building and the meter cupboard is allowed maximum 3 meters. If this is more, additional regulations apply. To ensure that emergency services can easily intervene in the event of an emergency, it is important that the front door and the meter cupboard are at the same level. The meter cupboard must be frost-free. It is recommended that the distance between the meter cupboard and radiators, is at least 50 centimeters. Regulations for meter cupboard dimensions The meter cupboard must have a minimum size of: 240 x 77 x 35 centimeters (hxwxd). The free passage of the doorway is at least 70 x 210 centimeters Other meter cupboard regulations If the floor area of the meter cupboard is larger than 1 m2, then at least: One lighting point and one wall socket must be present in the meter room. The meter space must be lockable with a lock. The walls to which the various utilities are mounted must be covered with sheet material. This must have a thickness of at least 18 mm. What doesn't belong in the meter cupboard? Toilet paper. Cleaning products and paint residues. The ironing board and the vacuum cleaner. Do not turn the meter cupboard into a storage cupboard A maximum of four groups may be protected by one earth leakage circuit breaker. A maximum of 12 groups are allowed on one phase, so in a 3-phase cabinet; 3-phase x 3 earth leakage circuit breakers (30mA), so 9 x 4 groups = 36 groups in total A maximum of four groups may be protected by one earth leakage circuit breaker. A maximum of 12 groups are allowed on one phase, so in a 3-phase cabinet; 3-phase x 3 earth leakage circuit breakers (30mA), so 9 x 4 groups = 36 groups in total 3-phase earth leakage circuit breakers may not be used for 1-phase circuit breakers
As a man living on a UK supply with a rated maximum of 100A (But normally never drawing more than 5A at once) I'm always surprised at how well adjusted I am to EU power supply limitations despite having the current availability of six French flats! 😳
@@dieseldragon6756 I think it's because electricity used to be really cheap in France, and used for heating. Without power limitation, power use would jump way too high, more than what the network can handle
@@pizza_diavola-bx4op It was the same in the UK, and a whole generation of homes (Mine included) were built in such a way they can only be heated electrically - Gas is completely out of the question here. Of course the latter increase in the cost of energy makes these places *very* difficult to live in (I've no hope; Resistive heating only, north facing, and exposed to boreal wind throughout the Winter) and mine will probably take a good 20 years off my lifespan. But because I have non-chosen disabilities and no money, this is regarded „OK“ by British administrative offices. ♿⚰🤔 Mind you; I wonder if the difference in supply capacities means that British domestic meters are also employed as industrial supply meters in France and other places where per-supply allowance is at or below the UK domestic norm? (Though nowadays, we're all being re-fused to 60A). 😇
@@dieseldragon6756 Electric resistive heating dominates in many Canadian provinces (where the electricity is produced 95% by hydroelectric dams) and has since the 1970s. A large portion of southwestern British Columbia, including Vancouver, now has mandated heat pumps as the singular legal source of heating going forward for all new construction.
Hi! I live near Marseille and I've some knowledges in electricity. I'm glad you've been impressed by our electricity network here in France, and yes we have high quality standards which now permits to get with few modifications to new technologies and that's same with internet network. Sometimes the national electricity standards (NF-C 15 - 100) are more restrictive than the other European countries standards but for good reasons. Here you're in city, but in the countryside you could be surprised cuz they don't renovated the domestic network on certain houses, that's a good way to see the national standard evolution, since 2000's we have most of the requirements that's are present today. - NF C 15-100, for domestic electricity standard from the output of the main breaker to all the domestic network. (colors-code, bathroom requirements, cable section with which equipement connected to, and lot more...) - NF C 14-100, from national grid into the input of the consumer unit point (main breaker; property of the national electric compagny aka EDF). The white box named "DTI" is a part for internet network ADSL, and now require to integrate fiber optic with RJ45 splitter (patch panel i think we say in english). the internet box should be located near this white box.
That's a great proposal, I would be interested about his thoughts. In Germany the whole main installation with the meter(s) and communication devices will be a metal enclosure (meter cabinet), which is isolated on the inside. There is a three-phase-supply on every building and the cable from the grid provider is terminated in a dedicated box. In contrast to french electrics only the phase is switched by the MCBs and type AC RCDs are forbidden. Installations in conduits are rare, most cables are directly laid into the walls. In addition there are standards for everything and similar to the UK testing the installation with measurement devices is required.
Consumer units at front doors are frowned upon by fire brigades as the door is a means of escape in case of fire. Fires do happen in consumer units with so many screwed terminals to work loose.
Others love it because they can disconnect the supply as they enter the house. A former colleague of mine was a volunteer fire fighter and worked during a flood. The first thing he did entering a house was find the DB and flip the RCD.
@@Ragnar8504 You can still put a consumer unit indoors with an accessible fire switch/disconnector on the outside. That also avoids having to get close to your burning CU.
Basically a dual RCD consumer unit which we got rid of a few years ago. Also why are the French still using AC type RCDs which we no longer use. Push fit MCBs are 20a or less, 32a have screw terminals. You have to pay extra for the bus bar - it doesn’t come with the consumer unit. Basically you buy the enclosure and the MCBs separately. I replaced the consumer unit on my parents house in France and it cost €700 for a three phase board with 24 ways with 3 RCDs. A fully loaded Hager all RCBO board would cost less in UK. The French have dedicated supplies for all appliances which heat water like a dishwasher or washing machine
Type A are mandatory for huge DC load such as cooking plate and dish washer. It is recommanded but not mandatory for other loads. Type F is recommanded for an electrical vegicule recharge plug as well but obly type A is mandatory. Also there is a earthing switch required, follow the biggest earh wire. This helps the consuel to perform the earthing double checks to ensure proper security and get granted to plug on the grid (ENEDIS) 🖖
You can mix and match enclosure, RCDs, RCBOs etc and you have 3-phases, which makes it hard to compare to UK units. A boiler, heat pump, sauna oven or car charger will be 32A or more on a single phase, but only 12-16A on a 3-phase, 400V system - so those would still be using push-in connectors. I find the European 5-6 DIN Rail enclosures much more flexible and future proof, especially if they use installation terminal blocks like WAGO TopJob S, where the cables are forever on a clamp and the inside of the cabinet gets (re-wired) from there. Yes. Might cost up to 300€ more, but it will save much, much more if anything needs to be changed later.
I don't know French prices but 700 sounds quite expensive. I've got access to Austrian prices, that's 50 Euros for an enclosure (26 ways, surface-mounted), 70-80 Euros per RCD (cheaper if you buy from Germany, much cheaper) and about 10 Euros per MCB (again, much cheaper in Germany). Type AC RCDs can't be used with any loads that could generate DC leakage because not only the RCD wouldn't detect it but worse, the DC could saturate the RCDs core causing the RCD not to trip even on an AC fault. So AC is useful for purely resistive and inductive loads but not for any power electronics, definitely not for inverters, possibly not even for switching mode power supplies (like in every phone charger, computer power supply, etc.).
If you have only one panel, even 3 phases, this must be RCBO (disjoncteur différentiel) they have setup. Second I would advice you to buy the product from online website asked by your electrician and have him set them up. Reason is that the 3 major brand (Legrand, Hager and Schneider) and a policy of public price with massive discount. Going online you will het that discount in your pocket.
I’m not an electrician but lived in France for nearly 20 years. We had lots of electric work done in our house, why? Because the place was a mass of cables which often were destroyed by mice etc. The loft was like a spiders’ web and in the sous sol (basement) it was even worse. The reason? The French do not do ring mains. There is a new cable for each set of outlets etc. Every set of outlets be it for plugs for TVs or fridges is allowed only up to a max of 5 outlets per cable (16amps). There has to be a dedicated cable for anything like a hob or cooker which is fine but by the time all this gets back to the consumer unit its impossible to cram all those cables in so its another row of circuit breakers and the conduit to the box is subsequently much larger. In fact the final length of conduit for our house was 10cms and even then it hardly coped. No Linksys. I was the tea boy for some French electricians during a neighbour’s renovation and it was a real eye opener. Not only did they have to deal with walls made of flint stones they had to run cables to and from the most inconvenient places. I spent a bit of time explaining about ring mains and spurs and while they were skeptical as to whether it was more convenient or cheaper they couldn’t understand why French rules prevented them from adopting the system. I doubt if many of the old places like mine and indeed any building before say 1960 would have the smart setup shown in the video. Accessibility, yes all of the consumer units I saw in France were in convenient places, even like the video, in the lounge. Ours was in the sous sol which could have been dodgy because we were prone to flooding after prolonged rain.This is almost certainly this standard because it is a rental property and apparently quite modern. Anyway our chat ended in the usual Gallic shrug and a c’est ;a view. I tired to educate them to drink tea but that was a loser. It was always too strong and why the hell do you put milk in it? An excellent way to improve your French skills but beware that they will swear that a certain word is OK instead. Thankfully I tried it on an elderly neighbour and he said, you learned that from the guys working in the house. He then explained what I was really saying - thank god I didn’t use the expression in polite company. It was a great life and we miss it - getting old is a bastard but you have to remember that for the kids, if anything happens, they will have a worrying time dealing with everything. Such is life.
Same in quite a few European countries. Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia are mostly three-phase, Hungary is a mixed batch, as are Czechia and Slovakia. Most other countries are largely single-phase for domestic supplies. I don't think most DNOs in Austria and Germany even offer single-phase supplies these days, the smallest you can get is 18 kW (25 A per phase). Some areas in Germany are 63 A per phase by default, even for the tiniest flat. That's a bit ridiculous if you ask me.
In the UK, lack of space and price of installation in older properties is a driver for locating CU in obscure places. I recently had a new CU installed in my bungalow, and we were trying to decide on the best place to put it, because I wasnt happy where the existing one was. It had to be relatively close to the incoming meter feed, otherwise the cost of wiring (and labor) between the CU and that would have been excessive. I could have put it in the entrance hallway, but that is quite narrow, and it would have stuck out into the hallway space. In the end, there wasn't any other practical option, so it ended up in the same place as the one it was replacing: Inside a cupboard in the master bedroom (which being a bungalow is at ground level). It also had to be at the top of the cupboard to prevent it accidentally being covered by stuff. So not great, but what can you do?
Hi, as an Spanish person, I find this consumer unit common. However I find award the location of the principal fuses and meter. In Spanish houses, the fuses and meter are always placed outside the house (in the fence) and all buildings must have a meter room (located near to the door) for all fuses and meters of all apartments. Then the consumer unit must be placed somewhere accessible the nearest to the exit door as possible.(Not in the living room) And we do things like that for a reason. Imagine the wires that feed your house start burning, it is logical to have a fuse outside your home that will protect you! Or imagine in a buiding a short circuit occurs in someone's feed wires, it is logical to have a separate feed to that appartment that will shut off and not all of them because someone had an electrical fault.
Here in german it is similar to the spanish , The main fuse is in a cable juncion box at the roadside for each building. The meter is normally in the building, in a single house at a wall to the roadside in extra space, normally a in a cabinet inclusive the consumer unit, similar to this one showed in this video. In block of flats or multi storied buildings, the incomer ends in a "meter room" in the cellar or ground floor , also faced to the roadside. The multi meter boxes must provided for internet acces or a tetra radio modem, depends on DNO. A consumer unit is installed in every flat near the entrance door in the hall. More complex building arangements must provide a space for a substation/ transformer unit. But you will even found weird old installation and " owner improved" wirings , you will find lot of them if you employ youtube.:)
This is also the case in France, with the exception of newly built city appartements often part of a bigger house splitted into smaller appartements. This is not a bad thing, since the Linky counter is accessed remotely by the electricity provider, there is no need for them to have direct access to the linky. And I would rather have theses kinds of installations all grouped together and totally secured from the weather inside a house.
The main 500mA differential disconnector/main switch is an RCBO. The over-current side of the RCBO is adjustable. They are available in the UK. Nothing stopping anyone from fitting one.
adjustable RCBOs are no longer in use in fact. In the past, you had a guy from the distribution company who came to your house to adjust the value of the RCBO to your subscribed power. That came at a cost. Now with Linky smart meters, RCBO are set to the highest amps level the line can stand, and the max subscribed poser power is watched by the smart meter, that can power off your house if you overload it. You can changed your subscribed power very easily and it costs only like 3€. And of course, you can have access to a lot of details about your power use so you know how much power you really need.
@@pizza_diavola-bx4op The older main disconnector RCBOs were adjustable for sure and are still available to buy. They can be fitted on any UK installation.
The most common in France is double poles singles with double bus bar above, but screw connectors at the bottom. The problem I have in my parents house is that none of the neutrals are connected (those are all bunch together) so I can't edit the installation before I have identified all the neutrals ...
What you must realise that the majority of the electrics in both France and the Uk are in old houses and have old electrics. It will be years before any upgrade will take place. My neighbour who has lived in her house for 60 years is not going to rush out and upgrade her original meter and wood Wylex 4 way consumer unit so don't hold your breath ! Sparkies today want £300 per day, most of their time they are on the phone and want to go home at 3pm.
Diff Type A is for protect on AC current and in also DC Current generate by some powerful devices. Type AC is only for AC current leakage. But it strange Main fuse is normally not accessible directly inside home. DTI in French : Dispositif de Terminaison Intérieur Only use for (RTC (telephonic commuter network)) and ADSL. Sorry for my English i don't practice.
The French invented the MCB!(Le Diruptor) I was installing French MCB'S in M&S 40 years ago and they could be adjusted via an Avometer, plus they were push button! Yes that long ago, when we were still using rewireable fuses!! Oh and one other thing, combi boilers? yes a French invention also, using them at least 50 years ago!
MCBs were introduced in germany 1969 by Siemens , they got the half space of the old 35mm Breaker which were introduced by the electrical manufacurer Voigt& Haeffner (V&H Frankfurt/Main) in 1935. In the same year V&H brought a RCD ( Fehlerstrom Schutzschalter) on the market. They were not the inventor but the first company which offered them widespread. Those RCDs had twice the measure than a single 35mm Circuit breaker, so 70mm.
Like the double pole bus bars. The company fuse would presumably be liable to age so might well require replacement at 10 to 15 years like mcb’s. Interesting to see a modern domestic unit. My last installation was nearly 30 years ago for self. I was looking at a seventies house casually for a family buy a year or two ago. I am amazed at how little fusing for a large house used to be acceptable in U.K.
You only have a 45A supply (actually, I think you said the blade fuse was 40A)? That seems very low, especially with lots of air conditioning units. Have you had any issues with it tripping if you boil a kettle while the air conditioning is on? They're never going to get an EV charger powered from that.
Is there any regulatory reason you couldn't install European style consumer units, cables in conduit, and per room radials in the UK? or is it simply a cost thing?
1500W for a water heater seems very low. Here a 275L water heater (eg) has two 4500W elements. Top thermostat heats the top third (near the outlet), when it is hot enough it switches the line down to the lower thermostat to heat the bottom (water inlet part). Takes about 3 ½ hours to heat a cold tank to hot but probably shower ready in 1 hour (top). New tanks have a third element of 800W at the bottom to heat small amounts of incoming water. This is for the utility's benefit to tame peaks - thus they subsidize the purchase of them.
Bonjour, There's some french electrician on UA-cam ("les disjonctés" for exemple). You might try to talk to some. As they are UA-camrs, they might be more open minded about making a video and explaining "stuff"
ADSL means Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. It's a digital broadband Internet connection via the phone line (with higher download than upload bandwidth, hence the "asymmetric"). Looks like at one point there would have been an ADSL modem in there.
yep in usa the boxes still look the same as 50 years ago ..and metal pipes etc.. feel like i'm traveling to the past when i'm in usa looking at electrical .
Looks fairly similar to our Swedish ones, except on houses the meter is often in a box outside together with three diazed (bottle) fuses, one for each phase. We have single pole automatic breakers inside and our neutral and ground each have separate bars at the top. We use three pole bus bars, where every third fuse is on the same phase, so basically 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3. We don’t use RCD type AC anymore, strictly A for regular consumer stuff, and type B for things like EV chargers, solar inverters and such. Type B is a requirement for EV chargers. The old style consumer units had diazed (bottle) fuses. One row per phase.
I went to France once to look at an old property with a friend. While I was there, it was discussed about French electrics. From what I understand, all wires had to be run in conduit to stop mice noring on the wires. Also, each outlet was individually fused. Hence, there were no ring mains or lighting spurs at that time.
only in the old times we found fuses on every socket. Now it's all on the consumer unit. A cable (like R2V) without conduit is OK, but wires have to be in a conduit.
and we don't have ring circuits in France. I think it's mostly a UK thing. We use in France 20 Amp - 2,5 sqmm wiring - 12 sockets max. or 16A - 1,5 sqmm wiring - 8 sockets max. Even if it's legal, 1,5sqmm on socket circuits is uncommon. And it's always 2,5 sq mm for kitchen appliances or washing machines.
This! Finally, you state what most international sparks think… 3-phases, multiple DIN-Rails And your French Hager box does not even have „Quick Connect“ and vertical bus bars. UK Electrics is just hopeless.
Le Linky, french Smart meter have been manufactured by different companies, one of them is Elster Metering which was bought by Honeywell, the SMETS1 from Honeywell which you have in UK is exactly the same one as the Linky in France. It was supposed to be manufactured at Honeywell Stafford where I use to work but they made it in France
Being stranded in the UK from disability barring employment/relocation - But having had the joy of visiting France many times and falling in love with so much that's there (My profile photo was taken at Gare Saint Charles; 'Nuff said! 🚄🇫🇷❤🔥) - I can wholeheartedly agree with this... 🇫🇷💯😍
regarding electricity, France hase two of the major electrical equipment companies of the world (Legrand and Schneider electric). There's a reason for that quite advanced regulation. Here in France we have more norms about electrical equipment but it's not forbidden, like in the UK, to install a DIY panel and do your whole home electricity by yourself (as long as you come after the main RCB from the utility).
Superior food ?!.. In restaurants (on average) yes but supermarkets are poorly stocked unless you want 20 sizes of Nutella by the trolley full & don't expect friendly service in there. Even the French complain about how complicated everyday life is.. & try earning more money by doing some overtime or a 2nd job then you've got to work cash-in- hand & hope your employer doesn't find out... but living litter free & having hardly any traffic is great.
@@pizza_diavola-bx4op Given that - Where most people have a heart inside them, I probably have the transformer oil pump from a TGV - I find the omission of *Alstom* from that list a little hard to believe... 🚄🇫🇷❤🔥😋
It's possibly been said already, but the RCD's are both overloaded. Hopefully installed before the rules were modified. Nowadays, we can only put a maximum of 8 circuit breakers per RCD. For the Type A RCD, we would usually only put the cooker and washing machine on it. Also, with the LED Driver in the box, you don't have the 20% of free space available for addiing circuits. A difficult thing to stomach, is the control circuit of the relay for the hot water tank is not on the same row or RCD as the power side. The other thing I just saw, is that the seal for the blade fuses is gone, which is technically an offence to break. You should not be able to access this, at all. Apart from that. it's a nice board. Here in France, the board should be installed between 1m and 1m,80 with a 60cm wide, unencumbered space. Your board is fitted to a GTL, or Gaines Technique de Logement, an excellent bit of trunking upon which we can attach the consumer unit and comms board. It usually has a seperation to keep the comms and power cables away from each other. It's a nice neat way to safely bring all of the cabling to the boards. The only thing I really prefer about English electrics, are the sockets, with the isolation switch and no sticky out earth pin... I miss them... Cool to see you in France, bon courage!
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Re: your guitar, as a colleague of mine said when I said I didn't have time at work, he told me 'you have to make time' 🤨😅. I likewise have a guitar that I should know how to play by now, seems I also have an inability to make time 😂
Welcome to France from a Scot in Tulle!
Question for you - does you being in Marseille have anything to do with a video ad I saw on the YT vid I watched before this one? The link in the right panel mentioned MaPrimeRenov, but the ad itself featured several clips of you (Jordan, in an Artisan Electrics shirt, no sound), so I thought I'd ask.
Hi, Welcome to living in France. Bon chance 😂
I am from Scotland originally but living in France for 22 years.
I live not too far from Marseille in a town called Manosque.
I have just moved to a lovely old Provinciale house with a lot if interesting electrics. Feel free to contact me if you would be interested in a visit as you mentioned in the video. Cheers Andrew.
The circuit is cable from street =>blade fuse=> linky meter => RCBO selective 500ma , you can open the "exit side" of the RCBO but not the fuse box. the seal is missing here.
The led driver is illegal in the consumer unit, it's not attended to put anything else than RCB , circuit breaker, relay, but definitely not a led driver !
The bussbar on the top row is attend for use with screws, the bottom one is the right one, it a push fit but have retaining clips to lock the bussbar in place.
With linky the adjustable main RCBO is not adjustable any more. It was previously used to set your power subscription. they were all set at the highest current the line feeding the house can bear. The subscription level is managed by a breaker (a simple switch) in the linky.
The switch will open only if the current is over your subscription but as it's not equipped with any arc extinguishing system, the linky is smart enough to keep it close if it's a short circuit or any condition that will damage it if open. The protection for short circuits is provided by the main RCBO, and if the RCBO fail the delayed blade fuse will open the circuit at last resort. Type A are a bit more expensive than the older AC one, but now the difference is so slight that you keep only type A in stock and install only A type. It came mainly with the development of induction cooking device with high power diodes that create high DC voltage with high power.
Note that the breakers are type C and not B like in UK
I wondered about that main fuse cover as well. Here in Germany anything in front of the meter and the meter itself have to be sealed. I somehow assume it is the same in France. I think you could see the green seal (In French I think it is something like Plómbe, originating from the old lead ones) on the Main Switch.
@@alexanderkupke920 The meter 'linky" plastic seal (no more leaded seal) is hidden behind his removable clip front cover. As the breaker is after the meter, and is no more a limiter for the subscription power, they don't matter if it's sealed or not, it can be to refrain people to mess with "always live" part at the input side, the output side was never sealed as it's the customer side.
@@alexanderkupke920 there is a reason for that, the RCBO in France is divided in two, the upper part belongs to the company which manage the power physical network ENEDIS, so no touch so they have a seal. But the down part belongs to you and you can open it at your own discretion, fortunately by the way because you could not test the residual current breaker otherwise. In that case you make it trip creating a line-ground fault
I'm Electrical and Electronics Engineer from France who lives in UK. And yes in UK, they are some good improvements to do.
T'es du ch'Nord hein !? :D
*have
Quel est l'intérêt d'aller en UK alors que c'est les mêmes salaires qu'en France (voire pire)? Autant aller aux US tu gagneras 5x plus
@@GeneralKenobi69420 En Angleterre avec un BAC+3, tu as le même poste et mieux payer qu'un ingénieur en France qui a un BAC+5. Après au États-Unis le salaire est élevé mais le coût de la vie aussi
@@houss59200Australie c'est le top
The DTI (Dispositif de Terminaison Intérieur) is the point of demarcation between the telephone network and the interior wiring, so that’s where the network operator responsibility ends. The other little box is just a television antenna splitter.
There’s another box you can get which lets you terminate RJ45s from around the house in a small patch panel (up to 16 ways) and also has space (and power outlets) for a router/switch.
The Linky meter is a smart meter send 10 minute interval readings back normally via power-line carrier to an aggregation point at the substation. They can also be fitted with 4G modules if needed. The meter also detects if you’re using more than your contracted kVA and has a built-in trip switch which you can reset if you go over the limit. It can also be remotely switched off if you don’t pay your bills!
We have kind of a similar system in Italy, since the 2000. If you pull from the meter 10% of more power than what the contract allows it will trip, up to 30% more for 3 hours (for a standard 3kW meter it means you can get 3.3kW forever and 4kW for up to 3 hours), after that it will disconnect after a couple of minutes.
When they introduced it it was very annoying, especially coming from the old meters that just had a thermal switch that was not that accurate and you could have easily got plenty over the limit for a couple of minutes. With the electronic ones it's annoying, if you use your air dryer and forgot you had the washing machine on, you will have to go reset the meter (that for newer regulations has to face the public street, so you have to get outside).
Of course people can just pay to augment the limit to up to 6kW or 10kW (more you need to go 3 phase) for a couple of euros of fixed cost more at month, but you know, people don't want to spend money and prefer to do mental calculation on what appliances to activate and when to save 10$ at month.
@@alerighi People managed to trip their supplies even in the old days of mechanical meters and thermal cutouts. Mamma's got dinner in the oven and sis takes a shower? Darkness in the whole flat within a few minutes. Happened to me when I stayed with a host family in Torino in 2002. I was quite amused when I saw someone from the host family take a picture off of the wall in the hallway to reveal the meter and reset the mains!
@@Ragnar8504 haha that's an interesting alternate reality as somebody from the US.
Around these parts usually it would be something like the doorbell is sharing the circuit with the microwave which is sharing all the outlets in the kitchen because it's an older house and it's sharing the bathroom outlet because you're not gonna use that at the same time. and then you got dinner in the microwave and somebody rings the doorbell while you're in the bathroom and you trip the circuit.
Crazy to think that there's a momentary whole house limit. I guess we're spoiled over here with a 200 amp split phase 240V main breaker and only occasionally very rarely Protection at the meter.
Yeah that sounds a bit facist and big brother
@@willkrummeck What - the telco having a demarcation point?
The Netherlands has very specific requirements for the main consumer units: a standardized "meter cupboard" (meterkast). It is not perfect, but nowadays the regulations say even where everything needs to go NEN 2768[1]. The base plate is also standardized 2100 × 750 × 310 mm. That is where the main cable of the electrics but also (often) gas and always water come inside the homes. I also like Hager. In the Dutch regulations it however limits the amount of circuit breakers per RCD to four.
you mean those ugly black ini mini boards they still sell ? with no cover ?
I dunno but the old ones were wood in south africa and now steel with some kind of plastic or enamel paint, mostly whit or grey black was the color of the switches cause its like a plastic that doesnt melt as easy as white plastics i think they added carbon @@kittsdiy
The Brazilian standard is closer to the EU than the British. Basic supply is 1 phase 127V for very small houses in very poor regions. Due to the electric shower with up to 7500W, most residences have at least 2 phases allowing 220V. Three phases is frequent if residence is not so small.
Rural areas have 1 phase splitted in the middle making 127+127 = 254V! It is frequent to see just one distribution line for the transformer that has the other side connected to the ground and the neutral. Hope neutral never disconnects in this installation!
There are 2 states where the phase neutral voltage is 220V.
All Brazil is @60Hz
Love to know the cost of the double pole circuit breakers with the push fit connections and is there a single module rccbo version, probably asking too much now, no rings there though
@@williamlowther7051 on major brands (Legrand / Schneider / Hager) it's around 8-10€ for circuit breakers. More like 30€ for 3-Phase + N.
Rare amp values (like the 2A used for command circuits) come at a higher cost, can be 12-15€.
I’m a French Electrical Engineer who lives in Marseille, if you need further explanation I can provide you some.
French regulation for electrical installations is called NFC15-100 and if I recall well Legrand has made an awesome guide which explains everything step by step with schematics and pictures.
I think MCB with both N and L are very rare system in most of the Europe. In my country (Croatia) 16A/2,5m2 for sockets and 10A/1,5mm2 for lights is a norm. For households B type MCB is used. RCD 30mA for Bathrooms and "wet" rooms and 300mA for the rest, although newest standard is 30mA for al purposes. in 99% of houses Type A RCD is used.
@@nikicamalezic5388 You can also use 16A/2,5mm2 for sockets and 10A/1,5mm2 for lights in France, but you won’t be able to stack as many sockets/lights on the same circuit.
For instance it’s 8 sockets max on a 16A/1,5mm2 circuit while you can go up to 12 on a 20A/2,5mm2 (general case, for wet rooms like kitchen and bathroom it’s different)
@@Sakiut25-1804 Thank you for Info. 1,5mm2 can handle 18A max and 2,5 26A, so using 10/20A MCB as you said is fine.
But usual installation in Croatia is little different. We are more conservative on the safe side :) We usually do two circuits per room 16A/2,5 sockets (up to 5-6 sockets per MCB) and 10A/1,5 for lights except where we need more circuits like in kitchen for appliances. Every room has separated circuits.
House socket are max 16A rated so that is also why 16A MCB is used. 20A MCB is usually for circuits with direct connections.
@@nikicamalezic5388 In newest installations the conditions are almost the same here: one socket circuit per room, usually a 16A/2,5mm2 one and at least two separated 10A or 16A/1,5mm2 light circuits.
The proximity between French and Croatian installations makes me wonder if maybe there’s EU regulations about domestic electrical installations
@@nikicamalezic5388 In the Netherlands MCB's with both L and N are quite standard. It's even mandatory to switch both Line and Neutral because of two reasons:
1. Many (but not all) residential buildings have TT System grounding like in France which means Neutral and Earth aren't connected and we rely on RCD's for ground fault protection.
2. In the past we had 127/220 Volts meaning some buildings didn't have a line and neutral but got 2 of the 3 line wires to get 220 Volts.
We don't have separation between lights and sockets so basically most circuits are B16/2,5mm². For RCD protection we have up to 4 circuits on one Type A 30mA RCD although new installations are usually fitted with Type A 30mA RCBO's on every circuit.
We have that system in Germany too, it's called Hager Quick Connect. It's not one earth block shown in this video, they are two block connected together with a link that is located between the third and the fourth screw from the left. And on the left and the right ends you can see the unused and open holes for the links to add more blocks if necessary. Hager also manufactures them in blue. You can get them in different sizes, with or without screws. The push-fits are rated for 1.5 to 4mm², and the screw terminals for 1.5 to 25mm². Rated current is 63A.
The blocks cost round between 6 and 15 Euros, depending on the size. The links cost 34 Euros for a set of 10. The difference is, that you won't find type AC RCDs here anymore. Only in older installations. They have been banned for new installation in 1987.
The fuses official designation is NH fuse, but they are usually called blade or knife fuse. They are used because they can isolate a short-circuit current of up to 120kA. NH is German and stands for Niederspannung Hochleistung (low voltage high power). They require a special tool for insertion and removing them. Not to be operated by lay persons, because that system has no precautions preventing the insertion of a fuse with a too high rating. They have an optical indicator showing when the fuse is blown.
aren´t the AC RCD´s banned even since 1983? either way it is highly recommended to change them out immediatly mostly to an type A but i would always take at least an type F because of all the appliances today that have an vfd in them and of course when you have an EV or PV system in the house best solution would be an Type B but they are still very expensive, where the F is only ~20€ or so more expensive than an type A
@@TheFlow2006 Nope, in 1984 it was introduced that "circuits in a room containing a shower and/or a bathtub must be protected by a 30mA RCD". The type AC RCDs approval, according to VDE 0664 was revoked. And no VDE certification, no installation. The mandate for VDE certification comes from the regulations released by the DNOs (Technische Anschlussbedingungen or TAB).
Type F is usually not necessary, type A is sufficient. For special dedicated circuits like EV or PV, I would use the recommendations of the manufacturer. They tell you what devices for protection need to be installed. If the EV charger has an integrated protection against DC faults you usually only need a type A RCD in the supply of the charger.
And the thing is, you won't get type F RCBOs, only RCDs. You then require an additional MCB.
In the UK we use term HRC or High Rupture Current for fuses like main cut out fuse. Typically 60 amps, so won't blow 'instantly' [0.1s] untill around 880 amps, but typically can resist 80,000 amps for like 0.0001 seconds without exploding to badly and creating secondary fire
The french system is just good, like every there in Europe, UK system is an disaster
@@jak4596 Except for the plugs, those technically are better.
If you want to learn more you are more than welcome to join me in Normandy. I Moved to France to start an electrical business in France after 10 years on the tools in the UK. Always happy to help you about
Out of interest, do you think that would be possible to do post Brexit ?
If you can contact me I have a house in Normandy and need the electrics inspected can you help
In our installation, it's not even possible to partially lift the cover with a seal on. Every accessible component in front of the meter is sealed not only for safety reasons, but to prevent anyone from stealing electricity.
here in France it's also protected agains theft, also with an electronic sensor that tells the distribution company if the cover was opened.
Eastern Europe: there is a panel with a sealed meter at the street front and there is one or more distribution boards inside the house; we can do anything in the house (with qualified electrician, in theory), we can also turn on or off the breaker that is after the meter. Basically after the sealed meter the electricity company has no control, nor do they need any control.
Looks similar to the panels in Germany (well, "Hager" is a German brand, after all). FYI, the covers don't have to be screwed back in after you put the cover back on, just push on the screws !
I'm an electrician from Sweden and I've used Hager a LOT, and I had no idea you could just push the screws back 😅 cheers!
Well this is why half the country voted for Brexit, the Brexiteers just love their shoddy electrics 😂
@@Tompradoo
But do you know that Schneider electric is French? :P
@@mattiasakerblom3426 i did not 😅 doesn't sound french! I've used Schneider a lot too, all of my outlets and switches/dimmers at home are Schneider.
The round hole for the back box are they available here in england yet , I first saw them in germany back in the 90s so much easier to use you can still have a square plate on the front
In Australia, they have banned the use of Type AC RCD's/RCBO's. Type AC RCD's are designed to detect AC residual current leakage currents, but aren’t able to detect leakage currents coming from more advanced technologies and appliances producing non-sinusoidal leakage currents, generating pulsating DC residual currents or slowly rising, slowly falling DC residual currents and halfway residual currents. Because of this, the need to improve the level of protection, transitioning from the minimum velocity Type AC to Type A as a minimum. The RCBO's here do not switch the Neutral wire, only the active.
The dangerous thing about type AC RCDs is that you can put a diode between Live and Ground and they will NOT trip, while a type A RCD will.
Yep, that’s why I put almost everything on the type A in my apartment.
we got B class RCD´s for that problems....but i am in Europe.....!
Hardly dangerous. @@thebamplayer
Our norme (regs) called NFC 15-100 up to 8 disjoncteurs (mcb's) per Differentiel. This panel is not in conformity with the latest normes actually.
Plus we mostly use type A instead of old AC now mostly. As soon as you have switching power supplies (in almost everything) they can have fault condition that delays tripping in type AC.
The regs for height: main on/off AGCP 500ma in this case 1.8 meters max, 0.90 min and the switch panel TGBT is 1.8 max and 0.9 min but 0.5 if there is a door. People have to be able to access it in an emergency to cut power and this includes to some extent elderly and disabled.
The box VDI with the DTI can get quite sophisticated sometimes. You can mount routers and switches in them too.
Cables or conduit, depends on the job really.
Hello! Welcome to you in our old country!! Cumulus is the water heater, is a funny name but we know what it stand for😊 I'm french by the way, I'm please to see a youtube star from other country to see and lived in my old France! That warm my heart, thank you! Have a great and lovely adventure here!✌️
"DTI" is "Dispositif de Terminaison Intérieure", the telco demarc point where the copper phone line ends. the test is a test RJ11 where they can plug a tester device. this particular model appears to have a 1 to 4 phone line splitter (the 4 RJ plugs at the bottom of the device).
the consumer unit it to be installed in the "GTL" aka "Gaine Technique Logement" which is a floor to ceiling reserved area with a minimum 60cm width and 25cm deep, that is supposed to be accessible at all times. in new construction, the main breaker is to be installed between 90 and 130cm from the finished floor to allow access to handicapped people.
breakers themselves are to be installed between 90 and 180cm maximum for similar accessibility reasons.
as for the A and the AC, there are some rules in the norms about what cicuits are to use what type. you can use F types everywhere too, though, if you have the cash.
"cumulus" is the water heater. the contactor is for the "Heures creuses" relay from the meter
street -> blade fuse -> meter -> 500mA RCD.
I am a Ex-Royal Artillery Comms instructor 1999-2013 and I am currently a Senior Network Engineer (Cisco etc..) and Telecoms Engineer. I have never seen anything like the DTI box. I really like it very smart It's going to give me something to look up today.
Good point about consumer unit location. When we got married in the 70s we moved into a new council house. The consumer unit was just inside the front door at a reasonable eye level. Four years later we bought our own house (a Victorian jobby) and were told the house needed rewiring. So I put a simple fuse box in the cellar to replace the old consumer unit and copied the rented house by locating the new consumer unit just next to the front door, with appropriate twin & earth and auxiliary earth cables linking the two. So when I was away for work my wife could reset any tripped RCD/MCB without scratting round. I do now have a mini-consumer unit in the cellar so the link cable is protected by an MCB and the cellar lights plus cellar power outlets are powered from down there too.
" in the 70s [...] a new council house. [...]Four years later [...] (a Victorian jobby) " And that is a large part of the problem, I think. We've got a tremendous range of ages of installation, and consequently wiring to different standards. In some respects the intense ground fighting in WW2 had a beneficial outcome in that almost everything had to be re-wired to a significant degree, in a fairly short period of time, to a single standard (per country/ region).
My first exposure to domestic wiring was when we moved into a Victorian house in the 1970s, and while trying to get the electrics to some sort of manageable state (e.g. replacing "round-pin" sockets with the "square"-pin ones, we discovered large runs of single-strand solid wiring with thoroughly perished rubber (not plastic - it burns differently ; Dad was a plastics chemist ; it was rubber, not plastic) cables, separate cable for live and neutral, going everywhere. We figured this was probably from a DC wiring system - some of the junction "boxes" (metal screw strips nailed to wooden boards, under floors and buried in lath-and-plaster) had polarity signs on them. No way, of course, to tell which was live and which was neutral. Literally, Victorian - we knew the house had been built by a local builder's merchant, so may have been packed with cutting edge technologies to see the old century out (1800s). The wire bell-cords to the servants quarters in the attic had been replaced with some of this positive and negative "white heat of technology" stuff, so the housemaid could be summoned to the drawing room *by electricity* !
Somehow, I don't think there will be much of that left on the continent. But there's still some of it left in that house, because we had a week when Dad was off work for the move, then he had to be back to work and we had to have a working house. And there was no budget for a sparky (nor any legal need).
50 years later I look at Dad's house, think about when I'll have to prepare it for sale, try desperately to remember what went where, and when ... and fear we've got no choice but to get the whole place gutted when we have to sell it. Nightmare!
@@a.karley4672 Our house had several runs of rubber/cloth insulated wires running in hardwood battens. They were clearly machine made with two grooves and a nailed on lid. A couple of years ago I think I removed just about the last of it when I did some work in one of the bedrooms. I believe that wiring had been installed circa 1910s. The house was originally lit by gas but must have been vacated around that 1910s date for some major work including some re-plastering and many of the floorboards must have been removed and replaced. There was also some rubber insulated twin wiring buried in the plaster but that was a later addition.
One thing. I'm glad that I didn't have to wire with multiple radial circuits because there is little space to transition to the front 'posh' end of the house to the rear where hired help might have worked. Around 1995 I ran two six square mm T&E cables for a heater and a twin fuel cooker and that was hard work
I\ve seens a consumer unit in a Hungarian flat in a panel building that presumably is single phase and only has a whopping three B16 MCBs. No RCD or fancy stuff, the meter is elsewhere, presumably in the basement. In another building - a small vacation home - the whole house is behind three C16 MCBs followed by the 3-phase meter. Again no RCB or fancy stuff- and that's a fairly recent install. So the British consumer units may not be perfect - but there''s worse.
I live in France. The DTI is a RJ45 socket for the telecoms engineer to plug in ADSL test meter. Not used for fibre but if you have a separate landline then this is what is used. The black panel with the cutouts is for network hub/switch normally with CAT6 cabling. Fibre the telecoms engineer like to run this directly to the hub via a green outlet. The Linky smart control is virtually mandatory now. You don't have an option and it is supplied by EDF/ENDIS. So if you change energy supplier it just done digitally with no house call. The busbar protection have been cut too short. You can still touch the live and neutral where it has been shortened. You can buy special covers. The 2A breaker is for the small feed for the HC going to the relay for the hot water. The electrician has not got the correct circuits on AC and A.
This obviously depends on how widespread Frances DSL rollout is (And I've not really ventured into the more rural parts of France)...But I like to think that someday a telecoms engineer will be going into a long unoccupied property to prepare DSL service for a new resident, will open the cupboard where the DTI is, and uncover a long-forgotten Minitel terminal - Still connected - And in full working order (If Minitel was still operational)... ☎🖥😁
(Just hoping to goodness for the sake of the person responsible for the bill - If the terminal had been left powered-on and connected right up to the end - That it hadn't been left on a *3615* page... 🔞💸😉)
@@dieseldragon6756 well, in fact rural parts of France mostly have fiber available 80% in rural areas, and 86% overall have acces to optical fiber. France has the highest rate in Europe and copper extinction has started.
@@pizza_diavola-bx4op France does communications and connectivity *very* well, there's no denying that...And where we Brits were still wasting millions of Pounds every year shipping millions of Pounds of telephone directories out to millions of households around the UK, what did France Telecom do? They dropped the phone _books,_ gave every subscriber a Minitel terminal and free (I assume) access to Directory Enquiries...Soon to be followed up by much easier and cheaper booking of holidays, plane and train tickets for a short data session costing much less than a voice call! 🇫🇷💯👍
And when the rest of the World came into the Internet, France had already been there for at least twenty years. If that isn't the most literal definition of « _advanced_ » I don't know what is! 🏆
Granted, we also had our own equivalent (Prestel) which also supported colour and introduced the first public e-mail service...But at a cost of at least 400£ (4100FF/500€) for the equipment *plus* something like 10£/mo (101FF/12€50) for service, that was destined to fail from the start in an era when most households weren't even earning 100£ a week! 💸
This is quite common in Austria and Germany as well, the only thing i´m quite surprised is that this flat does just use 1 phase feeding. Normaly households should have a 3 phase suply for better grid balance....
Three phase in an apartment? Are you kidding?
@@johnburns4017 Every household have 3 phase ;)
@@MrElofix I live in North Germany in an small village. All houses here got 3 phase by default. If a kitchen stove is electric it is wired to 3 phase. A flow water heater , if installed, has 18, 21 or 24kW power, flow water heaters a wide spread common.
In my house, the incomer ist fused with the here mentioned Blade fuses (NH ) 3x 63A and the master breaker in the meter box limits my power consumption to 3x50A. The DSO run a TNC-S system.
The house is build 1950 and got 3 phase from beginnig. In 1990 I renew all electric, plumbing and heating
The meter box and the incomer were replaced due a small fire in my cellar in 2020. I replaced all MCBs against RCBO. Most circuits ar 16A B , some 16A C, lighting 6A B. To separate sockets and lighing circuits are not mandatory but is recommend.
In some places you can came across the outdated 127/220V supply. The N is not distributed but bonded to earth.
The all consumers are on 2 phases, so double pole CBs are used.
So if you test a socket you measure 127 V against earth and 220V between the holes.
How I wrote, very rare but present. A friend of mine in the city of Essen lived in a flat with such installation.
in most apartment buildings the phase balance is made by connecting different appartments with sigle phase to the 3 available phases in the distribution column. Many people here in France even when they have 3 phase like to switch to sigle phase to avoid phase balanc, save on subscription costs and electrical equipment. It's common to have 45A sigle-phase in France.
@@pizza_diavola-bx4op
Same in UK. An apartment building will have three phase with each apartment alternating on the phases.
It is rare any supply is less than 60A in the UK. Some very old houses in remote locations may have lower amp supplies. Apartments tend to be 60A while homes 100A.
In addition to @johankorten2797, in the Netherlands the wiring is placed in conduit (mostly not flex), and the common circuits are distributed in a star form from lightpoint to lightpoint to the switches and outlets. So when the wiring needs replacing you don't have to break the walls open, you just pull new wires from box to box. Lighting and common outlets are on combined circuits ( 16A).
Also we don't have ring circuits like in the UK, so no need for glass-fuses in every plug. I do find ring circuits are outdated and could be a fire hazard, if the ring has a break somewhere.
The location of the cabinet with the meter- and distributionboard needs to be within a couple of meters (I thought 3) from the front door of the residence.
Surprisingly I've had ring circuits in my house for over 60yrs and never had a problem, although I do tend to look after my own wiring needs.
32A circuits are extremely useful and flexible though, and they do not have to be rings either and can be implemented as radials. It means that in a location like a kitchen you do not need separate circuits for things like microwaves, electric kettles, dishwashers, air fryers and so on. It makes things simple. Also, it means that something like a thin flexible cord on a table lamp can be protected by a more suitably rated fuse in the plug (such as 3A) rather than a 20A breaker.
The reason the fuse in the plug system was adopted post-war was that the previous round pin standard had different sized plugs and circuits for different functions. Thus low powered devices would use small, 2A or 5A plugs on radial circuits with a 2A or 5A central fuse. Higher powered devices would be on 15A radials.
It was deemed by the designers of the system that it was more flexible to have a single sized plug but without forgoing the extra protection of having a fuse sized for the type of appliance in use. Thus BS1363 and the fuse in the plug idea. That was an enabler for 32A (and more powerful) circuits, but it was not the only reason. Of course, this was designed before MCBs, RCDs and so on, but it remains a very useful feature which enables BS1363 plugs to be used on just about any rated circuit (it's common to have a 13A socket on a 40A cooker circuit for instance).
@@deathonawhitehorse If you maintain it correctly it certainly can work and can be safe. But most people are not qualified for this, and will not notice when there is a break in the ring. In my opinion, ringcircuits in domestic environments are outdated and there are better/safer solutions nowadays.
Ring circuits can use less copper which was a very important consideration during the Second World War when they were first adopted as a common wiring solution. Modern practice, I hear, has returned to favouring radial circuitry,
How accurate that statement is where consumer units are installed. I am a retired electrician now 77. My unit is too high and was in a cupboard untill i removed the cupboard to expand the kitchen 20 years ago when I moved to Wales. What i found behind the old wylex consumer unit was frightening. Meter tails had been extended using 15amp. Connector blocks and well melted. I replaced the consumer unit and Tails. Certainly an eye-opener this is. This is far superior. I am out of touch now with uk standards as been out of the trade too long. No longer do private jobs , I am capable, but a definite No. Thanks for the video. We learn something everyday.
Oh, forgot to mention, the white box above the Linky should have seals on it, the supplier uses it to shut the supply down for meter work etc. Used to be a solid neutral link and fuse for phase. Three phase low current supply is quite common.
The black line in means your incomer is on L2 from the transformer. Same colours as UK 3 phase. L1 Brown, L2 Black, L3 Grey.
Interesting to maintain the line colour all the way to the consumer unit.
@@iainkay3630 For single phase installation the phase color is always black, no matter the phase use. For 3 phase meters, colour code is European, so your right for 3 phase installations
if it's like in Belgium the only mandatory colours are yellow/green for PE and blue for neutral. Neutral must be blue, blue must be neutral. The phase wires and light switch wires must be any other color. Back in the days phase conductors were red and black then it evolved to black-blue(-brown(-another black)) while now and since a few decades they are conform to HD 308 with blue-brown(-black-grey) and cables made for 3-phase supply without neutral do not have the blue conductor anymore, which makes things far more simpler and safer.
Brown is phase, black is switched mains. Blue neutral, yellow/green is earth.
The colors of the phase in the electrical panel are not specific to that of the neighborhood transformer.
In France we often use red, black or brown.
It depends on the electricians and the age of the installation, on old installations we often find black and on more recent installations red.
Lets be fair, if your doing a brand new build install then the box has to be in an accessible place and that has been the case for a few years. The gubbings of the box can either be split load (safe as houses) or RCBOs which is also safe as houses. Give it a few years and itll all be AFDDs. And others have mentioned cost is a major factor on install.
Hiya, I moved from the UK to Biarritz in western France. Welcome/bienvenue !
My electric cupboard looks very similar to yours. By the way, if you take the green front off the Linky you will see some signalling terminals on the lower right - these are where the wires to the water heater contactor come from and how the water heater gets switched on and off for the heures cruse via the Linky (not a time switch).
Mine also has space for the internet router, RJ45 cables to each room and a power outlet to plug the router in to. It is all very neat and tidy. Even the doorbell transformer is in the electrical panel alongside the breakers.
the contactor isn't limited to water heaters! I also use it for my car charging socket for example :)
Its awesome that france considers home networking space as part of its electricity installs and bundles them all into a neat package. We're definitely very behind on things like that.
I remember wiring a house up in France 30 years ago using Hager breakers, it was decent stuff, they did DIN rail mounted time clocks for lighting etc back then too.
The trouble with the consumer unit that low is that it’s also easily accessed by kids too!
I’m in the UK in a 19 year old house and the fuse box is reachable for an adult within reason, is there a set height here?
Note the French don’t do ‘ring mains’ they never identified the live and neutral at the wall socket either and some plugs can be inserted either way around do live neutral reversed.
The French tend to run single strings from sockets back to a breaker, makes for a lot of wires at the board.
I seem to remember they introduced a standard for L and N at sockets recently, N on the left if I'm not mistaken. Only earthed plugs are polarised, all non-earthed plugs fit either way, which renders the fixed positions in the socket rather useless, especially considering most appliances these days have double-pole switches and the ones that don't (table lamps, etc.) are most likely to be class II.
I assume dedicated circuits are required for most larger appliances, as in pretty much every country with socket circuits
We in the UK need to put the ring circuit to bed and loose our adversion to 3-phase in domestic premises. We also need to be less concerned with "polarity". With the euro 2-pin non-polarised socket, polarity can't be guaranteed to the appliance, so who cares if the ES lampholder is wired live to shell? What kind of person would stick their fingers in a lampholder, ES or BC? Another continental european thing is the trend for all insulated class 2, no metal, no earth required.. In my experience only places like kitchens and damp areas such as bathrooms have the CPC taken to a socket. Washing machines in bathrooms? No problem, sockets by sinks not an issue. 3-phase cookers no issue, This way the supplier can dispense with the 100A service fuse. and use something more appropriate. 0.75mm2 flexes protected by 16A devices, no fused plugs with 3A fuses here. A few years ago, there was a committee looking into why UK hospitals and other public buildings are so expensive to build compared to the European counterparts, you can see why on the elctrical installation side. All our regs are supposed to be harmonised with the IEC, really? In the UK we are over engineered and it produces very little benefit for the end user. We have very little standardisation with everyone condeming everyone else's work, making the industry look like a bunch of cowboys. Consumer unit "upgrades" are a good example., remember wi unit fires ? Very rare with traditional fuseboards and rewirable fuses.
@@ericthelan2188 This!
I have the same feeling that the UK is a total outlier in many ways (not just the sockets).
This means, that many really good solutions can not be sold in the UK (solar inverters, induction hobs), while the industry in Britain is saved from competition and does not innovate at an international rate.
Also, it is quite interesting to see how few UK sparks know anything about DALI and KNX, which would be often a life-saver for rewire projects.
@@Ragnar8504 Federal Republic of Germany here! At Bundespost (state post company [government own]) since around 1920 at SCHUKO [SCHUtzKOntaktsteckdose] (literally safety contact power outlet) they use the standard that from front view are left is neutral and right is phase, up and down is saved earth / cpc. My teacher in electrician company works there for many years after this electrician people worked around overall in West-Germany so it started to be a "standard" here. They influenced it with work in every colonies and working as teacher into other countries where we Germans was be after the second world war. So do you can found the Schuko around the world if they not use the British system. 😂
So we use N-L at every modern installation in mostly the houses. If you marked N same the musicians do in musical equipment do you can put in right too, other is that the power cord "hanging down" hardwired on the plug if it produces inside European Union.
@@OldLordSpeedy That's a Bundespost tradition but not an official standard (VDE or anything). The only official consensus seems to be that you should keep all sockets in one house the same. Asking "Neutral left or right?" is a good way to start a flame war among Germans on the internet. Some people say "L on the left" and others "R (from the old phase designations RST) on the right". Both equally correct, unless your employer has specific company guidelines.
The best theory I've ever read was that you should install horizontal sockets (turned 90 degrees) phase up so it takes longer for the water level to reach the phase in case of a flood. As if those 19 mm were likely to matter.
Belgium here: I have a new apartment (2021) with 3 phase 20A supply. I have 3 rows of breakers (most double module) with screw terminals. This is 3x400v+N. Some homes still have 3x230v, but that is being phased out. Residential is normally always TT earth.
3 phase to induction heater and EV charger in parking garage. (Unfortunately no data cable to EV charger) Everything else is single phase, although I have gas radiant floor heating and a mini-split system for AC. A large heat pump would likely have been 3 phase as well.
Separate breakers for almost everything you can imagine. Max of 8 loads per breaker (double outlet counts as 1 load) by code, I have 4 socket circuits.
Wiring is all singles in tubes, 2.5mm² for sockets fused at 20A, 1.5mm² for lights, fused at 16A.
It's required to have a 300mA main RCD for normal loads and 30mA for all "wet" loads. They are always daisy-chained, but never the selective type, so if you do something seriously wrong, its almost always the main RCD that trips. I wish we would move over to RCBOs instead, so the trips are localized. Other than that I quite like how it's done here, especially compared to the videos I see from the UK :O
Also: In apartments, the meter is almost always in a technical room in the basement. They moved to standardized wall mounting plates a long time ago, but with the new smart meters, that's even less messy. From the meter, it's a mains wire up to your breaker panel (consumer unit), usually on the wall of a small room where the all of the technicals are done, usually next to the washing machine.
RCBO double pole protected are crazy epensive .. a normal braker is mabye 8 to 12 euro .. RCBO wil proably cost 50 euro ..and has to be dual pole protected ( reason if because still lots of 3X230V in Belgium ) . But yes for slectivity it would be nice ..but has no sence if you have 300mA standaard ( non selective )RCD ...chances are big it wil trip also ( in uk there is no MAIN RCD )
@@kittsdiy True. Although Siemens makes them VAT inc for 30€ (Conrad), and I suspect price would go down if they weren't a specialty item. But given it's normally a one time cost and usually the time is much more expensive than the material, I would at least like to see this available for sockets.
Or maybe we can replace the 30mA system we now have with RCBOs instead and keep the normal stuff on a separate 300mA RCB.
Anything but the "trip all of things" scenario we have now...
@@Dries007BE nope that are RCD's .. still need a fuse behind it .. RCBO = RCD + MCB combine in 1 device . And those are expensive in Belgium and not very common . ( 45 a 65 euro at conrad siemens and are also 1P+N .. so probably not ok for inspection in Begium ...
@@kittsdiy On Conrad they have the Siemens 5SU1356-6KK16 for example, which is an actual RCBOs. If you look for "differentieelautomaten" at zelektro or elektramat, they also have them, with varying prices, but 25€ seems to be the cheapest option.
But you are right on the 1+N thing, so maybe it should only be allowed in situations where it makes sense (3x400+N for example).
Although I admit I don't quite get why this would matter too much, there must be a reason why they're marked as L and N instead of 1 and 2.
I’ve have certainly never understood why in the UK double busbar consumer units aren’t standard since boards are now fully populated with RCBOs, to me fly-leads to the neutral bar is a bizarre arrangement and untidy.
French electric regulation is RFC 15 100. You can find very comprehensive pdf summaries on Legrand and haguer’s websites. Very easy to read and understand
NFC......... ;)
@@pandyinfrance3065 merci pour la correction
The Netherlands and Switzerland do not differentiate between socket and light circuits. Wires are in conduits and rings are not used. 3 Phases are common for residential installations. The MCBs are double-poled, mostly 10 or 16A and there are multiple RCDs.
In Switzerland, the meter and the main fuse must be accessible from the outside, the consumer unit can be anywhere. In our case in the cellar. The main fuses are not sealed. These are round fuses that are screwed in. The amperage is also coded by the diameter of one end, so you could mount a smaller fuse in the holder, but not a bigger one.
In the Netherlands, RCDs have been mandatory since 1960 or so.
Another interesting component in Switzerland is the STOTZ (Stromstoßschalter). It is a bi-stable switch that is used to control lights with multiple switches, for example in corridors. One pulse switches on and the next pulse switches off. So, instead of DT and cross switches, you can have any number of momentary switches in parallel.
The weirdest installation I came across was in the 1970s in the inner city of Delft (NL) Here, the phase and neutral were at 110 Volt relative to earth. This required consumer units with a fuse in the phase and in the neutral.
Well it's stupid not using ring circuits. and massive radial ones can cause fires as they are like extention cables and when they are using it too much will go on fire like and lighting circuits should be only a certain size (sq metres) if not could start a fire due to so many lights on in that circuit and that's being a good electrician as in the future of these circuits it can be modified or made bigger and that's how it causes fires and problems and people should know that like 👍
@@GordonKay-ro1rs The wiring is all 2.5 mm2 and fused with a maximum of 16 A.
Our rules for electricity in residential is NF C 15-100.
Old houses have also ugly electricity installation like UK, with fuses.
The DTI is for testing old cooper PTT arrival (phone and ADSL internet). Useless now with fiber connection.
Coaxial TV repartitor, is compulsory but also useless now with fiber and TV by internet.
Ethernet dispatch and 2 16A sockets are compulsory for Internet provider box and other (like Fiber converter we call it PON/ONT). Number of ethernet outlet is based on number of rooms (see NF C 15-100). The biggest flaw in french installations is the lack of neutral in light switch, we go from breaker with phase, then to the switch, then DCL (central point of the ceiling for the bulb), then go back with neutral to the breaker. Not very upgradable for smart control lightning.
If you were to hop over to Germany for a bit, I could show you around some new, fairly new and ancient 3-phase units in one place. And show you how those label windows on these breakers are used properly. ;)
In central europe Poland we do similar, but our power meters are installed in outdoor cabinet on house wall if power service is overhead or in property border in cabinet if service is underground, also our electrical distribution grid works in TN-C system, rarely in TT, residential gets three phases L-N 230 L-L 400V. If i good know, France using usually TT system with 133 volts to ground and 230 phase to phase which need double pole breakers in house panel
Really? I thought that was only in Belgium, Italy and Spain, with France being mostly 230/400 V.
@@Ragnar8504 Looking at the double pole breakers and also fused neutral in mains page this looks like system with two 133V phases delivered to house
Same in Loithuania. A few decadeds ago power meters were also inside homes, but these days they are moved away into separate boxes to either property boundaries, or the closest power pole if within one's property
@@AsXSn I assumed that was just a leftover from old times. In Austria you had fused neutrals well into the early 1980s, in a then-standard 220/380 V TT system.
in Germany the main Fuse of a House will be external in a special Compartment if the Provider needs to shut power off. the Meter is always in the House. Sometimes with the needed Fuses in one box (in small Houses to save some space) but mostly as a main Distribution. if you have two or more flats in a house you will see a Sub Distribution in every Flat.
I think the ‘cumulus’ circuit is there for the EDF to be able to remotely disable the water heater during peak demand periods. I vaguely recall that there was such functionality built into the ‘geyser’ (as we used to call it) circuit when I was a youngster living in South Africa
Yeah I think you’re right!
@@artisanelectrics I think it’s called ripple control
In France it's pretty common (depending on your subscription) to have cheaper electricity during the night and/or around noon. The "cumulus" (which is the name of a range of water heaters from the brand Atlantic) is connected through the contactor and works only during these periods
I think it's possible but it's extremely rare that EDF uses that way to reduce power demand during peaks
The 2A breaker is to protect the contacter which turns the hot water heating on depending what hours are cheap rate on your contract. Heurs Creuse is cheap rate and heurs Pleine is full rate. In my case the hours for heurs Creuse start at 23:36 and end at 07:30.
If you push the buttons on the Linky you can see instant current consumption, kWh for day and night, maximum current ever drawn for the house and the linky is already setup to measure how much you've injected back into the network if you have solar panels. This is under Index Injection on the Linky.
The EDF will send a signal low/high price at fix times. Times at witch electricity is less expansive depends on your subsciption contract. The little 3 positions slider on the contacter is for: 0=Always OFF, Auto=automatic switching, 1=forced ON. On some contacters The forced ON will automatically switch back to Auto when finished heating or low price signal is sent.
hi really nice video and like to have a external input about our electrical system ^^
on your main breaker (the Bako one) the fuse can be set to something between 15 and 45 amps. it was set up by the electricity provider (Enedis who is in charge of the puplic electrical network up to houses) but now with linkys being mandatory, they are all set to the max and the linky is configured remotely to the plan you’re using ^^
if you’re interested about how the linky works and how it’s implemented i recommend you the channel Monsieur Bidouille who made a video in Enedis labs (only automatic subtitles avaliable tho)
In Germany, most households have 3 phases.230V to neutal/400V Phase to Phase. With the Hager system, you can split the 3 phases alternately between all circuit breakers. You should perhaps take a look at that.
Love the push fit connectors. Little chance of a loose connection from incompetence.
Yep. We always terminate our cables with WAGO TopJob S or Phoenix PTI 2,5-PE/L/NT installation clamps, to separate the cabling inside the cabinet from the building.
It makes it so much nicer to bring a unit you wired, labelled & tested in the workshop onsite and just push in the wires.
I am from Marseille and I can say your installation is very clean, electricity in this city has ton of issues cause of old unmaintained installation on old buildings
I'm portuguese, I live in france I live in London for 6 years as a handyman. In the UK you have third world level electric installations, it's scary how dangerous it can get
Também eu! It's amazing how such a developed and rich nation has awful electric installations.
My flat in the UK is from 1997 and its electrics are on par with my parents home built 60 years ago
My flat in PT, which was subsidized by the local council - so built cheaply - has a much better consumer unit than the ones I've seen in new builds.
It's appalling.
What about Portugal ?
@@papatango5085I have just had a house built in Portugal and the consumer unit looks similar to the one in this video, with some differences as I have a solar system with storage and a backup box fitted. There’s also separate panels for the heat pump and hot water cylinder etc.
@@papatango5085 Looks a lot like what's depicted in this video, but (in Portugal) the Smart Meter also has the limiter and the 500mA RCD incrporated. In this way, the grid operator can remotely change the parameters of your contract (power limitation, bidirectional for solar injection into the grid, etc...).
With that said, I asked my supplier of cable the other day, if they sell more black or more brown electrical cable and he replied: By far more black. So there's still a lot of shoddy work to be found. IEC 60446 became law in 2006 (Portaria n.º 949-A/2006) and that mandates that single phase cable runs should be brown and blue cable. Not black and blue.
@@papatango5085 Very similar to france the standards are basically the same nowadays
What i don’t like is how close the line and natural bus bars are together, you could say it’s not an issue because the incoming supply is protected by a 500 mA RCD, but what if the RCD becomes faulty and gets stuck in the on position ?
I think this French system is what we use in Eastern Europe and also in Germany. The only difference is we use quite a lot of single pole MCBs (shared neutral) behind RCD (or RCBO) instead of dual pole MCB, also triple phase is quite popular in some areas where single phase is limited to 32 Amps and triple phase is the only way to get more than that.
It is called European Union 🇪🇺 EU sets the standards.
The DTI box is the connection between the national phone network and the local network inside your place. The "test" plug allows to check if an issue comes from your network or from the outside world (if your equipement works when connected to it, the problem is in your place).
Remember the earth regime of domestic installations is mostly TT in France like in many other countries on the continent. Double-pole MCBs are a must in TT installations as you could have 127 V between neutral and earth in some situations. Also, the habits in France, Belgium etc. to work on a circuit is to trip the MCB of the said circuit. MCBs have the "sectionneur" function = isolation switch function, shown with a T-shaped contact on the switch symbol, and are double pole so you're safe to work on that circuit without needing to switch off the whole instlalation or a whole row of the consumer unit. Also an interesting ting : there is a [S] symbol on the main switch : the RCD function is delayed so the RCDs in the consumer unit will trip first and will trip less circuits. The main switch must be an RCD because of the TT earth regime, again.
Yeah, Germany is weird, we have the TT system in some regions, but we don't have to isolate the neutral, but mostly we have the TN system.
Good point, doesn't this mean that the UK system, apropos earthing, is superior?
@@thebamplayer a TT system where neutral isolation is not mandatory means that the neutral of the single phase is always a real neutral, tied to the earth at the DNO side. In Belgium we have this weird 3x230V distribution system installed after WW2 to spare one conductor in the street distribution, which means single phase houses and apartments get either L1-L2 or L2-L3 or L3-L1, one of which of these conductors is then considered as neutral in the installation... while it is not the neutral at the DNO side... But in other places the distribution is a real 3x400V+N where the neutral is a "genuine" DNO neutral... So, to avoid any confusion and keep things simple, we have dual pole RCDs and MCBs all over the country.
@@icarossavvides2641 a TN-S distribution system needs more conductors in the street wiring, which one could consider as "inferior". I think there is no superior/inferior system, there are different systems and depending of what was more important or what were the constraints at the moment of the decision, one system is more suitable than another in a dedicated situation, at a defined moment in history. Elsewhere or later on, the decision could be different.
German TT Systems uses 3 phases and a Neutral, which is connected with the generator neutral, but you have to build your own ground. So the neutral is connected to the middle of the Y wiring at the transformer secondary. Our Phase to Phase voltage is 400V and Phase to Neutral is 230V
Yeah our Cabinets here in Germany mostly look like that as well, though of course it can happen that in older houses you will find stuff like, screw fuses, Cables without ground wire (but that are houses build before the 60-70s mostly), but generally speaking every house that was build after like 1970ish, should look very similar.
Hello,
In France, AC type RCD are allowed for everything but appliances with inverters like EV charger, washing machine, induction hobs... For these A type (or F or B) RCD are mandatory.
Also there is a rule saying you can't have more than 8 breaker plugged into one RCD, which is not enforced here 😅
That's the point, inverters are the only likely source of DC leakage, although some think any switching mode power supply might as well, which means at least every desktop computer should be on a type A RCD.
@@Ragnar8504 EVs are also a source of DC leakage, but the DC detection is usualy done in the wallbox.
At home, I only have type A and type B RCD, not type AC as they are useless now.
I'm surprised that you could take off this cover of the main fuse... I'm an electrician in France, you have no right to touch anything before the lower part of the isolation switch / RCD 500mA. If you remove the green cover from your 'linky' (this you're allowed to do) you can acces the contact for the 'heures creuses', which is the cheaper electricity by night if you subscribe an option to get it (than for the day you pay more!). It's just a simple contact NO, commanded by the provider of electricity.
maybe it only matters for high current devices?
Supply goes through the Linky then the rcd, the terminals on the rcd "out" are not sealed
Here in the UK we do seem to lag behind the rest of Europe in a lot of ways. I agree with you about our consumer units are all too often located in the most ridiculous places and can be very difficult to work on. The panel you show here is very neat and accessible, why didn't they just put 2 type A RCDs in to cover all possibilities. I like the double pole MCBs which make testing and fault finding so much easier but I think all RCBOs would be better than the 2 RCDs, like we are now doing in the UK.
Our railways are certainly lagging behind the French by at least four decades! They released the 300km/h (186mph) TGV in 1981...And 42 years later we're *still* clipped at a comparatively stationary 200km/h (125mph)... 🚄🇫🇷💯💨😇
(The sole exception to that is HS1...But HS1 is built to the French standard, and the only British built trains which use it are cross-channel variant of the TGV... ❤🔥)
@@dieseldragon6756 It's been obvious for years that our hierarchy prefer our country to be an investment bank lining their pockets with easy money rather than an industry powerhouse. Plus we totally lack skill base labour forces, The country is strangled from all directions. The government are very stingy with their incomes (like banks are) And are slow on the uptake for change - unless it greatly benefits their coffers in the short term. People wave around the term "Broken Britain".. Well, It certainly is! Not in the literal sense (yet lol), But we are far removed from what we used to be and from the rapidly changing world around us.
And when I was a kid back in the 60s it was the opposite way round. Our home in the UK was a haven of safety compared with my relatives' place in France. That's what 40 years of no longer investing in your country and its people does. Thanks Maggie!
@andrewwithers4843 Yes, but in a new install, part M of the Building Regulations states access requirements and accessible location for the consumer unit. If it's just a new consumer unit on old circuits then it's almost certainly going to go in the same place, though I have had one replaced in a previous house and I asked the electrician to move it in a more accessible location while he was about it... and he did!
This video is comparing new with old and people are saying new is light-years ahead of old and then acting surprised.
In Italy type A are used for outlets and appliances while type AC is used for lighting. Anyway those RCD only switches are crazily overloaded! That unit according to Italian rules is unsafe (our unit must be safe regardless what the meter has as a breaker) so if the power company replaces the MCBO with a switch the unit must still be safe
I think you are assuming all houses are like yours. The electrics you have look brand new. You can't compare to old victorian houses in Britain. I bet some of the old Gites have crap electrics too.
There is absolutely no reason old houses have crappy wiring. Sure, it can be difficult to renew wiring in old buildings but on the other side of the channel they put decent wiring in since the 60’s at least. If the wiring is older than that it has been time to do something about that several decades ago.
And even with questionable wiring in the house, it is absolutely inexcusable to have a crappy breaker box. It’s cheap and easy to make something decent out of that.
In The Netherlands the consumer unit must be indoors, protected against frost- water- and wind, and on the same floor as the front door.
It must be placed in the same space and not more than 4,5 meters from the front door.
The reason for this is that in the event of an emergency, the fire brigade easily can shut off electricity and gas
At new building sites the 'meterkast' is normaly the first to be placed.
I've come across a board like that in UK 4 years ago, sparks came from Germany to do the install years ago!!
If French/German boards *are* acceptable under UK regs, I think I might've just found a safer upgrade for my 14th edition CUs... 👍
(Just don't tell a certain Mr. Farage... 😉)
@dieseldragon6756 that's what the departures section of the certificate is used for😎
When I bought my Dutch-built boat, the mains electrics consisted of two 10A trips which sent out a cable to a double socket. From there another cable went out to the other side of the boat with a plug on the end. The plug was permanently live.
I replaced this with a 12 place box with a 40A RCD taking 2 places. There are 8 trips for plugs around the boat. The last two places are taken by 2 16A trips connected to the input sockets, one on either side of the boat so the side next to the quay can be connected. Since the nonconnected socket will be live, the trip for that side has a warning light connected indicating that the trip should be switched off. One cannot be too careful when electricity is involved.
hi there, nice vid about the french elektrics, i'm next door in belgium. i am an electrical inspector btw :). its interesting to see how the french do it. here in belgium you are not allowed to use a type AC DIfferential (RCD) only a type A or in some cases when you have battery you have to use a type B. i wonder what other rules are different in france since our elektrical grid is based on the french, like in belgium you have to have since 2023 1 differential per 8 wall outlets. and dedicated line for washing machine, oven, and everything over 2600W. also the differential in belgium has to be max 300mA instead of the 500mA.
anyways like to see elektrics in other country's :)
yep and also the neutral is not protected ( just switched together withe the live ) i believe in these fuses .. we cannot use these in Belgium for example .
The 500mA differential is the main breaker. It is loosely to protect from fires while the Consumer unit RCDs are to protect people.
The main differential disconnector is also a failsafe in case the consumer unit RCDs fail.
@@johnburns4017 we have the same in Belgium 300mA RCD type A ( but not with mcb inside ) in the same consumer board. At the meter we have normal mcb of 40.A in case of single fase
@@johnburns4017 unless i'm missing something they do different in france, the 500mA always indicates that it is a differential and does not protect againts overload, unless it is a breaker/differential combo, ( also a differential and a RCD is the same thing). i think the french do the same thing as in belgium first in line is the main breaker from the meter, then its the differential/RCD and that has the 500mA indicator.
@@playercloof
It is:
*1)* earth leakage (500mA usually);
*2)* Over-current (adjustable on many).
*3)* fault protection;
8:57 I'm not sure about France, but in The Netherlands it's not allowed to put wago's inside a fusebox with 230V.
I am surprised that they are still using split load boards and not RCBO's.
Double pole RCD & adjustable MCB main switch is an excellent solution to the incoming supply.
All RCBO's should be double pole imho.
I have used the push in terminal bars before in NIGLON consumer unit and they are the way forward!
Good video, cheers!
Double pole is just useless as you alway have the neutral at the earth potential, so can't have a huge flow of current if it touch earth. Double pole is mandatory when you have 220V between phases, and you have 110V to ground in the "neutral" as this is not happening anymore as all is upgraded to 230/400V. RCBO are really overpriced and llosing just the half of the house if something get wrong is not a big thing to deal with. And as all overcurent protection cut the neutral, it's easy to flip all down, the reset the RCB and flip the rest up one by one until the RCB cut to locate the fault. As it's TT and not TN an eath fault is never a short circuit.
@@lapub. RCBOs in the UK at least are not particularly expensive and I for one find it massively inconvenient to lose half the circuits in the house. I did not, for instance, appreciate the loss of power to the refrigerator and freezer when I was away from home due to water getting into the PIR detector on an external light.
@@TheEulerID The cheapest RCB is 25€ while a simple breaker is 5€. There is "minimal mandatory" configuration and "recommended" one. So you can have RCB dedicated for freezer and fridge "Hpi" that are less prone to false triggering but cost 200€, you can dedicate one for the outside and so on.
@@lapub. I can get MK RCBOs in the UK (retail) for £14.40 inc VAT (17 Euros). MCBs are £2.88 inc VAT, or around 3.5 Euros.
My fairly new MK consumer unit (steel enclosure) with 10 RCBOs cost £179.94 including VAT, although adding surge protection was another £32.82 including VAT. So about £210 or 250 Euros. When the requirement for a couple of RCDs and the larger enclosure required for a split-RCD configuration is factored in, then the full RCBO configuation is about £70 more. Frankly, over the life of the unit the cost is trivial. It costs me £70 to refuel my car.
That is for a 4 bedroom detached house with an exterior detached double garage with power.
Very interesting on the new stuff it would be interesting to see some of the older properties wiring. That's some commute you've introduced for yourself !!
Haha true 😂
You do not want to see old French wiring! Even 70s/80s wiring is quite shocking to us. Things have improved greatly in France.
@@johnburns4017 One thing that constantly amazes me even in fairly new wiring is singles in trunking. It's legal over here only if the trunking can't be opened without using tools, and regular old trunking definitely can.
@@Ragnar8504
plastic trunking in the UK needs a screwdriver to prise the lid off. So a tool used.
@@johnburns4017 Memories of my first trip to Paris (mid 90s) include cafe toilets where the (Hopefully!) neutral leg of the light was wired through the lock on the door, as the light would illuminate as soon as the bolt came into contact with the hasp. I very quickly adopted the habit of (un)locking the door with a few layers of folded toilet paper as insulation... ⚡
Nothing to do with perceived danger, mind you. I was just aware that I don't have nearly the same degree of _Resistance_ as the French. 🇫🇷💯😇
I'm english and did my apprenticeship in germany and we mainly use hager. Though I'm always impressed with what you guys do i always see consumer units and certain things done in the UK and I'm kind of shocked at how some standards/practices are.
You should look at a 30+ year old house in the Netherlands or Germany😜 electricity in the house you shown was still an afterthought.
Something interesting you could look at is ABB Busboard.
In the Netherlands the consumer unit is in its own closet in the hallway (the "meterkast"), together with all other utilities. I didn't even know that wasn't standard everywhere. I think that's the best way; very convenient and accessible, but not being ugly or taking up space in the living room or kitchen or something like that.
Saves having the messy neutral fly leads.
SBS did the same in the UK but they went belly-up after only a few years on the market.
My daughter's house is three years old. Consumer unit in the hall is steel, with relevant RCDs and separation of upstairs, downstairs, garage and exterior curciits. My house is 50 years old and has electrics and plumbing in the garage that look like a plate of spaghetti. I've rented old houses in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Malta. They all had dodgy electrics. Why the "national disgrace" message? New houses have more modern electrical installations than old houses? Who'd a thunk it?
Having a split-RCD CU is a step backwards for me from separate RCBOs.
It is, however, about time that CUs with dual bus bars for line and neutral with RCBOs were the standard. Dual pole would be nice of course.
Putting an LED line driver into a CU is a no-no for me.
Having separate circuits for dishwashers, microwaves and so on strikes me as a very expensive and inflexible system compared to simply plugging in or hardwiring into a 32A circuit. That's lots of extra wires, extra breakers and limits locations. Some will complain about ring circuits, but it's perfectly possible to use 32A radials in kitchens.
I should add that just because the water heater is rated at just 1500 watts doesn't mean that it costs any less to run. It just takes longer to heat up. Water takes the same amount of energy to heat, whatever the rating of the heater element (leaving aside heat pumps - a different issue). What does make a difference is being able to use cheaper rates using "smart" technology.
nb. are those rather steep, narrow, open stairs without a guard rail within regulations? There isn't even a handrail on the wall side. We obsess about the danger of electricity, but deaths due to falls from steps or stairs dwarf them (731 deaths due to falls from stairs or steps in England and Wales in 2021 for instance).
Having that many RCBO's would make that board blooming expensive? There are rules on the number of plugs and lights per circuit, and likewse the number and rating of circuit breakers per RCD. The number of RCD's is then governed by the size of the property. Dishwashers and Microwaves don't require a dedicated circuit. Though it is recommended for Freezers, Dishwasher and tumble dryers. Washing machines, Cookers, Ovens, boilers, hotwater tanks and radiators should all have direct circuits. Though you can put two rads to a circuit breaker.
Ring mains are considered dangerous and illegal in the UK sense of the installation.
Horses for courses, though it is true that a 120m2 house in France, uses km's of wire these days, which does indeed make it expensive.
@@Charles-pz6ux As european plugs do not have fuses, then they cannot use high powered circuits, which are are very flexible as far as the consumer is concerned. In my kitchen I don't have to be concerned which combination of appliances is plugged in where, as the circuit can deliver 7 kW. That simplifies everything. Also, it doesn't have to be delivered as a ring. Sometimes a 32A radial is used in a kitchen. Often the only dedicated circuit in a kitchen is for the cooker (although a few might have a dedicated fridge/freezer circuit, albeit with a socket) . The enabler for that is the fuse in the plug, which means that the overcurrent protection on the final leg is that appropriate to that appliance and cable.
I thought a RCD was a fancy new breaker and I googled it and they are just GFCIs . I don't see any AFCI breakers at all. I have a separate apartment that I built above my garage and it has a bathroom and a kitchen. On the kitchen countertop the code requires 20 amp receptacles. They must be split. Each plug is 120V but from the top to the bottom receptacle is 240. ( I build a plug that plugs into both to power my wife's massager device from Ukraine.) So in bedrooms you need all the receptacles to be ACFI and for the countertop you need 2 double pole 20 amp breakers ganged together so that a fault on top or bottom of one socket will trip the other socket in the receptacle also. So I need two double pole AFCI breakers and they cost about $200 each. The inspector eventually told me that to get around all of this , that I don't have a kitchen , it is just a serving area, because I don't have a stove. Now I want to put in a stove so I also need AFCI and GFCI combo breakers. They do have these but just single pole. I think I can put the ACFI breakers in and have the actual receptacle as GFCI. I would also like to upgrade my service because I only have 100 amps and I need 200 amps with all the circuits and now a new double 40 amp for the stove.
I can't believe how compact the breaker boxes are in Europe. Mine is just huge. My wife has an apartment in Dnipro Ukraine and it is all aluminum wiring and she had the kitchen redone. When I got there for the first time to look at it , the kitchen light didn't work and the long hallway had one light and was dark. The living room light was an old ugly fixture. The electrician was not called back to fix the kitchen so I just did it myself. I took EE and wired my own house in Canada so I was kinda competent. I fixed the kitchen wiring and then added two more lights in the hallway and put a new living room fixture in that was nice and bright. She only had 4 crappy breakers above her front door. 240 V one for the oven. I couldn't believe such a small little box. Then the wall receptacles were few and far between and humongous. The outlet bars you could buy were gigantic. The wall switch was complicated also. I am glad they designed the North American plugs and switches to be so compact and convenient. You need a receptacle every 12 feet in any room. Ukraine seems to have no such code , or they didn't in the past. In Canada the wires have to be in the center of studs , the studs are usually 3 1/2 inches and this means when you drive a screw into a stud you won't penetrate a wire and create a short. If it is less than that , then the wire needs to have a piece of metal covering it to stop a screw. In between the studs, the wire should hang kinda loose so that any accidental wall penetration will just push the wire aside and not penetrate it. The wiring in Ukraine and UK from what I see doesn't worry about this.
At my local Home Depot, I talked to the guy in electrical dept. and he actually sat in on the committees that worked out the electrical code for US and Canada. Canada has 20 amps on kitchen counters and the US requires only 15. They couldn't get the Americans to increase it to 20. There are now many differences between Canada and the US and when I buy stuff I have to make sure it has ULC and not just UL. When you go online shopping you have to zoom in on the pictures to see if the C is actually there. American stuff is sold to Canada and it is buyer beware. I notice the 14/2 wire in the US is not rated for Canada and I bought some for my house in Florida and it is more flimsy. Canada needs special plastic for -40C.
No way the French -- or anyone else around the world -- would call a breaker box a 'consumer unit'. Sounds like a term that an economist came up with.
German:
Hauptverteilung - Main distribution
Unterverteilung - Sub distribution
Bureaucratic German:
Niederspannungshauptverteilung - Low voltage main distribution
Colloquial
Zählerschrank - Meter cabinet
Sicherungskasten - Fuse box
Silly name for a main panel. It is only a relatively new name.
Personally (From a British perspective) I find it quite descriptive - Everything in and south of it is consumer adaptable¹, everything north of the main switch should be left entirely to the professionals. 👍
(¹ - Assuming you have the due competency to do the work. It's consumer adaptable as in _„The competent consumer may install additional circuits if required“_ (e.g: New shower/HVAC circuit) as opposed to _„The equipment is designed to be usable by anybody with no prior training“_ (Plugs, switches) 😇)
It is a unit on consumer premises.
It is accurate and descriptive.
They've been called "consumer units" for as long as I can remember - and I'm nearly sixty.
It is mentioned in the comments elsewhere.
N frame fuses (NH etc.) then sizes in series of zeros like hornby trains. Higher current devices come in bigger bodies. There is a range in each size thouhh.
Various curves (class) are available which iirc differ from the BS series quite a bit.
We had a compressor supplier insistant (in the UK) that they needed "semiconductor fuses" to protect the inverter of a 60kw screw compressor despite an adjustable thermal breaker in the DB to the machine and a fused switch local to the machine. Our local fuse specialist supplier pointed us in the direction of N frame fuses and a "whoner" carrier. A 3 pole thermoplastic affair that goes together like an old knife switch. Much like a cut out it could be used to isolate a circuit but not for disconnecting a load.
Very compact and easy to fit. I think at the time each fuse was £80.
They do have indicators on each fuse at least.
The rupture time can be far shorter hence the "semiconductor" aspect.
Imagime a shoot through on an inverter bridge or recitifire failure. Providing a dead short beyond the cable/supply capacity. Now wait for the fuses to heat up and eventually pop. Or go for these things that blow in milliseconds. Just the the induction heater i have here to repair that took out a ring main and the plug fuse rather than a suitable selective fuse in the device.
As for the double pole breakers.. can the plugs there can be made in either ploarity and don't have fuses in them.
The breakers protect the devices as well as the installation. (Foregoing internal fuses).
Besides. I rather like having switches on my outlets.
This is not meant to be antagonistic but as you recently had your business go through a parlous state (whilst you were travelling the Far East) that resulted in having to make redundancies I would have thought you would not have been in such a hurry to work relocate in such a short space of time.
Rather have the foreign lifestyle and make people in the UK redundant than give up his foreign work. Nobody cares about the UK anymore!
Great video as usual. Like you i investgate everywhere i go to see how they do things in other countries. i am IET eng, but not electrician.
i lived in Wroclaw, Poland for 7 years. My rented flat was about 15yrs old and had a metal fuse box in the wall, with double rows rcd, easily accessable. But the internal wiring in the flat was very rough and ready, but better than a lot of old English houses.
i think that we can all learn from each other as there are some good points from many EU counties and UK.
It's the same in Poland. Only UK is weird
Other than the location, this consumer unit is just like the one in my house in the UK, so not that weird really. Given that this is the standard requirement these days, there can't be that many homes in the UK that don't have these now.
@@Thurgosh_OG It may be the standard regulation, but that's for new installations. When new regulations come out, nobody jumps up and says "I must upgrade my wiring".
Thousands of older properties still have older units - they only get replaced when problems arise. Until very recently, my house (built 1882) still had a fuse box.
Standard EU law
15:48 microwave, lights sockets on AC type does not sound right. Don't all led bulbs nowadays have pulsating electronics in it?
Doesn't electricity in France run on the other side of the wires ?
Yeah it does, it flows in from the left
It depends: If the wires are on the railway, it runs on the same side as in the UK... 🚄⚡😉
(Except that the French system is 150% faster, 30% cheaper, and has tractive performance on impossibly sharp gradients that we can't match on the flat! 🙃)
I suppose France works like the Belgian electricity; we have 2 main types of circuits for humid environments like kitchen, bathroom who are on a 30mah "residual current circuit breaker"; and there is a 300mah for other rooms. These are devices that measure 'loss' current in devices and switch off extremely rapid. In Belgium we also use a very strict laws for electricity, it is called AREI (in Dutch), it is available online. Our normal home electricity installations look like the cabinet you have in France.
By the handwriting, the electrician who wired that panel was either a woman or he brought his wife to do the labeling. Mine looks like it was done by a physician.
In the Netherlands we have meter box regulations
Regulations for the position of the meter cupboard
The meter cupboard must go directly from the door of your home or building
through a hall or hallway are accessible.
The distance between the entrance door of the home/building and the meter cupboard
is allowed maximum 3 meters. If this is more, additional regulations apply.
To ensure that emergency services can easily intervene in the event of an emergency,
it is important that the front door and the meter cupboard are at the same level.
The meter cupboard must be frost-free.
It is recommended that the distance between the meter cupboard and radiators,
is at least 50 centimeters.
Regulations for meter cupboard dimensions
The meter cupboard must have a minimum size of: 240 x 77 x 35 centimeters (hxwxd).
The free passage of the doorway is at least 70 x 210 centimeters
Other meter cupboard regulations
If the floor area of the meter cupboard is larger than 1 m2, then at least:
One lighting point and one wall socket must be present in the meter room.
The meter space must be lockable with a lock.
The walls to which the various utilities are mounted must be covered with sheet material.
This must have a thickness of at least 18 mm.
What doesn't belong in the meter cupboard?
Toilet paper.
Cleaning products and paint residues.
The ironing board and the vacuum cleaner.
Do not turn the meter cupboard into a storage cupboard
A maximum of four groups may be protected by one earth leakage circuit breaker.
A maximum of 12 groups are allowed on one phase, so in a 3-phase cabinet;
3-phase x 3 earth leakage circuit breakers (30mA), so 9 x 4 groups = 36 groups in total
A maximum of four groups may be protected by one earth leakage circuit breaker.
A maximum of 12 groups are allowed on one phase, so in a 3-phase cabinet;
3-phase x 3 earth leakage circuit breakers (30mA), so 9 x 4 groups = 36 groups in total
3-phase earth leakage circuit breakers may not be used for 1-phase circuit breakers
France has choice of 15-30-45 amps...your monthly electricity bill 'line rental' varies on this choice
As a man living on a UK supply with a rated maximum of 100A (But normally never drawing more than 5A at once) I'm always surprised at how well adjusted I am to EU power supply limitations despite having the current availability of six French flats! 😳
@@dieseldragon6756 I think it's because electricity used to be really cheap in France, and used for heating. Without power limitation, power use would jump way too high, more than what the network can handle
@@pizza_diavola-bx4op It was the same in the UK, and a whole generation of homes (Mine included) were built in such a way they can only be heated electrically - Gas is completely out of the question here.
Of course the latter increase in the cost of energy makes these places *very* difficult to live in (I've no hope; Resistive heating only, north facing, and exposed to boreal wind throughout the Winter) and mine will probably take a good 20 years off my lifespan. But because I have non-chosen disabilities and no money, this is regarded „OK“ by British administrative offices. ♿⚰🤔
Mind you; I wonder if the difference in supply capacities means that British domestic meters are also employed as industrial supply meters in France and other places where per-supply allowance is at or below the UK domestic norm? (Though nowadays, we're all being re-fused to 60A). 😇
@@dieseldragon6756 Electric resistive heating dominates in many Canadian provinces (where the electricity is produced 95% by hydroelectric dams) and has since the 1970s. A large portion of southwestern British Columbia, including Vancouver, now has mandated heat pumps as the singular legal source of heating going forward for all new construction.
Hi! I live near Marseille and I've some knowledges in electricity. I'm glad you've been impressed by our electricity network here in France, and yes we have high quality standards which now permits to get with few modifications to new technologies and that's same with internet network.
Sometimes the national electricity standards (NF-C 15 - 100) are more restrictive than the other European countries standards but for good reasons. Here you're in city, but in the countryside you could be surprised cuz they don't renovated the domestic network on certain houses, that's a good way to see the national standard evolution, since 2000's we have most of the requirements that's are present today.
- NF C 15-100, for domestic electricity standard from the output of the main breaker to all the domestic network. (colors-code, bathroom requirements, cable section with which equipement connected to, and lot more...)
- NF C 14-100, from national grid into the input of the consumer unit point (main breaker; property of the national electric compagny aka EDF).
The white box named "DTI" is a part for internet network ADSL, and now require to integrate fiber optic with RJ45 splitter (patch panel i think we say in english). the internet box should be located near this white box.
You should take a look into a modern German home
That's a great proposal, I would be interested about his thoughts.
In Germany the whole main installation with the meter(s) and communication devices will be a metal enclosure (meter cabinet), which is isolated on the inside. There is a three-phase-supply on every building and the cable from the grid provider is terminated in a dedicated box. In contrast to french electrics only the phase is switched by the MCBs and type AC RCDs are forbidden. Installations in conduits are rare, most cables are directly laid into the walls. In addition there are standards for everything and similar to the UK testing the installation with measurement devices is required.
Consumer units at front doors are frowned upon by fire brigades as the door is a means of escape in case of fire. Fires do happen in consumer units with so many screwed terminals to work loose.
Others love it because they can disconnect the supply as they enter the house. A former colleague of mine was a volunteer fire fighter and worked during a flood. The first thing he did entering a house was find the DB and flip the RCD.
@@Ragnar8504
Fires are more common than floods.
@@johnburns4017 With your name, you should know.
@@Ragnar8504 You can still put a consumer unit indoors with an accessible fire switch/disconnector on the outside. That also avoids having to get close to your burning CU.
@@tartanspy
If the only exit is the front door, like in apartments, having the main panel at the front door is not a very bright thing to do.
Basically a dual RCD consumer unit which we got rid of a few years ago. Also why are the French still using AC type RCDs which we no longer use. Push fit MCBs are 20a or less, 32a have screw terminals. You have to pay extra for the bus bar - it doesn’t come with the consumer unit. Basically you buy the enclosure and the MCBs separately. I replaced the consumer unit on my parents house in France and it cost €700 for a three phase board with 24 ways with 3 RCDs. A fully loaded Hager all RCBO board would cost less in UK. The French have dedicated supplies for all appliances which heat water like a dishwasher or washing machine
There is plenty of applications where type A RCDs don't work and AC should be used there instead.
Type A are mandatory for huge DC load such as cooking plate and dish washer. It is recommanded but not mandatory for other loads. Type F is recommanded for an electrical vegicule recharge plug as well but obly type A is mandatory. Also there is a earthing switch required, follow the biggest earh wire. This helps the consuel to perform the earthing double checks to ensure proper security and get granted to plug on the grid (ENEDIS) 🖖
You can mix and match enclosure, RCDs, RCBOs etc and you have 3-phases, which makes it hard to compare to UK units.
A boiler, heat pump, sauna oven or car charger will be 32A or more on a single phase, but only 12-16A on a 3-phase, 400V system - so those would still be using push-in connectors.
I find the European 5-6 DIN Rail enclosures much more flexible and future proof, especially if they use installation terminal blocks like WAGO TopJob S, where the cables are forever on a clamp and the inside of the cabinet gets (re-wired) from there.
Yes. Might cost up to 300€ more, but it will save much, much more if anything needs to be changed later.
I don't know French prices but 700 sounds quite expensive. I've got access to Austrian prices, that's 50 Euros for an enclosure (26 ways, surface-mounted), 70-80 Euros per RCD (cheaper if you buy from Germany, much cheaper) and about 10 Euros per MCB (again, much cheaper in Germany).
Type AC RCDs can't be used with any loads that could generate DC leakage because not only the RCD wouldn't detect it but worse, the DC could saturate the RCDs core causing the RCD not to trip even on an AC fault. So AC is useful for purely resistive and inductive loads but not for any power electronics, definitely not for inverters, possibly not even for switching mode power supplies (like in every phone charger, computer power supply, etc.).
If you have only one panel, even 3 phases, this must be RCBO (disjoncteur différentiel) they have setup. Second I would advice you to buy the product from online website asked by your electrician and have him set them up. Reason is that the 3 major brand (Legrand, Hager and Schneider) and a policy of public price with massive discount. Going online you will het that discount in your pocket.
I’m not an electrician but lived in France for nearly 20 years. We had lots of electric work done in our house, why? Because the place was a mass of cables which often were destroyed by mice etc. The loft was like a spiders’ web and in the sous sol (basement) it was even worse. The reason? The French do not do ring mains. There is a new cable for each set of outlets etc. Every set of outlets be it for plugs for TVs or fridges is allowed only up to a max of 5 outlets per cable (16amps). There has to be a dedicated cable for anything like a hob or cooker which is fine but by the time all this gets back to the consumer unit its impossible to cram all those cables in so its another row of circuit breakers and the conduit to the box is subsequently much larger. In fact the final length of conduit for our house was 10cms and even then it hardly coped. No Linksys. I was the tea boy for some French electricians during a neighbour’s renovation and it was a real eye opener. Not only did they have to deal with walls made of flint stones they had to run cables to and from the most inconvenient places. I spent a bit of time explaining about ring mains and spurs and while they were skeptical as to whether it was more convenient or cheaper they couldn’t understand why French rules prevented them from adopting the system. I doubt if many of the old places like mine and indeed any building before say 1960 would have the smart setup shown in the video. Accessibility, yes all of the consumer units I saw in France were in convenient places, even like the video, in the lounge. Ours was in the sous sol which could have been dodgy because we were prone to flooding after prolonged rain.This is almost certainly this standard because it is a rental property and apparently quite modern. Anyway our chat ended in the usual Gallic shrug and a c’est ;a view. I tired to educate them to drink tea but that was a loser. It was always too strong and why the hell do you put milk in it? An excellent way to improve your French skills but beware that they will swear that a certain word is OK instead. Thankfully I tried it on an elderly neighbour and he said, you learned that from the guys working in the house. He then explained what I was really saying - thank god I didn’t use the expression in polite company. It was a great life and we miss it - getting old is a bastard but you have to remember that for the kids, if anything happens, they will have a worrying time dealing with everything. Such is life.
In denmark 3phase is normal for domestic CUs
Same in quite a few European countries. Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia are mostly three-phase, Hungary is a mixed batch, as are Czechia and Slovakia. Most other countries are largely single-phase for domestic supplies.
I don't think most DNOs in Austria and Germany even offer single-phase supplies these days, the smallest you can get is 18 kW (25 A per phase). Some areas in Germany are 63 A per phase by default, even for the tiniest flat. That's a bit ridiculous if you ask me.
In the UK, lack of space and price of installation in older properties is a driver for locating CU in obscure places.
I recently had a new CU installed in my bungalow, and we were trying to decide on the best place to put it, because I wasnt happy where the existing one was.
It had to be relatively close to the incoming meter feed, otherwise the cost of wiring (and labor) between the CU and that would have been excessive.
I could have put it in the entrance hallway, but that is quite narrow, and it would have stuck out into the hallway space.
In the end, there wasn't any other practical option, so it ended up in the same place as the one it was replacing: Inside a cupboard in the master bedroom (which being a bungalow is at ground level). It also had to be at the top of the cupboard to prevent it accidentally being covered by stuff. So not great, but what can you do?
Old French wiring was Red White Blue before EU Harmonization
Very patriotic :-)
Hi, as an Spanish person, I find this consumer unit common. However I find award the location of the principal fuses and meter. In Spanish houses, the fuses and meter are always placed outside the house (in the fence) and all buildings must have a meter room (located near to the door) for all fuses and meters of all apartments. Then the consumer unit must be placed somewhere accessible the nearest to the exit door as possible.(Not in the living room)
And we do things like that for a reason. Imagine the wires that feed your house start burning, it is logical to have a fuse outside your home that will protect you! Or imagine in a buiding a short circuit occurs in someone's feed wires, it is logical to have a separate feed to that appartment that will shut off and not all of them because someone had an electrical fault.
Here in german it is similar to the spanish , The main fuse is in a cable juncion box at the roadside for each building.
The meter is normally in the building, in a single house at a wall to the roadside in extra space, normally a in a cabinet inclusive the consumer unit, similar to this one showed in this video.
In block of flats or multi storied buildings, the incomer ends in a "meter room" in the cellar or ground floor , also faced to the roadside. The multi meter boxes must provided for internet acces or a tetra radio modem, depends on DNO. A consumer unit is installed in every flat near the entrance door in the hall. More complex building arangements must provide a space for a substation/ transformer unit.
But you will even found weird old installation and " owner improved" wirings , you will find lot of them if you employ youtube.:)
This is also the case in France, with the exception of newly built city appartements often part of a bigger house splitted into smaller appartements. This is not a bad thing, since the Linky counter is accessed remotely by the electricity provider, there is no need for them to have direct access to the linky. And I would rather have theses kinds of installations all grouped together and totally secured from the weather inside a house.
The main 500mA differential disconnector/main switch is an RCBO. The over-current side of the RCBO is adjustable. They are available in the UK. Nothing stopping anyone from fitting one.
Only cost, as they're rarely used here they're quite expensive
adjustable RCBOs are no longer in use in fact. In the past, you had a guy from the distribution company who came to your house to adjust the value of the RCBO to your subscribed power. That came at a cost. Now with Linky smart meters, RCBO are set to the highest amps level the line can stand, and the max subscribed poser power is watched by the smart meter, that can power off your house if you overload it. You can changed your subscribed power very easily and it costs only like 3€. And of course, you can have access to a lot of details about your power use so you know how much power you really need.
@@pizza_diavola-bx4op
The older main disconnector RCBOs were adjustable for sure and are still available to buy. They can be fitted on any UK installation.
The most common in France is double poles singles with double bus bar above, but screw connectors at the bottom. The problem I have in my parents house is that none of the neutrals are connected (those are all bunch together) so I can't edit the installation before I have identified all the neutrals ...
What you must realise that the majority of the electrics in both France and the Uk are in old houses and have old electrics. It will be years before any upgrade will take place. My neighbour who has lived in her house for 60 years is not going to rush out and upgrade her original meter and wood Wylex 4 way consumer unit so don't hold your breath ! Sparkies today want £300 per day, most of their time they are on the phone and want to go home at 3pm.
Diff Type A is for protect on AC current and in also DC Current generate by some powerful devices. Type AC is only for AC current leakage. But it strange Main fuse is normally not accessible directly inside home. DTI in French : Dispositif de Terminaison Intérieur Only use for (RTC (telephonic commuter network)) and ADSL. Sorry for my English i don't practice.
The French invented the MCB!(Le Diruptor) I was installing French MCB'S in M&S 40 years ago and they could be adjusted via an Avometer, plus they were push button! Yes that long ago, when we were still using rewireable fuses!! Oh and one other thing, combi boilers? yes a French invention also, using them at least 50 years ago!
MCBs were introduced in germany 1969 by Siemens , they got the half space of the old 35mm Breaker which were introduced by the electrical manufacurer Voigt& Haeffner (V&H Frankfurt/Main) in 1935. In the same year V&H brought a RCD ( Fehlerstrom Schutzschalter) on the market. They were not the inventor but the first company which offered them widespread. Those RCDs had twice the measure than a single 35mm Circuit breaker, so 70mm.
Like the double pole bus bars. The company fuse would presumably be liable to age so might well require replacement at 10 to 15 years like mcb’s. Interesting to see a modern domestic unit. My last installation was nearly 30 years ago for self. I was looking at a seventies house casually for a family buy a year or two ago. I am amazed at how little fusing for a large house used to be acceptable in U.K.
You only have a 45A supply (actually, I think you said the blade fuse was 40A)? That seems very low, especially with lots of air conditioning units. Have you had any issues with it tripping if you boil a kettle while the air conditioning is on? They're never going to get an EV charger powered from that.
That's a flat, you are not going to get EV charger there anyway. House would get 3 phase supply.
@@jacekowski Flats don't have an "étage".
Is there any regulatory reason you couldn't install European style consumer units, cables in conduit, and per room radials in the UK? or is it simply a cost thing?
Probably something to do with _„Levelling Up“_ I shouldn't wonder... 🙃
My consumer unit is right by my front door and only means of exit in case of fire
1500W for a water heater seems very low. Here a 275L water heater (eg) has two 4500W elements. Top thermostat heats the top third (near the outlet), when it is hot enough it switches the line down to the lower thermostat to heat the bottom (water inlet part). Takes about 3 ½ hours to heat a cold tank to hot but probably shower ready in 1 hour (top).
New tanks have a third element of 800W at the bottom to heat small amounts of incoming water. This is for the utility's benefit to tame peaks - thus they subsidize the purchase of them.
Bonjour,
There's some french electrician on UA-cam ("les disjonctés" for exemple). You might try to talk to some. As they are UA-camrs, they might be more open minded about making a video and explaining "stuff"
ADSL means Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. It's a digital broadband Internet connection via the phone line (with higher download than upload bandwidth, hence the "asymmetric"). Looks like at one point there would have been an ADSL modem in there.
man your breaker boxes are very diffrent from us in the USA
We have similar to US , old boards still in use from 1960s .
yep in usa the boxes still look the same as 50 years ago ..and metal pipes etc.. feel like i'm traveling to the past when i'm in usa looking at electrical .
US breaker boxes are always very strange to me. And at least also the voltage!
@@docugraf ya but it cost to much money to change it. our video system is in NTSC and not pal
@andrew_koala2974 we don't use interlaced that much any more we use progressive video 1080p59.94 NTSC
Looks fairly similar to our Swedish ones, except on houses the meter is often in a box outside together with three diazed (bottle) fuses, one for each phase. We have single pole automatic breakers inside and our neutral and ground each have separate bars at the top.
We use three pole bus bars, where every third fuse is on the same phase, so basically 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3. We don’t use RCD type AC anymore, strictly A for regular consumer stuff, and type B for things like EV chargers, solar inverters and such. Type B is a requirement for EV chargers.
The old style consumer units had diazed (bottle) fuses. One row per phase.
10:50 Hope you noticed the insulated bus bars have been cut so you don't get shocked🥶 (probably not according to Hager's instructions)
I went to France once to look at an old property with a friend. While I was there, it was discussed about French electrics. From what I understand, all wires had to be run in conduit to stop mice noring on the wires. Also, each outlet was individually fused.
Hence, there were no ring mains or lighting spurs at that time.
only in the old times we found fuses on every socket. Now it's all on the consumer unit. A cable (like R2V) without conduit is OK, but wires have to be in a conduit.
and we don't have ring circuits in France. I think it's mostly a UK thing. We use in France 20 Amp - 2,5 sqmm wiring - 12 sockets max. or 16A - 1,5 sqmm wiring - 8 sockets max. Even if it's legal, 1,5sqmm on socket circuits is uncommon. And it's always 2,5 sq mm for kitchen appliances or washing machines.
This! Finally, you state what most international sparks think… 3-phases, multiple DIN-Rails And your French Hager box does not even have „Quick Connect“ and vertical bus bars. UK Electrics is just hopeless.
The video does not even touch on the absence of ring mains everywhere else in the world apart from the UK.
Le Linky, french Smart meter have been manufactured by different companies, one of them is Elster Metering which was bought by Honeywell, the SMETS1 from Honeywell which you have in UK is exactly the same one as the Linky in France. It was supposed to be manufactured at Honeywell Stafford where I use to work but they made it in France
Having lived in both countries with the UK always in my heart, France is far superior in many aspects, not just food …
Being stranded in the UK from disability barring employment/relocation - But having had the joy of visiting France many times and falling in love with so much that's there (My profile photo was taken at Gare Saint Charles; 'Nuff said! 🚄🇫🇷❤🔥) - I can wholeheartedly agree with this... 🇫🇷💯😍
regarding electricity, France hase two of the major electrical equipment companies of the world (Legrand and Schneider electric). There's a reason for that quite advanced regulation. Here in France we have more norms about electrical equipment but it's not forbidden, like in the UK, to install a DIY panel and do your whole home electricity by yourself (as long as you come after the main RCB from the utility).
Superior food ?!.. In restaurants (on average) yes but supermarkets are poorly stocked unless you want 20 sizes of Nutella by the trolley full & don't expect friendly service in there. Even the French complain about how complicated everyday life is.. & try earning more money by doing some overtime or a 2nd job then you've got to work cash-in- hand & hope your employer doesn't find out... but living litter free & having hardly any traffic is great.
@@pizza_diavola-bx4op Given that - Where most people have a heart inside them, I probably have the transformer oil pump from a TGV - I find the omission of *Alstom* from that list a little hard to believe... 🚄🇫🇷❤🔥😋
It's possibly been said already, but the RCD's are both overloaded. Hopefully installed before the rules were modified. Nowadays, we can only put a maximum of 8 circuit breakers per RCD. For the Type A RCD, we would usually only put the cooker and washing machine on it. Also, with the LED Driver in the box, you don't have the 20% of free space available for addiing circuits.
A difficult thing to stomach, is the control circuit of the relay for the hot water tank is not on the same row or RCD as the power side.
The other thing I just saw, is that the seal for the blade fuses is gone, which is technically an offence to break. You should not be able to access this, at all.
Apart from that. it's a nice board.
Here in France, the board should be installed between 1m and 1m,80 with a 60cm wide, unencumbered space. Your board is fitted to a GTL, or Gaines Technique de Logement, an excellent bit of trunking upon which we can attach the consumer unit and comms board. It usually has a seperation to keep the comms and power cables away from each other. It's a nice neat way to safely bring all of the cabling to the boards.
The only thing I really prefer about English electrics, are the sockets, with the isolation switch and no sticky out earth pin... I miss them...
Cool to see you in France, bon courage!