That is spectacular. Like some sort of hobby wiring that wasn't done to any particular regulations. The three screwable things look like bottle fuses. Seeing a selection of Europe's electrical systems makes me even less happy about the retarded decision to ditch our vivid three phase colour code to blend in with the rest of their disjointed grey crap.
In germany there where also different colors like BLACK L1 RED L2 BLUE L3 and GREY N and Ground till 1965, after that till 2004 we got Black L1 BROWN L2 BLACK L3 BLUE N GREEN/YELLOW Earth, made it somtimes hard to get motors running reight way round. Now days it is BROWN L1 BLACK L2 GRAY L3 BLUE N GREEN/YELLOW Earth. We had till 1965 basically the same collor code as canada in germany. That cabinet is not up to code 2,5mm² as an bus bar is a joke, a bad one for that. Those 3 fuses are indeed bottle fuses called type "neozed" Personaly I do not like the Canadian/US style screw on cable conectors and the tendency to mix copper with aluminium to many bumblefucks around messing it up. My biggest mistake I made in Canada, exept from leaving, fixing some cabeling in a mine at -40 at night with a flashlight in my mouth.
Closed bends are only mandatory when using wires (at least in the Netherlands). When using cable, it doesn't need to be protected since the individual wires are alread protected is by the outer shell of the cable an their own insulation. The one of the main reason to use pipes, is to prevent sagging of the cable.
They are protected from an electrical sense, not a mechanical sense. What happens when someone hits that cable with a metal tool or appliance? Exposed cables require mechanical protection in US, Canada, and sounds like UK as well. Interesting that it's different in Europe.
In Romania too if you use cable not wires you do not need closed bends, tube laying is not regulated. Also it is very hard work to pull 2 cables trough a closed bent tube sometimes almost impossible
Yeah. Double insulated cable/flex can be surface clipped without a problem. So the conduit in this case is just making things neater to look at. Nothing wrong with doing it this way in Britain, but it is slightly unsightly. :-)
@@trevorlambert4226 interesting you made me think. Is it les safe, no. Here we juse difrent kabel than us or uk look up (draka vult dca) the kabel itself is protekted. We ar mandatory to swith the neutral to in nederland. What i don't understand is why do you use metal boxes. If a power wire gets loose, wel lets hope de earth kabel isent loose some where. If a power wire is loose here, the outlet simpely won't work. It can't ark to plastik.
what you refer to as an isolator are I think Bottle fuses as made by siemens. the reason they don't use bends is that unlike UK using single insulated single cores in conduit, in europe they use three core cable similar to our flex.
I notice a lot of countries make 3 phase available by default (or an easy upgrade), whereas in the UK you have to pay thousands of pounds to have your driveway and half to road dug up if you want to go from a 60amp main fuse to an 80amp main fuse < shakes fist >
In finland atleast we get 3phases 25amp at our house by default. Then we have to pay like 150€ to get upgrade to 50A. (well we can also upgrade it for free by ourselves but they have 80A fuses in a like main box in the street that limits it so we can have 80A 3phase if we want, UK system seems very anoying.
With lower energy use, or at least that`s the aim, there should be no need for anything more than a 60A single phase supply to domestic premises. The National Grid is on it`s arse, it`s simply not possible to throw 3 phase power around like confetti.
That is not really representative... It is a huge mess! The "Busbars" are insufficient. The Colors are all over the place: Yellow/Green for PE, Blue for N, any other color for Live wires. The Wires are not organised in any way. The Plastic inside the boards corresponds to Schutzklasse 2 - double insulation. See for ex. Hager Feldverteiler, which are all covered in plastic on the inside, even the attachment rails are insulated. For the tubing: the cables correspond to NYM-J. The single wires within are insulated (similar to H07V-U), then inside a PVC Mantle (The M from NYM) with fire retardant between the wires. The Mantle ist sufficient protection to permit open bends and entries. The tube only provide support - it is better to have the bends and so on open, to allow moisture to egress. These national comparisions are very, very interesting, as I often work myself on german and french equipments - which are also quite different from each other (TN-C (S) networks usually in germany, TT networks in France). Keep them up! Thank you for yet another interesting video!
Olivier Engelkes thanks for your information, it’s good hearing from other electricians and how things are done the world over. I would say the uk has some of the strictest regulations in the world and sometimes are way over the top. Are they also very strict in Germany?
@paul7053 there are special bus bars for this which have 3 internal rails. They cycle through each rail, so every third connection is on the same phase
You can even get 3-phase+neutral bus bars, four copper bars with offset spade connectors at each position in a common plastic casing. One Austrian manufacturer used to supply bare 3-phase+neutral bus bars, sometimes called "the world's hottest 3D jigsaw puzzle". The only thing that kept them from shorting was the air gap between the individual copper bars. Thankfully that system disappeared in the early 90s but you can still find it in plenty of old consumer units. If you didn't de-burr the ends of the bars they could pierce wire insulation and cause lovely shorts.
The round ceramic 'things' where the three phases come in to the board are incoming bulb fuses Tom and the L-type breakers are common in the US and are predominantly manufactured by Schnider/Square-D.
Yes they are bottle fuses, they use to be everywhere in 3 phase control panels on machines etc but you do not see them anymore as 1 fuse would blow feeding a 3 phase motor leaving it run on 2 phases.
Holy Sh*t, what a mess. That isn´t any close to passing our regulations, that can´t be the work of an electrician. A 30 year old fuse board is closer to the current regulations than this horrible mess...
It wouldn't pass here in Germany either. And in Austria it would fail too I suppose. A screw-type terminal floating arround in the air isn't permitted too. If you use such connectors in there you must lock them into position. There's a special holder available for Wago connectors which is installed on the DIN rail.
I´m from Germany and the regulations in Germany are quiet similar to the ones Austria as far as I know. This is wrong in so many ways and a couple decades ago it was also wrong.
I'm right in the neighbor, Hungary, and those pipes should be connected as far as I know. In installations for telecom supplies, lighting for blocks of flats etc I always see corner pieces in use, even in this building, but in shopping centers and a lot of public buildings I doubt I have seen a single cornerpiece. All of them look exactly like what you have shown. I have a feeling the reason is budget...
Same in Germany with the PVC conduit. I am a spark here but not on house bashing. As I understand it the tube is support for the cable - which is double insulated so it's not like singles in a conduit - and for mechanical protection but more in a general sense than we would know it in the UK (again because it's not singles) so there is no requirement for bends. Think of it more as a method of clipping than protection. That cable by the way is called NUM Leitung (cable) and it's really quite nice to strip - try a bit if you get the chance. You just score the outer and bend to snap along the score. It has a soft crumbly inner lining which lets you pull the outer insulation off as a tube. The earth is already insulated so you just strip and go :) They seem to have different phase colours in Austria. In Germany they are brown, grey, black and blue for neutral. The fuse board is pretty much identical to here. Three phase supplies are the norm in houses and flats. Cookers are three phase as are bathroom water heaters :-0 Gives me the willies just to think of 400V in a bathroom. I think the bus you are seeing is a bodge. The norm is an encapsulated flat copper bus staggered for the phases. Havnt seen the 'L' breakers here but 'C' is very common 'B' is what you mostly are supposed to use unless the load has a high inrush just as in the UK. Surprisingly health and safety here are non existent and testing sporadic. Even more fun is caused by the existence of lots of old East German Aluminium cable. Think brittle as all hell, badly corroded and as easy to clamp on as over cooked spaghetti :) I'm not sure about the ferrules. They are mandatory here for stranded cable but I've never seen them on solid and it doesn't sound like a good plan to me. They really need to be able to "bite" into the conductors to be safe and that isn't going to happen on solid. There is a good crimp tool from Knippex that puts corrugations in them. Interesting to see your perspective on all this though. Keep up the good work and enjoy your holiday :) Oh and no rings. Did you spot that? Only radials allowed. No loop in lighting either. All joint boxes.
Nope, this is 230/400 V, the last 3x220 supplies were taken out of service in the 70s and they existed only in large cities where 19th-century DC supplies had been converted to 3-wire AC in the 30s and 50s. Those MCBs only switch the neutral (no overcurrent or short protection). Way back when the neutral of a 220/380 V TT supply was considered an active conductor as depending on the transformer earthing it could be lifted off earth potential far enough to be dangerous and therefore it was fused. At the time MCBs really made it to the scene that was no longer an issue in Austria but people were used to fusing the neutral so they invented the 1+N MCB. The very first consumer units with MCBs back in the 50s occasionally did have individual single-pole MCBs for phases and neutrals. I think that's the main reason why France and Italy still require double-pole MCBs - they've got TT supplies of dubious impedance, especially Italy - think kilometres of 6 mm2 copper overhead wire!
@@Ragnar8504 Hee-he-he-he hoo-hoo! I just had myself a little giggle at that thought -- kilometres of impedance, volts drop, capacitance, reluctance... I suppose the birds would stay warm in winter ;-)
Even though I'm German I'm sure that's not standard and looks like it was done backhandedly or even the owner did it himself. 1. L (=Leitungsschutz, circuit protection or Licht = light) basically is an old type in the German speaking countries which was abandoned in 1990 and replaced by the B type. 2. The missing corners on the copex are common in Germany too. We're just too lazy to put them in and they're also more expensive (one corner is around the price of a 3m length of conduit). As long as there isn't a reason to use them, like mechanical stress, we just don't need it. BTW. You're lucky there was a RCD. 😁
I agree with SCWfan06 It is the same in Greece and all the rest of European Countries, except the UK where, always electrics was different. Very often in places mostly small town and villages you see all kind of different type of electric installations that belong to the (local installer regulations). But these installations was always more safe than the UK ones as all the wiring is inside the wall and the Electric Power provider install a 30 to 40A fuse for the mains instead of a100A in UK for dwellings. In every country you can meet good and bad installations. In UK some are really bad as the electric board 20 years ago was like a cars fuse board. It is only the last 15 - 18 years they start to use proper electric boards.
This is Lower Austria, you won't find a supply without an RCD there. Until the late 90s this was all TT so RCDs were mandatory. If this was absolutely ancient you might find a voltage-operated ELCB (Fehlerspannungsschutzschalter, FU-Schalter). Now I did grow up in Vienna where it was legal to use the water pipes as an earth connection until 01/01/01 and the pipe system had such a low impedance that you actually could get by without an RCD despite of the TT supply, at least when these systems were new. I did test one of these systems and the loop impedance was well over 1 Ohm so definitely too much for skipping an RCD now (and that was with the whole building already converted to TN-C-S and undoubtedly the water pipes bonded in the cellar so what I measured was only the pipework inside the house).
George Vekkos - in the area of the U.K. where I live, the standard supply company fuse is 60A for domestic connections (two, three and four bedroom houses etc). Although some small installations may use a smaller rated fuse.
IMO large single-phase supplies are mainly inconvenient for the installers due to the large wires involved but not necessarily dangerous. Once you get into rural settings or medium-scale DIY they're also inconvenient because larger equipment tends to have three-phase motors. Farms in Germany or Austria are usually chock-full of three-phase equipment and even DIYers often have three-phase compressors, table saws etc. Most distribution network operators explicitly require loads exceeding 4.5 kW to be three-phase for load distribution (and in theory three-phase loads exceeding 10 kW require explicit permission by the DNO). The aspects of UK wiring that feel outright wrong to electricians from most other countries are the installation of meters, service cutouts etc. on flammable materials rather than flame-retardant plastics (a practice that has been banned in most countries I'm aware of in the 1970s or even earlier) and the use of singles for meter tails. I suppose technically there's nothing wrong with bundling double-insulated singles but to the foreign eye it simply feels wrong (unless we're talking sizes like 150 mm2 and up) and I suppose if they aren't bundled you could get into EMI issues. Oh, and of course ring mains with plug fuses - that's a DIY disaster waiting to happen and I strongly feel the disadvantages in terms of risk and bulkier plugs that require the consumer to stock fuses far outweigh the advantages in terms of load diversity. Of course rewireable fuses are a bit of an issue too. They don't prevent consumers from using larger fuse wire ("Surely 30 amp fuse wire must be the best, it's the most expensive and it even lasts longer than the smaller kinds!"), they can spray molten metal all over the CU since they aren't sand-filled like most other fuse types and they require the entire supply to be disconnected in order to replace one fuse, at least in theory. Other than that, UK electrics just feel quite over-engineered to most foreigners.
Missing the bend out is common, I worked on a job in King's Lynn massive place and it was done by German contractors and they've done the tube exactly the same..
In Germany the Letters on the breakers mean the tripping characteristics. B means Standard, L means "Leitungsschutz" in English Cabel Protection. and there are many more. For the pipes, it's normal to cut the corners and leave it so.
All though I’m Danish I can still explain some of these things The bulb fuses we would call ‘tariff fuses’, they are slightly smaller than the fuses put in by the electrical utility company, so that if there’s a overload or short before the breakers it won’t blow the fuse out in the electrical panel on the sidewalk, but rather inside your house and it will be easier to change out. Some power companies require this in DK. Using conduit with cable is different than with wires. When you use it with cable it’s often a simple way to fasten the cable to the wall, it doesn’t serve the purpose that a conduit normally would, like being able to easily pull a new cable through. It’s faster and looks better than using clips/brackets whatever directly on the cable. It’s often not done to provide mechanical protection either, all though it can. In that case you could use metal conduit and soft corner fittings.
I was working for a Belgium building in England in 2002 on the construction of a hotel. The plastic conduits they used were all straight lengths with open corners as in video. They also used their own portacabins from Belgium that I had to rewire. Their version of twin and earth was a flex that looked and felt like Butyl heat resistant flex. The light switch wiring was different to UK. They had a cable going from fuse board to wall light switch, then another cable going to a 6 x 6 plastic box next to fuse board. Cable was connected into connector strip in plastic box then cables from connector strip went out to light fitting. Also the main fuse boards (from Belgium) around the site were 36 way ( 3 rows of 12 c/b) with a switch inside to have it as a 3 phase or single phase board. Also the building company did not know that in he UK we use 110v tools so I installed transformers for them. They used workers from all over Europe that meant there were many languages spoken. I was the only UK person working on the site. If I wanted something done by another trade and they spoke for instance only Polish I had to find someone who spoke English and Polish so they could translate form me.
ive been a electrician for over 20yrs in the the usa. what we do here is completly different then anything ive seen on your channel yet... love learning different things. thomas nagy if you have any questions let me know. are they using 10guage wire for the mains coming from meter? wow.
The “round things” called D2 Diazed fuse they got 2 types of it, one is quick blow and another with a snail shell sign on it is a slow blow. We used them in Hungary when I was an apprentice in the 90’.
The nymj is also used in conjuction with the pipe work, as it is not permitted to run pvc singles in conduit or trunking in austria/germany while it IS permitted in ireland/UK
Hi in Austria theye use double pole fusing breakers for single phase work but 3 phase is a solid neutral link the round devices are diazed fuses AKA coke bottle fuses
Weird. Even ignoring different methods and regulations, that cabling doesn't look big enough to handle the possible current (based on the number and rating of the breakers). In the U.K, we'd normally have 16 or 25mm coming in, and a bus bar you could knock someone out with. That's not just being over the top either, it's based on the physical properties of copper cable.
Well the incoming mains is likely 6 mm2, which had a current carrying capacity of around 40 A when this was installed (it was lowered slightly later but this is grandfathered in) and is protected by a 35 amp bottle fuse so I don't see any issues. I do see issues with the wire links feeding the MCBs, these are definitely not rated for more than 25 amps. Definitely a sign of morons at work!
This fuseboard was probably installed in the 1970s, hence the old color system where yellow green and violet were the Phases and grey was neutral. The selfmade busbars are still common, but usually in 6mm2, like the ones on top of the modern Breakers. 2,5 for Busbars is way too small, 4mm2 would be ok, 6mm2 even better. This particular Fuseboard is a mess, I would rip all those old breakers out, put new ones in (except for the RCD and the other modern Eaton breakers) and put a nice new busbar in. The corners on the pipes are simply not needed, the regs say every conductor has to be double insulated from a person touching it. The cables already have two layers of PVC (or another insulator), so you dont need corners. And its way easier if you want to add another cable to an existing pipe. The twin and earth you are using in the UK only have a single layer of insutator around them IIRC , so you need another layer of insulation.
Yep, Austria had a slightly different color code than eg. Germany. Grey, brown, violet, white and orange were/are switched phases, black unswitched phase. Blue neutral, but a switchboard that old - colors could be anything... So never ever trust any color on those old installations.
The in coming supply terminates into three Siemens style bottle fuses like BS88. So they are fuses. Also some of the breakers in that board are two phase. Things like ovens and washing machines are often bi- phase in Germany Austria Switzerland. In the machines connection block you have links to change from single phase to biphase.
So, when will you be visiting The Netherlands to see how it is done over there? Seems different. We do have NEN-regulations around here. NEN 1010 to be specific, but that not available to the public for some odd reason. You would typically see a whole closet with all meters in place inside the home. A wooden plate to the wall, with a plastic box with RCD's, main breaker and the meter. Most homes also have a gas and water meter as well. New homes also have phone line, glasfiber and coax in there as well. Google "meterkast nieuwbouw" to see some dutch examples.
In Austria they still use double pole fusing except in 3 phase work where the neutral is a solid link thats why there are a number of 2 pole breakers to make sure the phase and neutral are opened together. I think its a leftover from when they had a 2 phase system of 127 volts on each which gave 220 volts for most appliances now of course they use standard single phase 220 volt same as rest of europe
Seen the bends done like that in most of germany, I'm out of canada where we use metal pipe for basically everything and just bend the corners to keep things continuous and easy to pull through.
The three ceramic round things in the fuse box were actual ceramic fuses, most likely the main fuses for each phase. They are quite common in Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary as well (most likely elsewhere as well) and they are literally fuses: once the conductor inside melts, that's it, you have to replace them.
I'm no electrician and from Germany so not entirely sure if it's the same in Austria... but we had an electrician change the position of our switch board and he explained to me that for the 1,5mm² cables the old 16A breakers are no longer up to regulations as it was in the past and they have to use 13A breakers for that size instead... they could circumvent the regulation for some reason in our house though (cable cooled by the brick walls or something like that was the reason, don't remember entirely)
Just from the technical point of view 1,5mm² can "carry" 16A under some circumstances/depending on where/how the wire is placed (library.e.abb.com/public/a6d7a9f5a041ca8cc12579cf00217542/2CDC401002D0106_viewfile.pdf).
needs a make-over for sure. really old stuff. i don't know how many RCD's are required in Austria, but in the netherlands we are only allowed to put max 4 (groups / isolators ) behind 1 RCD.
Across mainland Europe, they use conduit as a support system for cable rather than clipping when installed on the surface. The conduit is continuous when used for wire containment.
in Denmark we would do the same with pipes. The cable is already allowed to be used without the pipe in a visible installation. instead of trying to make perfect lines and even spacing between the clips. So using pieces of pipe makes mounting faster. We always use 3-phase, but all fuses cut the neutral as well, so we do not use a neutral bar. The Stove use a 3*16A with 2,5mm2 cable. the rest is 13 amp and 1,5mm2 cables. L1=brown,L2=black,L3=gray,N=blue , PE=yellow/green. We are also stating to use the 3 fuse block for the incoming lines, between the meter and RCD, to protect the cable, as most meters will be placed in a shared location, with long cables going to the flats.
That fuseboard has fairly old bones as some people already said. I'm not sure if there isn't even some wiring that uses grey as a neutral, that would suggest pre-1970 (blue was introduced in 1965 but there was a transitional period until 1967, casually extended into the early 70s, when the neutral was still usually grey but earth was already green/yellow). The bus bars are absolutely undersized as I suppose the main fuse is 35 amps per phase, should be 6 mm2 at least (and usually is). Judging by the bunch of different MCBs this was added onto a dozen times without much care. The flying Wago isn't supposed to be there either. One of the 3-pole B16s is probably for the cooker (the elements are usually 230 V but distributed across the phases, hobs with four elements usually have two elements per phase and the oven goes on the third, gives roughly 2.5-3.5 kW per phase depending on the model). The one thing I'm truly surprised about is that the enclosure actually has a rear wall. Most enclosures of that style (well into the early 1990s) just had an exposed brick wall in the rear. Or a piece of plywood lined with asbestos. Even makes me wonder if someone removed the whole enclosure from the wall (including all the wiring and the meter) and retro-fitted a rear wall, even though that'd be a crazy thing to do! Yellow and green were standard phase colours in mains distribution (e.g. transformer stations, even medium voltage rails) for a long time and sometimes used up to the fuse board. At some point after the introduction of green/yellow earths both green and yellow were banned but that took a while to catch on. Other than that the regs only say that phases can be any colour other than blue and green/yellow. Blue is acceptable if there is no neutral in the entire distribution system (a fairly theoretical option in house wiring) or the required cable isn't manufactured. I guess you could argue using blue as the switched live in a switch loop using 3-core cable would count since there's no equivalent to the UK T&E with two browns and you'd have to run 4-core to a simple single-pole light switch. (since earth is always full-sized and insulated it counts as a core, unlike the bare earth in T&E). I'd probably replace all the old MCBs, maybe add a second RCD and install proper 4-pole bus bars instead of the crazy undersized jumper wires. Any alteration would also require surge protectors to be fitted these days (have been required for close to 20 years I think). And of course straighten out that crazy wiring. I usually zip-tie the live and neutral conductors of each circuit together to make them easier to trace instead of just having a loose bundle like this rats nest. The open conduit is easily explained. The only job of the pipe is to hold the cable in place and keep it somewhat straight, it doesn't serve any other function required by the regs. You might as well clip the cable to the wall but then you'd need a clip every 20 cm so it'd be a whole lot more work.
As an industrial electrician, I've seen many different wirings and quirks, depending of which countries, the machines did came from… But I don't really know much about "housing" installations, your video is nice to see things from a different perspective.
I live in the Netherlands and we do open bends to but only whit cable. And we need a main switch to turn off all the power in the fuse box. We use only the modern switches.
The pipe install is normal in germany. It is the way it is teached here. The cable is double insulated, so the pipes are really just for easy mounting and extra Protection.
Weird - my comment from my business UA-cam account doesn't appear here. The comment just pointed out that that was not an isolator but Diazed fuses. (Neozed fuses will be found on newer installations.) I understand that starting and stopping conduit at bends is commonplace in Germany as well.
That switchboard looks very similar to german installations. But that setup really doesn't look too nice. First: color codings usually are: Green-Yellow PE Blue Neutral Brown L1 Black L2 Grey L3 So that should be exactly the same as in the UK (i think?). This is just an old installation... The switchboard in that place looked a bit nasty :-) There's big distribution busbars which are usually used for installations, daisy-chaining wires like here isn't the nice way of doing that... about the breakers: "L"-type breakers are really old ones. Back in the day there were L and H breakers. These days of course we have the regular B and C characteristic breakers. The three phase isolators with the screw-in fuses also aren't to common in new installations. Usually you have the main distributions fuses (like big NH-type, 120A or something) and then they go to the 3 phase RCDs. After that it's just busbars and the many 16A breakers for the rooms and lighting. Really enjoying your videos, thanks for making them! Cheers!
L was actually used longer. The H-type were manufactured until 1976 and was replaced by L. L was used until 1990. L was replaced by type B then, which is the same as they use over in the UK.
I heard from someone from Austria that the eletric code over there set a 100 ohms resistance for TT grounding system , is it true? I think 100 ohms too high , Here in Brazil is 10 ohms for TT system.
The fusebox looks off because a large part of it is at least 30 years old. "L" breakers are for "L"ight. Putting cables into pipes is not for protection, it's just for attaching them to the wall. It doesn't matter that the corner is not covered, as long as the cable stays where it is.
Can't wait until you visit the US or Canada and see the messes that pass for electrical boxes here. At least they aren't uptight about outlets in a bathroom (they need RCD/GFCI protection). Its rare to see RCDs/GFCIs in a breaker box here. Some houses in the 70s/80s would have a GFCI breaker for the bathroom, and not much else. Current practice is to install GFCI outlets around wet areas that require them (its easier to reset them and makes code inspections quicker). The most annoying recent NEC requirement is that new construction is mandating arc fault circuit breakers that accidentally trip way too much.
In Hungary, maybe it is the same in Austria, the pipes are for mechanical protection and the wires are double insulated, therefore one does not have to cover them. We use pipes in the ceiling to prevent wires/cables failing down and on the walls for protection. The only mandatory thing is the double insulation/protection. If you have only the wires no outer layer, you need the pipes.
Hallo Thomas. I am electrical contractor in Austria. This fuse bord is more than 40 years old. Is is the reason why there are so many different coloured wires. Now a days we also use brown black and grey. And of course we have now busbars with plastic insulation. MCB manufactured before 1995 were L{=B},U,G. Than the European standard (BCD) was introduced. The Neozed Fuse is the main fuse no insulator switch. It is used to protect the RCCB from overcurrent.
Pipework is always installed without bendings. There is normally no reason for it because our standard PVC cables (NYM, AT-N05VV-U, CH-N1VV-U) is designed to be installed without any trunking. This installation method is used in Germany, Switzerland, Austria,...
i am an Italian electrician,i dont know if it is a very old house or electricians who realized it were stupid. Here in Italy and also in Austria THIS ISN’T THE CODE! We have a very strict code (like CEI64/8 and many others). We are allowed to use: BLUE for the NEUTRAL, YELLOW/GREEN for the EARTH and absolutely for nothing else. Then we can use other colours for the phase(s) and other command circuits. Generally phase is brown, black or grey. But eventually if you want you can use (for example) colour RED for the garage phase circuit. We also use C or B curve automatic breaker (we call “interruttore magnetotermico”), generally in italy C16 or C20 for the plugs circuit and C10 or C6 for the lights. For an house we generally use RCD Idn 0,03A 25 or 32 Ampere . THIS CONSUMER UNIT WAS VERY VERY BAD WORK ! here in italy we create very good electrial system in house or commercial places . Also the corner of the pipes! Very bad in THIS house. I’ve never seen things like THIS in Italy, if we have to realize an external pipe system we do it properly. The last thing, you said that in Italy we use metal case for the unit, no in houses(in general in all civil buildings) we use only plastic unit.
The yellow, green, purple colours I came across in my home country hungary. They seem to be the old 3 phase colours of Austria. Probaby the mix of old and new colours is the culprit for this mess. L type breakers are basically like B breakers. 12 amp breakers have 13 amp modern substitutes. It's completely normal to have separate phase switching, which is actually in the new Hungarian standard and used to be in the austrian as well. And finally F&G switchgear is the best.
The corners arent piped because euro standards state tat nymj provides sufficent mechanical protection , and the straight runs it purely to give the cable structure
They could just have clipped the cable to the wall but it's easier this way as you only need like three clips per metre. This method is pretty common in most parts of Europe I think - definitely standard for unfinished spaces in Germany, Austria, Hungary and a number of other countries. Elbows would only be required if they'd used singles. Most switches and junction boxes don't even come with glands for pipe so this is the preferred method.
it reminds of the mess knob and tube was in small commercial stuff long long ago, only different is, breakers vs fuses and multi-color wires, vs all black... also ancient control boards...
Here in the States, in San Francisco, there is actually still a fair amount of knob and tube in old residential! Good thing its "only" 120V. Very cool to see different standards in practice! Very different from what I deal with here.
The pipe work is done this way because the NYM wires inside are pretty robust and do not require pipe work. The pipe work you see here just keeps the wire attached to the wall, so it's perfectly okay to have the wires exposed for a few centimeters. This is of course diffent with metal piping for explosion protection.
I'm an Apprentice from Germany and we also do the "cutting corners" thing with our pipework. From what I've heard we don't have to build closed corners anywhere, not in school, residentials or even huge chemical companys. I work at a very "high quality" company and in 3 Years I've never seen or even heard of someone piping a corner...I also never heard of any accidents or damaged cables because of that.
Hello Thomas, i've stumbled across your content recently, got to say its fantastic to see someone with a real passion for his trade and the skill to make it pay. I've recently decided that i want to get into this industry, however i've missed the regular college course entry dates are there any reccomendation on how i might get into the industry other than college, i have decided that im willing to go cross country if neccesary (from sheffield), all the best, love the work
Got a kitchen rewire on Wednesday. Concrete floor, solid brick walls, about 20 boxes need raggled in.... Fancy flying back to give me a hand? There's a crisp 20 pound note in it for you.
The "isolator" is 3 separate diazed fuses. I've no idea why they're using this odd color scheme, even less why they connected the yellow/green wire to the breakers.
Yes, Neozed or D0-fuses. Neozed is a trademark of Siemens, like Diazed is. Neozed is the more modern system, an improved version of Diazed. I suppose it's size D02. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60269#D0-System_(NEOZED)
Yep you're right. As a matter fact I have a fuse collection of all different types of fuses from around the world and I actually have a couple blown neon ones like these fuses. actually just Bing Supply power through a resistor to act as a little night light. Also I have a tube collection and I use voltage regulator tubes is that lights and also in some lamps. Which also use Neon gas. Also I collect vintage Christmas lights. I have some of the old detecto bulbs I believe that's how you say it. At the score bace end the glass is clear so when the bulb fillament breaks. the full line voltage appears on the filament and lead in wires and it glows indicating that that bulb was the one that failed in the series circuit string. So not interacional idea using neon as an indicator of an open circuit.
Pipes are used to hold cables in place just for a neater finish. If the cable is insulated you don't need corners, saves money as its classed as double insulation, which is not needed. If it are single wires without an outer protective layer you need the corner pieces for protection of the wires. Just think if you throw a brick at it which will snap and spark first. It will be the single wires as they break at the end of a pipe
Hope you are enjoying your stay in Austria. I live about an hour away from Melk and I can tell you: that board is not up to code and if you wanted to rent it out to someone you would have to have it updated. edit: Very nice drone shots indeed, just don't get caught using it. We have ridiculously extreme Drone laws (pretty much banning them, if you are not doing it commercially).
Hi Tom, It is very odd how they do things here in Italy... Was in an apartment the other day and all the circuits were connected to only one main breaker... everything lights and sockets to a single two pole breaker (RCD) Another thing that is common is that they do not consider a water heater / geyser as a permanent installation, most of the time it is just connected via a socket like a washing machine or dishwasher... Another thing that I have seen often is that they do not use metal enclosures and no glands, just flex trunking entering the enclosure... Nice vid and nice scenery...
1. The cable is already a double insulated type. Thus there is no code or regulation which requires a continuous tubing in domestic environment. 2. Those cables are usually too rigid to pull them into those plastic tubes in one pass. So it's easier and more efficient to do one section of a time and keep going till you reach your desired location. 3. There was a time when you had to use tubes 30% larger in diameter for later installations. That was some sort of technological reserve. You weren't able to install new circuits if there were 90 degree elbows everywhere with cables already in them.
Did I miss something or is there no covers on the breaker terminals. Do end users just open the door to reset a trip and have to be very careful not to touch any live terminals!
The Mains entry is actually 3-neozed (hand grenade) type fuses. The caps screw on. I concur, that panel is a mess, I would not have expected that in a Germanic county.
First up, a small disclaimer - while I did study Electrical Engineering in school (almost 18 years ago), I did not bother completing it and getting certified. I'm from South Africa, and while I have seen some shit here, that DB makes my OCD itch like you have no idea. It's not as bad though, as the situation that I find myself in our current (rented) accommodations. I had to replace a plug socket in the kitchen some time ago, and when I opened the socket, I discovered to my horror that there was no earth!!! Just a Live and Neutral. Fortunately, all the conduit in the wall was still metal, and this was bonded to earth in the DB, so I lust added a little earth pigtail and bonded this to the plug housing. It's not ideal, but it works. I have, subsequently discovered at least another 3 plugs in the house that was simply not earthed. I've treated each to the same earth pigtail.
L is the predecessor of B. Magnetic short-circuit detection is the same as B. Only the thermal overload is different. L was used until 1990 and then replaced by B.
I guess the colors are harmonized across Europe nowadays: brown (L1), black (L2), grey (L3), blue (N) and green+yellow (PE). In Germany, old installations used black (L), white (N) and red (PE) or green (L1), yellow (L2) and purple (L3). From a German standpoint, this installation looks like old wiring ending in a pretty modern fuse box. The fuse box seems to be from the 80ies, as today the bus bars would have to be fingerproof.
I agree that its the people of Britain that make it great, But the great in Great Britain really comes from the joining of Scotland and Wales . what the Romans know of Britain was mostly England. After the union it was called Greater Britain. Similar to Greater London or Greater Manchester. During Victorian times the Greater was dropped and the Great replaced it
John Newbury The Great in Great Britain doesn't mean wonderful, it means big. There are, or were, two Britains. The other, smaller one, is now called Brittany. Great Britain is the correct geographical name for the island we live on. I personally think the place is evolving into a police state shithole! I still call it Great Britain though. I blame the education system for the rampant ignorance on this point.
Jasper Janssen Not really surprising since Edison is a US company, the U.K. developed its own systems which obviously dominated here. We used to have rewireable plug in fuses, not screw in. In fact, screw in lamps were also very rare and are still not really considered the norm, the U.K. Traditionally using the safer bayonet system. However since Europe uses screw in bulbs they have become more common, especially since places like IKEA only sell lamps that take screw in bulbs.
I might be from germany, but I'm sure that this panel would not pass an initial inspection when this would be a new installation. That panel honestly is just a bloody mess.
Thomas Nagy during your editing i recommend taking out some of the higher end of your audio as their is a high pitched frequency in parts of this video
the newer the switchboard the better itll look, as you can see from the RCD and "newer" style B-breakers and wiring 6:47 ah yeah that dangling outlet chilling in the breeze in the backround - classic xD
This is obviously a pretty old fuseboard. These L-type breakers conform to an old norm which was replaced by the B-type in 1990. At least here in Germany. The "isolator" is just a fuseholder for "neozed" fuses. Those B13 breakers are probably for normal Schuko-sockets because they are not really rated for 16A continuous load. But that is a rather new thing. In most installations, at least in Germany, they are still protected with a B16 breaker. The biggest difference between this Panel and those in Germany (except the mess) is, that in Germany only the live goes through a breaker. Also, 3 phase is very common here in Germany. Every house built in the last > 50 years is wired for 3 phase.
(Disclaimer: Not an electrician) The Board looks pretty similar to older ones (80s?) I saw installed here in germany. Just the coloring and the spaghetti-routing seems a bit off for my taste - maybe they used it to mark the different phases? Regarding pipework: I would guess it's a lot easier to get the cables in and make modifications afterwards. For me it's just something to keep the cables where they belong - there are other common systems which just clip/clamp the cable itself to the wall without any further encapsulation whatsoever.
L16 is the old standard equal to B16, until 1990 (so this fuse board isn't really up to date) (L≈"lights", other characteristics were K="Kraft" and U="Universal", equal C. H="household" similar to A or Z for very high impedance lines)
I personally think this is not the standard in Ausstria. I am from Belgium and this wouldn't pass any inspection! The color code in Belgium is regulated: live wire can be any color except blue(neutral) or yellow/green (ground) or yellow or green (looks the same as earth and can be confusing). We also need to put 2 rcd units. First one after the main breaker is one off 0.300Amps for the normal circuits and after that (fed by the 0.300) is another one 0.030amps for the "wet circuits". We also use 2pole breakers and most houshold installations have a 40 amp main switch (2pole) with a 6 or 10 mm cable. 2pole bus bars are at least 10mm standard. This 2.5 wire is not allowed even not for 1 breaker of 20 amps. Have nice holiday! Jeroen Belgian electrician.
Indeed very common in the Netherlands. Main reason is it's easier to work with, all our cables are round, pulling larger cables though bends is hard, especially on longer pipe runs. Also, the low smoke halogen free conduit is tough to bend. Some applications require you to have a closed conduit system, like in houses where single insulated wires are used, you need the second layer of insulation a conduit system offers. Also in fire alarm applications, where the cables are double insulated but for extra protection, the "chimney effect" and also to prevent collapsing of cables, "functiebehoud" a closed conduit system is needed. But my lord that fuseboard is a rats nest. Wrong in so many ways. Many diffrent types and brands of breakers, incoming cables are 10mm2 by the looks of it, after the RCD they jump to 6mm2 (yellow ferrules) and the 2,5mm2 bridges are just plain bodge. Way too thin. Also way too many points of contact, if you do decide to loop wires like that, at least do it like on the bottom row of Eaton breakers, with ferrules that join the 2 wires together solidly before they enter the cage clamp or terminal.
The bottom Isolator is assume is the service fuses. and I cauld not connect any MCB without using busbars because there is an risk of loose connections and messy wiring the only good thing was the MCB's were not overrated like in the UK sometimes when they use 32A instead of 16A for power circuits.
The lack of conduit elbows looks pretty unprofessional, but probably only matters in unusual circumstances, like in a place they'll be hit by something sharp. Suppose this is in some utility area where sharp things leaning on the walls go sliding off it. Where are they going to hit? Right at the corners.
Wow, they should add tomatoes sauce and turn that into spaghetti bolognese! 😀 Also it seem that breaker 4 has been replaced? Look at that scorched marks around 3, 5, and 6.
+Thomas nagy what exactly is wrong with those exposed corners and why wouldn't they pass here in the UK? Surely the cable inside is is fully sheathed and would be quite safe if surface clipped fully exposed. In effect the pipes are simply being used to keep the runs nice and tidy, clean, and to reduce the number of ugly clips needed. To be honest I'm working hard to see what UK regulations it would break. Of course it would be different if it were single insulated conduit cable.
Screw in HRC fuses in the 3-phase incoming carriers??? Wouldn’t have thought that’d do any of the boiler or burner kit any good seeing as you could quite feasibly remove one fuse dropping a phase?!? No mechanical interlock across that device?? Moody install. 🤷🏻♂️
The L Type is simmilar to B Type, L stands here for Light (probably from the 70s or 80s). The Screw Fuses D02 are just there to Protect the Cabeling inside of the Board. The main Isolator wouldb be in front of the Meter.
That is spectacular. Like some sort of hobby wiring that wasn't done to any particular regulations. The three screwable things look like bottle fuses.
Seeing a selection of Europe's electrical systems makes me even less happy about the retarded decision to ditch our vivid three phase colour code to blend in with the rest of their disjointed grey crap.
I'm going back to the old colour code after brexit!
not sure what you're talking about but for three phase we use Black Grey and Brown in the EU
bigclivedotcom Just about to comment on the ceramic fuse holders, beat me to it!
In germany there where also different colors like BLACK L1 RED L2 BLUE L3 and GREY N and Ground till 1965, after that till 2004 we got Black L1 BROWN L2 BLACK L3 BLUE N GREEN/YELLOW Earth, made it somtimes hard to get motors running reight way round. Now days it is BROWN L1 BLACK L2 GRAY L3 BLUE N GREEN/YELLOW Earth.
We had till 1965 basically the same collor code as canada in germany.
That cabinet is not up to code 2,5mm² as an bus bar is a joke, a bad one for that.
Those 3 fuses are indeed bottle fuses called type "neozed"
Personaly I do not like the Canadian/US style screw on cable conectors and the tendency to mix copper with aluminium to many bumblefucks around messing it up.
My biggest mistake I made in Canada, exept from leaving, fixing some cabeling in a mine at -40 at night with a flashlight in my mouth.
It's not how it normaly is thats a messtup boart sorry for my bad englich am from belgium and a subscriber of you xd
Brings another meaning to cutting corners lol
Closed bends are only mandatory when using wires (at least in the Netherlands). When using cable, it doesn't need to be protected since the individual wires are alread protected is by the outer shell of the cable an their own insulation. The one of the main reason to use pipes, is to prevent sagging of the cable.
They are protected from an electrical sense, not a mechanical sense. What happens when someone hits that cable with a metal tool or appliance? Exposed cables require mechanical protection in US, Canada, and sounds like UK as well. Interesting that it's different in Europe.
mooi gesproken
In Romania too if you use cable not wires you do not need closed bends, tube laying is not regulated. Also it is very hard work to pull 2 cables trough a closed bent tube sometimes almost impossible
Yeah. Double insulated cable/flex can be surface clipped without a problem. So the conduit in this case is just making things neater to look at. Nothing wrong with doing it this way in Britain, but it is slightly unsightly. :-)
@@trevorlambert4226 interesting you made me think. Is it les safe, no.
Here we juse difrent kabel than us or uk look up (draka vult dca) the kabel itself is protekted. We ar mandatory to swith the neutral to in nederland. What i don't understand is why do you use metal boxes. If a power wire gets loose, wel lets hope de earth kabel isent loose some where. If a power wire is loose here, the outlet simpely won't work. It can't ark to plastik.
what you refer to as an isolator are I think Bottle fuses as made by siemens. the reason they don't use bends is that unlike UK using single insulated single cores in conduit, in europe they use three core cable similar to our flex.
In surface work, yes. Inside walls we do use singles, at least mostly (this installation is a mix of both).
I notice a lot of countries make 3 phase available by default (or an easy upgrade), whereas in the UK you have to pay thousands of pounds to have your driveway and half to road dug up if you want to go from a 60amp main fuse to an 80amp main fuse < shakes fist >
60A? Here in N. Ireland (also UK), 100A is the normal for service fuses. I've never seen anywhere here with less than 100A.
In finland atleast we get 3phases 25amp at our house by default. Then we have to pay like 150€ to get upgrade to 50A. (well we can also upgrade it for free by ourselves but they have 80A fuses in a like main box in the street that limits it so we can have 80A 3phase if we want, UK system seems very anoying.
With lower energy use, or at least that`s the aim, there should be no need for anything more than a 60A single phase supply to domestic premises. The National Grid is on it`s arse, it`s simply not possible to throw 3 phase power around like confetti.
In Scotland a standard service fuse would be 80 or 100A only tends to be older cable heads that may have a 60A
My house was built in the 50's. Has an 80A fuse.
How close to you want to get your finger to then live cables?
That is not really representative... It is a huge mess! The "Busbars" are insufficient. The Colors are all over the place: Yellow/Green for PE, Blue for N, any other color for Live wires. The Wires are not organised in any way.
The Plastic inside the boards corresponds to Schutzklasse 2 - double insulation. See for ex. Hager Feldverteiler, which are all covered in plastic on the inside, even the attachment rails are insulated.
For the tubing: the cables correspond to NYM-J. The single wires within are insulated (similar to H07V-U), then inside a PVC Mantle (The M from NYM) with fire retardant between the wires. The Mantle ist sufficient protection to permit open bends and entries. The tube only provide support - it is better to have the bends and so on open, to allow moisture to egress.
These national comparisions are very, very interesting, as I often work myself on german and french equipments - which are also quite different from each other (TN-C (S) networks usually in germany, TT networks in France). Keep them up!
Thank you for yet another interesting video!
Olivier Engelkes thanks for your information, it’s good hearing from other electricians and how things are done the world over. I would say the uk has some of the strictest regulations in the world and sometimes are way over the top. Are they also very strict in Germany?
@paul7053 there are special bus bars for this which have 3 internal rails. They cycle through each rail, so every third connection is on the same phase
You can even get 3-phase+neutral bus bars, four copper bars with offset spade connectors at each position in a common plastic casing.
One Austrian manufacturer used to supply bare 3-phase+neutral bus bars, sometimes called "the world's hottest 3D jigsaw puzzle". The only thing that kept them from shorting was the air gap between the individual copper bars. Thankfully that system disappeared in the early 90s but you can still find it in plenty of old consumer units. If you didn't de-burr the ends of the bars they could pierce wire insulation and cause lovely shorts.
The round ceramic 'things' where the three phases come in to the board are incoming bulb fuses Tom and the L-type breakers are common in the US and are predominantly manufactured by Schnider/Square-D.
Agreed they are ceramic bottle fuses.
An L16 is a bx connector in NA
Yes they are bottle fuses, they use to be everywhere in 3 phase control panels on machines etc but you do not see them anymore as 1 fuse would blow feeding a 3 phase motor leaving it run on 2 phases.
Holy Sh*t, what a mess. That isn´t any close to passing our regulations, that can´t be the work of an electrician. A 30 year old fuse board is closer to the current regulations than this horrible mess...
it does not have to pass UK regulations it Austrian Electrics
Maybe one from a couple decades ago?
Ein Elektriker war das schon. Nur hat der nicht zu viel investiert...
It wouldn't pass here in Germany either. And in Austria it would fail too I suppose. A screw-type terminal floating arround in the air isn't permitted too. If you use such connectors in there you must lock them into position. There's a special holder available for Wago connectors which is installed on the DIN rail.
I´m from Germany and the regulations in Germany are quiet similar to the ones Austria as far as I know. This is wrong in so many ways and a couple decades ago it was also wrong.
I'm right in the neighbor, Hungary, and those pipes should be connected as far as I know. In installations for telecom supplies, lighting for blocks of flats etc I always see corner pieces in use, even in this building, but in shopping centers and a lot of public buildings I doubt I have seen a single cornerpiece. All of them look exactly like what you have shown.
I have a feeling the reason is budget...
Same in Germany with the PVC conduit. I am a spark here but not on house bashing. As I understand it the tube is support for the cable - which is double insulated so it's not like singles in a conduit - and for mechanical protection but more in a general sense than we would know it in the UK (again because it's not singles) so there is no requirement for bends. Think of it more as a method of clipping than protection. That cable by the way is called NUM Leitung (cable) and it's really quite nice to strip - try a bit if you get the chance. You just score the outer and bend to snap along the score. It has a soft crumbly inner lining which lets you pull the outer insulation off as a tube. The earth is already insulated so you just strip and go :) They seem to have different phase colours in Austria. In Germany they are brown, grey, black and blue for neutral. The fuse board is pretty much identical to here. Three phase supplies are the norm in houses and flats. Cookers are three phase as are bathroom water heaters :-0 Gives me the willies just to think of 400V in a bathroom. I think the bus you are seeing is a bodge. The norm is an encapsulated flat copper bus staggered for the phases. Havnt seen the 'L' breakers here but 'C' is very common 'B' is what you mostly are supposed to use unless the load has a high inrush just as in the UK. Surprisingly health and safety here are non existent and testing sporadic. Even more fun is caused by the existence of lots of old East German Aluminium cable. Think brittle as all hell, badly corroded and as easy to clamp on as over cooked spaghetti :) I'm not sure about the ferrules. They are mandatory here for stranded cable but I've never seen them on solid and it doesn't sound like a good plan to me. They really need to be able to "bite" into the conductors to be safe and that isn't going to happen on solid. There is a good crimp tool from Knippex that puts corrugations in them. Interesting to see your perspective on all this though. Keep up the good work and enjoy your holiday :) Oh and no rings. Did you spot that? Only radials allowed. No loop in lighting either. All joint boxes.
Nope, this is 230/400 V, the last 3x220 supplies were taken out of service in the 70s and they existed only in large cities where 19th-century DC supplies had been converted to 3-wire AC in the 30s and 50s.
Those MCBs only switch the neutral (no overcurrent or short protection). Way back when the neutral of a 220/380 V TT supply was considered an active conductor as depending on the transformer earthing it could be lifted off earth potential far enough to be dangerous and therefore it was fused. At the time MCBs really made it to the scene that was no longer an issue in Austria but people were used to fusing the neutral so they invented the 1+N MCB. The very first consumer units with MCBs back in the 50s occasionally did have individual single-pole MCBs for phases and neutrals.
I think that's the main reason why France and Italy still require double-pole MCBs - they've got TT supplies of dubious impedance, especially Italy - think kilometres of 6 mm2 copper overhead wire!
@@Ragnar8504 Hee-he-he-he hoo-hoo! I just had myself a little giggle at that thought -- kilometres of impedance, volts drop, capacitance, reluctance... I suppose the birds would stay warm in winter ;-)
Even though I'm German I'm sure that's not standard and looks like it was done backhandedly or even the owner did it himself.
1. L (=Leitungsschutz, circuit protection or Licht = light) basically is an old type in the German speaking countries which was abandoned in 1990 and replaced by the B type.
2. The missing corners on the copex are common in Germany too. We're just too lazy to put them in and they're also more expensive (one corner is around the price of a 3m length of conduit). As long as there isn't a reason to use them, like mechanical stress, we just don't need it.
BTW. You're lucky there was a RCD. 😁
I agree with SCWfan06
It is the same in Greece and all the rest of European Countries, except the UK where, always electrics was different. Very often in places mostly small town and villages you see all kind of different type of electric installations that belong to the (local installer regulations). But these installations was always more safe than the UK ones as all the wiring is inside the wall and the Electric Power provider install a 30 to 40A fuse for the mains instead of a100A in UK for dwellings. In every country you can meet good and bad installations. In UK some are really bad as the electric board 20 years ago was like a cars fuse board. It is only the last 15 - 18 years they start to use proper electric boards.
This is Lower Austria, you won't find a supply without an RCD there. Until the late 90s this was all TT so RCDs were mandatory. If this was absolutely ancient you might find a voltage-operated ELCB (Fehlerspannungsschutzschalter, FU-Schalter).
Now I did grow up in Vienna where it was legal to use the water pipes as an earth connection until 01/01/01 and the pipe system had such a low impedance that you actually could get by without an RCD despite of the TT supply, at least when these systems were new. I did test one of these systems and the loop impedance was well over 1 Ohm so definitely too much for skipping an RCD now (and that was with the whole building already converted to TN-C-S and undoubtedly the water pipes bonded in the cellar so what I measured was only the pipework inside the house).
George Vekkos - in the area of the U.K. where I live, the standard supply company fuse is 60A for domestic connections (two, three and four bedroom houses etc). Although some small installations may use a smaller rated fuse.
IMO large single-phase supplies are mainly inconvenient for the installers due to the large wires involved but not necessarily dangerous. Once you get into rural settings or medium-scale DIY they're also inconvenient because larger equipment tends to have three-phase motors. Farms in Germany or Austria are usually chock-full of three-phase equipment and even DIYers often have three-phase compressors, table saws etc. Most distribution network operators explicitly require loads exceeding 4.5 kW to be three-phase for load distribution (and in theory three-phase loads exceeding 10 kW require explicit permission by the DNO).
The aspects of UK wiring that feel outright wrong to electricians from most other countries are the installation of meters, service cutouts etc. on flammable materials rather than flame-retardant plastics (a practice that has been banned in most countries I'm aware of in the 1970s or even earlier) and the use of singles for meter tails. I suppose technically there's nothing wrong with bundling double-insulated singles but to the foreign eye it simply feels wrong (unless we're talking sizes like 150 mm2 and up) and I suppose if they aren't bundled you could get into EMI issues. Oh, and of course ring mains with plug fuses - that's a DIY disaster waiting to happen and I strongly feel the disadvantages in terms of risk and bulkier plugs that require the consumer to stock fuses far outweigh the advantages in terms of load diversity.
Of course rewireable fuses are a bit of an issue too. They don't prevent consumers from using larger fuse wire ("Surely 30 amp fuse wire must be the best, it's the most expensive and it even lasts longer than the smaller kinds!"), they can spray molten metal all over the CU since they aren't sand-filled like most other fuse types and they require the entire supply to be disconnected in order to replace one fuse, at least in theory.
Other than that, UK electrics just feel quite over-engineered to most foreigners.
Missing the bend out is common, I worked on a job in King's Lynn massive place and it was done by German contractors and they've done the tube exactly the same..
In Germany the Letters on the breakers mean the tripping characteristics. B means Standard, L means "Leitungsschutz" in English Cabel Protection. and there are many more. For the pipes, it's normal to cut the corners and leave it so.
All though I’m Danish I can still explain some of these things
The bulb fuses we would call ‘tariff fuses’, they are slightly smaller than the fuses put in by the electrical utility company, so that if there’s a overload or short before the breakers it won’t blow the fuse out in the electrical panel on the sidewalk, but rather inside your house and it will be easier to change out. Some power companies require this in DK.
Using conduit with cable is different than with wires. When you use it with cable it’s often a simple way to fasten the cable to the wall, it doesn’t serve the purpose that a conduit normally would, like being able to easily pull a new cable through. It’s faster and looks better than using clips/brackets whatever directly on the cable. It’s often not done to provide mechanical protection either, all though it can. In that case you could use metal conduit and soft corner fittings.
I was working for a Belgium building in England in 2002 on the construction of a hotel. The plastic conduits they used were all straight lengths with open corners as in video.
They also used their own portacabins from Belgium that I had to rewire. Their version of twin and earth was a flex that looked and felt like Butyl heat resistant flex. The light switch wiring was different to UK. They had a cable going from fuse board to wall light switch, then another cable going to a 6 x 6 plastic box next to fuse board. Cable was connected into connector strip in plastic box then cables from connector strip went out to light fitting. Also the main fuse boards (from Belgium) around the site were 36 way ( 3 rows of 12 c/b) with a switch inside to have it as a 3 phase or single phase board.
Also the building company did not know that in he UK we use 110v tools so I installed transformers for them. They used workers from all over Europe that meant there were many languages spoken. I was the only UK person working on the site. If I wanted something done by another trade and they spoke for instance only Polish I had to find someone who spoke English and Polish so they could translate form me.
ive been a electrician for over 20yrs in the the usa. what we do here is completly different then anything ive seen on your channel yet... love learning different things.
thomas nagy if you have any questions let me know.
are they using 10guage wire for the mains coming from meter? wow.
The “round things” called D2 Diazed fuse they got 2 types of it, one is quick blow and another with a snail shell sign on it is a slow blow. We used them in Hungary when I was an apprentice in the 90’.
Nice to see you relaxing and getting away from it all (well nearly !)
The nymj is also used in conjuction with the pipe work, as it is not permitted to run pvc singles in conduit or trunking in austria/germany while it IS permitted in ireland/UK
Hi in Austria theye use double pole fusing breakers for single phase work but 3 phase is a solid neutral link the round devices are diazed fuses AKA coke bottle fuses
Weird. Even ignoring different methods and regulations, that cabling doesn't look big enough to handle the possible current (based on the number and rating of the breakers). In the U.K, we'd normally have 16 or 25mm coming in, and a bus bar you could knock someone out with. That's not just being over the top either, it's based on the physical properties of copper cable.
Matt Churchyard zzzzzzzzz
I also noticed that. You wouldn't be allowed to supply more than about 20A with those wires in US or Canada, by the looks of it.
Well the incoming mains is likely 6 mm2, which had a current carrying capacity of around 40 A when this was installed (it was lowered slightly later but this is grandfathered in) and is protected by a 35 amp bottle fuse so I don't see any issues.
I do see issues with the wire links feeding the MCBs, these are definitely not rated for more than 25 amps. Definitely a sign of morons at work!
This fuseboard was probably installed in the 1970s, hence the old color system where yellow green and violet were the Phases and grey was neutral. The selfmade busbars are still common, but usually in 6mm2, like the ones on top of the modern Breakers. 2,5 for Busbars is way too small, 4mm2 would be ok, 6mm2 even better. This particular Fuseboard is a mess, I would rip all those old breakers out, put new ones in (except for the RCD and the other modern Eaton breakers) and put a nice new busbar in.
The corners on the pipes are simply not needed, the regs say every conductor has to be double insulated from a person touching it. The cables already have two layers of PVC (or another insulator), so you dont need corners. And its way easier if you want to add another cable to an existing pipe.
The twin and earth you are using in the UK only have a single layer of insutator around them IIRC , so you need another layer of insulation.
Yes that definetly looks a board what has got couple too many cobble modifications
i can confirm this 100% as an austrian mechatronics engineer
as an addition i would also change the isolator fuse with an NH00 fuse/holder
Twin and Earth has insulation on L & N, Earth just hangs about in the middle then the whole lot has insulation around it
Yep, Austria had a slightly different color code than eg. Germany. Grey, brown, violet, white and orange were/are switched phases, black unswitched phase. Blue neutral, but a switchboard that old - colors could be anything... So never ever trust any color on those old installations.
You wouldn't. Netz Niederösterreich (the grid operator) requires D02 Neozed fuses for residences, 35 amp. NH isn't suitable for consumers.
The in coming supply terminates into three Siemens style bottle fuses like BS88. So they are fuses. Also some of the breakers in that board are two phase. Things like ovens and washing machines are often bi- phase in Germany Austria Switzerland. In the machines connection block you have links to change from single phase to biphase.
So, when will you be visiting The Netherlands to see how it is done over there? Seems different. We do have NEN-regulations around here. NEN 1010 to be specific, but that not available to the public for some odd reason. You would typically see a whole closet with all meters in place inside the home. A wooden plate to the wall, with a plastic box with RCD's, main breaker and the meter. Most homes also have a gas and water meter as well. New homes also have phone line, glasfiber and coax in there as well. Google "meterkast nieuwbouw" to see some dutch examples.
I’ve mentioned before Tom I’m no electrician but I love watching your videos 👍🏻
In Austria they still use double pole fusing except in 3 phase work where the neutral is a solid link thats why there are a number of 2 pole breakers to make sure the phase and neutral are opened together. I think its a leftover from when they had a 2 phase system of 127 volts on each which gave 220 volts for most appliances now of course they use standard single phase 220 volt same as rest of europe
Seen the bends done like that in most of germany, I'm out of canada where we use metal pipe for basically everything and just bend the corners to keep things continuous and easy to pull through.
The three ceramic round things in the fuse box were actual ceramic fuses, most likely the main fuses for each phase. They are quite common in Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary as well (most likely elsewhere as well) and they are literally fuses: once the conductor inside melts, that's it, you have to replace them.
They're Neozed or D0-system fuses.
A similar one is in the former USSR and there were even retrofit resettable breakers back then
I'm no electrician and from Germany so not entirely sure if it's the same in Austria... but we had an electrician change the position of our switch board and he explained to me that for the 1,5mm² cables the old 16A breakers are no longer up to regulations as it was in the past and they have to use 13A breakers for that size instead... they could circumvent the regulation for some reason in our house though (cable cooled by the brick walls or something like that was the reason, don't remember entirely)
Just from the technical point of view 1,5mm² can "carry" 16A under some circumstances/depending on where/how the wire is placed (library.e.abb.com/public/a6d7a9f5a041ca8cc12579cf00217542/2CDC401002D0106_viewfile.pdf).
needs a make-over for sure. really old stuff. i don't know how many RCD's are required in Austria, but in the netherlands we are only allowed to put max 4 (groups / isolators ) behind 1 RCD.
Across mainland Europe, they use conduit as a support system for cable rather than clipping when installed on the surface. The conduit is continuous when used for wire containment.
in Denmark we would do the same with pipes. The cable is already allowed to be used without the pipe in a visible installation. instead of trying to make perfect lines and even spacing between the clips. So using pieces of pipe makes mounting faster. We always use 3-phase, but all fuses cut the neutral as well, so we do not use a neutral bar. The Stove use a 3*16A with 2,5mm2 cable. the rest is 13 amp and 1,5mm2 cables. L1=brown,L2=black,L3=gray,N=blue , PE=yellow/green. We are also stating to use the 3 fuse block for the incoming lines, between the meter and RCD, to protect the cable, as most meters will be placed in a shared location, with long cables going to the flats.
That fuseboard has fairly old bones as some people already said. I'm not sure if there isn't even some wiring that uses grey as a neutral, that would suggest pre-1970 (blue was introduced in 1965 but there was a transitional period until 1967, casually extended into the early 70s, when the neutral was still usually grey but earth was already green/yellow). The bus bars are absolutely undersized as I suppose the main fuse is 35 amps per phase, should be 6 mm2 at least (and usually is). Judging by the bunch of different MCBs this was added onto a dozen times without much care. The flying Wago isn't supposed to be there either.
One of the 3-pole B16s is probably for the cooker (the elements are usually 230 V but distributed across the phases, hobs with four elements usually have two elements per phase and the oven goes on the third, gives roughly 2.5-3.5 kW per phase depending on the model).
The one thing I'm truly surprised about is that the enclosure actually has a rear wall. Most enclosures of that style (well into the early 1990s) just had an exposed brick wall in the rear. Or a piece of plywood lined with asbestos. Even makes me wonder if someone removed the whole enclosure from the wall (including all the wiring and the meter) and retro-fitted a rear wall, even though that'd be a crazy thing to do!
Yellow and green were standard phase colours in mains distribution (e.g. transformer stations, even medium voltage rails) for a long time and sometimes used up to the fuse board. At some point after the introduction of green/yellow earths both green and yellow were banned but that took a while to catch on. Other than that the regs only say that phases can be any colour other than blue and green/yellow. Blue is acceptable if there is no neutral in the entire distribution system (a fairly theoretical option in house wiring) or the required cable isn't manufactured. I guess you could argue using blue as the switched live in a switch loop using 3-core cable would count since there's no equivalent to the UK T&E with two browns and you'd have to run 4-core to a simple single-pole light switch. (since earth is always full-sized and insulated it counts as a core, unlike the bare earth in T&E).
I'd probably replace all the old MCBs, maybe add a second RCD and install proper 4-pole bus bars instead of the crazy undersized jumper wires. Any alteration would also require surge protectors to be fitted these days (have been required for close to 20 years I think). And of course straighten out that crazy wiring. I usually zip-tie the live and neutral conductors of each circuit together to make them easier to trace instead of just having a loose bundle like this rats nest.
The open conduit is easily explained. The only job of the pipe is to hold the cable in place and keep it somewhat straight, it doesn't serve any other function required by the regs. You might as well clip the cable to the wall but then you'd need a clip every 20 cm so it'd be a whole lot more work.
As an industrial electrician, I've seen many different wirings and quirks, depending of which countries, the machines did came from…
But I don't really know much about "housing" installations, your video is nice to see things from a different perspective.
I live in the Netherlands and we do open bends to but only whit cable. And we need a main switch to turn off all the power in the fuse box.
We use only the modern switches.
The pipe install is normal in germany. It is the way it is teached here. The cable is double insulated, so the pipes are really just for easy mounting and extra Protection.
Its like that with the bends on old electrics in france at least in the Alps and you see it outside as well..Not sure about modern stuff though
The open corners of conduit are to be seen on the Austrian kit we look after, installed in the UK.
Weird - my comment from my business UA-cam account doesn't appear here. The comment just pointed out that that was not an isolator but Diazed fuses. (Neozed fuses will be found on newer installations.) I understand that starting and stopping conduit at bends is commonplace in Germany as well.
Always though Harmonization was introduced to standardize the cable colouring.......or was that just for us?
That switchboard looks very similar to german installations.
But that setup really doesn't look too nice.
First: color codings usually are:
Green-Yellow PE
Blue Neutral
Brown L1
Black L2
Grey L3
So that should be exactly the same as in the UK (i think?). This is just an old installation...
The switchboard in that place looked a bit nasty :-)
There's big distribution busbars which are usually used for installations,
daisy-chaining wires like here isn't the nice way of doing that...
about the breakers:
"L"-type breakers are really old ones.
Back in the day there were L and H breakers.
These days of course we have the regular B and C characteristic breakers.
The three phase isolators with the screw-in fuses also aren't to common in new installations.
Usually you have the main distributions fuses (like big NH-type, 120A or something) and
then they go to the 3 phase RCDs. After that it's just busbars and the many 16A breakers for the rooms and lighting.
Really enjoying your videos, thanks for making them! Cheers!
L was actually used longer. The H-type were manufactured until 1976 and was replaced by L. L was used until 1990. L was replaced by type B then, which is the same as they use over in the UK.
I heard from someone from Austria that the eletric code over there set a 100 ohms resistance for TT grounding system , is it true? I think 100 ohms too high , Here in Brazil is 10 ohms for TT system.
The fusebox looks off because a large part of it is at least 30 years old. "L" breakers are for "L"ight. Putting cables into pipes is not for protection, it's just for attaching them to the wall. It doesn't matter that the corner is not covered, as long as the cable stays where it is.
"Light" was the older designation, later they changed it into "Leitungsschutz" (cable protection).
Can't wait until you visit the US or Canada and see the messes that pass for electrical boxes here. At least they aren't uptight about outlets in a bathroom (they need RCD/GFCI protection). Its rare to see RCDs/GFCIs in a breaker box here. Some houses in the 70s/80s would have a GFCI breaker for the bathroom, and not much else. Current practice is to install GFCI outlets around wet areas that require them (its easier to reset them and makes code inspections quicker). The most annoying recent NEC requirement is that new construction is mandating arc fault circuit breakers that accidentally trip way too much.
In Hungary, maybe it is the same in Austria, the pipes are for mechanical protection and the wires are double insulated, therefore one does not have to cover them. We use pipes in the ceiling to prevent wires/cables failing down and on the walls for protection. The only mandatory thing is the double insulation/protection. If you have only the wires no outer layer, you need the pipes.
The mainboard wiring is at least 10years old, and yes the pipes is also like that here in Germany we leave the corners open
Hallo Thomas. I am electrical contractor in Austria. This fuse bord is more than 40 years old. Is is the reason why there are so many different coloured wires. Now a days we also use brown black and grey. And of course we have now busbars with plastic insulation. MCB manufactured before 1995 were L{=B},U,G. Than the European standard (BCD) was introduced. The Neozed Fuse is the main fuse no insulator switch. It is used to protect the RCCB from overcurrent.
Pipework is always installed without bendings. There is normally no reason for it because our standard PVC cables (NYM, AT-N05VV-U, CH-N1VV-U) is designed to be installed without any trunking. This installation method is used in Germany, Switzerland, Austria,...
Simon Schertler in Italy you’ll never see no bendings pipes.
i am an Italian electrician,i dont know if it is a very old house or electricians who realized it were stupid. Here in Italy and also in Austria THIS ISN’T THE CODE!
We have a very strict code (like CEI64/8 and many others). We are allowed to use: BLUE for the NEUTRAL, YELLOW/GREEN for the EARTH and absolutely for nothing else. Then we can use other colours for the phase(s) and other command circuits. Generally phase is brown, black or grey. But eventually if you want you can use (for example) colour RED for the garage phase circuit. We also use C or B curve automatic breaker (we call “interruttore magnetotermico”), generally in italy C16 or C20 for the plugs circuit and C10 or C6 for the lights. For an house we generally use RCD Idn 0,03A 25 or 32 Ampere .
THIS CONSUMER UNIT WAS VERY VERY BAD WORK ! here in italy we create very good electrial system in house or commercial places .
Also the corner of the pipes! Very bad in THIS house. I’ve never seen things like THIS in Italy, if we have to realize an external pipe system we do it properly.
The last thing, you said that in Italy we use metal case for the unit, no in houses(in general in all civil buildings) we use only plastic unit.
@@NARoads2016 of course all electrical installations in this house is scrap
The yellow, green, purple colours I came across in my home country hungary. They seem to be the old 3 phase colours of Austria. Probaby the mix of old and new colours is the culprit for this mess. L type breakers are basically like B breakers. 12 amp breakers have 13 amp modern substitutes. It's completely normal to have separate phase switching, which is actually in the new Hungarian standard and used to be in the austrian as well. And finally F&G switchgear is the best.
The corners arent piped because euro standards state tat nymj provides sufficent mechanical protection , and the straight runs it purely to give the cable structure
They could just have clipped the cable to the wall but it's easier this way as you only need like three clips per metre. This method is pretty common in most parts of Europe I think - definitely standard for unfinished spaces in Germany, Austria, Hungary and a number of other countries. Elbows would only be required if they'd used singles. Most switches and junction boxes don't even come with glands for pipe so this is the preferred method.
it reminds of the mess knob and tube was in small commercial stuff long long ago, only different is, breakers vs fuses and multi-color wires, vs all black...
also ancient control boards...
Here in the States, in San Francisco, there is actually still a fair amount of knob and tube in old residential! Good thing its "only" 120V.
Very cool to see different standards in practice! Very different from what I deal with here.
The pipe work is done this way because the NYM wires inside are pretty robust and do not require pipe work. The pipe work you see here just keeps the wire attached to the wall, so it's perfectly okay to have the wires exposed for a few centimeters. This is of course diffent with metal piping for explosion protection.
This quick to a good vid. Time to watch and enjoy.
In norway we use mostly 16 and 20mm pipes and the reason that its no bended pipe is because it goes faster and is easier
I'm an Apprentice from Germany and we also do the "cutting corners" thing with our pipework. From what I've heard we don't have to build closed corners anywhere, not in school, residentials or even huge chemical companys. I work at a very "high quality" company and in 3 Years I've never seen or even heard of someone piping a corner...I also never heard of any accidents or damaged cables because of that.
Hendrik Lau difference is that UK cables are not double insulated, so you always have to protect them a second time.
Is it an isolator or are they fuse holders on the incoming supply?
Fuse holder:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60269#D0-System_(NEOZED)
Hello Thomas, i've stumbled across your content recently, got to say its fantastic to see someone with a real passion for his trade and the skill to make it pay.
I've recently decided that i want to get into this industry, however i've missed the regular college course entry dates are there any reccomendation on how i might get into the industry other than college, i have decided that im willing to go cross country if neccesary (from sheffield), all the best, love the work
Got a kitchen rewire on Wednesday. Concrete floor, solid brick walls, about 20 boxes need raggled in.... Fancy flying back to give me a hand? There's a crisp 20 pound note in it for you.
The "isolator" is 3 separate diazed fuses.
I've no idea why they're using this odd color scheme, even less why they connected the yellow/green wire to the breakers.
Those are neozed fuses. Diazed fuses are a tiny bit bigger.
Yes, Neozed or D0-fuses. Neozed is a trademark of Siemens, like Diazed is. Neozed is the more modern system, an improved version of Diazed. I suppose it's size D02.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60269#D0-System_(NEOZED)
Yep you're right.
As a matter fact I have a fuse collection of all different types of fuses from around the world and I actually have a couple blown neon ones like these fuses.
actually just Bing Supply power through a resistor to act as a little night light.
Also I have a tube collection and I use voltage regulator tubes is that lights and also in some lamps.
Which also use Neon gas.
Also I collect vintage Christmas lights.
I have some of the old detecto bulbs I believe that's how you say it.
At the score bace end the glass is clear so when the bulb fillament breaks.
the full line voltage appears on the filament and lead in wires and it glows
indicating that that bulb was the one that failed in the series circuit string.
So not interacional idea using neon as an indicator of an open circuit.
Pipes are used to hold cables in place just for a neater finish. If the cable is insulated you don't need corners, saves money as its classed as double insulation, which is not needed. If it are single wires without an outer protective layer you need the corner pieces for protection of the wires. Just think if you throw a brick at it which will snap and spark first. It will be the single wires as they break at the end of a pipe
Bloody hell Thomas and your polite nature, that board was bobbins!
Hope you are enjoying your stay in Austria. I live about an hour away from Melk and I can tell you: that board is not up to code and if you wanted to rent it out to someone you would have to have it updated.
edit: Very nice drone shots indeed, just don't get caught using it. We have ridiculously extreme Drone laws (pretty much banning them, if you are not doing it commercially).
Hi Tom, It is very odd how they do things here in Italy... Was in an apartment the other day and all the circuits were connected to only one main breaker... everything lights and sockets to a single two pole breaker (RCD)
Another thing that is common is that they do not consider a water heater / geyser as a permanent installation, most of the time it is just connected via a socket like a washing machine or dishwasher... Another thing that I have seen often is that they do not use metal enclosures and no glands, just flex trunking entering the enclosure...
Nice vid and nice scenery...
if you have proper solid wire , glands are not needed. only when using flex wire (litze)... then it is mandatory
I'm from Austria and this will be thrown out on any rework.
Leaving the bends open is common with sheathed cable (NYM, ...)
from uk just found a busbar made from 6mm neutral cable at least it was continuous
1. The cable is already a double insulated type. Thus there is no code or regulation which requires a continuous tubing in domestic environment.
2. Those cables are usually too rigid to pull them into those plastic tubes in one pass. So it's easier and more efficient to do one section of a time and keep going till you reach your desired location.
3. There was a time when you had to use tubes 30% larger in diameter for later installations. That was some sort of technological reserve. You weren't able to install new circuits if there were 90 degree elbows everywhere with cables already in them.
Do you have a Instagram page or something, where you post pictures from work?
Such an interesting video. I always wondered why we had electrical sockets in the bathroom in Germany, for example
Did I miss something or is there no covers on the breaker terminals. Do end users just open the door to reset a trip and have to be very careful not to touch any live terminals!
The door is probably attached to a cover, and the cover is screw to the fuse box.
Went to Iceland this year and they had metal conduit with no bends aswell.
Love seeing different electrical works in different countries defo think this needs to be a feature hahah 😂 👌🏼👌🏼love it !!!
The Mains entry is actually 3-neozed (hand grenade) type fuses. The caps screw on. I concur, that panel is a mess, I would not have expected that in a Germanic county.
First up, a small disclaimer - while I did study Electrical Engineering in school (almost 18 years ago), I did not bother completing it and getting certified.
I'm from South Africa, and while I have seen some shit here, that DB makes my OCD itch like you have no idea. It's not as bad though, as the situation that I find myself in our current (rented) accommodations. I had to replace a plug socket in the kitchen some time ago, and when I opened the socket, I discovered to my horror that there was no earth!!! Just a Live and Neutral. Fortunately, all the conduit in the wall was still metal, and this was bonded to earth in the DB, so I lust added a little earth pigtail and bonded this to the plug housing. It's not ideal, but it works. I have, subsequently discovered at least another 3 plugs in the house that was simply not earthed. I've treated each to the same earth pigtail.
The letter mean how fast the circuit-breaker react B is fast and L or so is similiar to diazed or neozed...
L is the predecessor of B. Magnetic short-circuit detection is the same as B. Only the thermal overload is different. L was used until 1990 and then replaced by B.
Tah's a mess. Why the grounding(green/yellow) ever used to carry a phase?
I guess the colors are harmonized across Europe nowadays: brown (L1), black (L2), grey (L3), blue (N) and green+yellow (PE). In Germany, old installations used black (L), white (N) and red (PE) or green (L1), yellow (L2) and purple (L3). From a German standpoint, this installation looks like old wiring ending in a pretty modern fuse box. The fuse box seems to be from the 80ies, as today the bus bars would have to be fingerproof.
What ever happened to harmonisation all over Europe. Thomas do they use afds in Europe. And what do you think of afds
It is Britain. But people like you, me and everyone else that lives here makes it Great. And I believe that’s worth celebrating.
I agree that its the people of Britain that make it great, But the great in Great Britain really comes from the joining of Scotland and Wales . what the Romans know of Britain was mostly England. After the union it was called Greater Britain. Similar to Greater London or Greater Manchester. During Victorian times the Greater was dropped and the Great replaced it
John Newbury
The Great in Great Britain doesn't mean wonderful, it means big. There are, or were, two Britains. The other, smaller one, is now called Brittany. Great Britain is the correct geographical name for the island we live on. I personally think the place is evolving into a police state shithole! I still call it Great Britain though. I blame the education system for the rampant ignorance on this point.
4:50 These are melting fuses. They are also used in older installations in Germany but not so common today. You can screw them out.
...and there is no handle missing.
I can not believe Edison screw fuses are so rare in the UK that he’s never even seen them.
Jasper Janssen Not really surprising since Edison is a US company, the U.K. developed its own systems which obviously dominated here. We used to have rewireable plug in fuses, not screw in. In fact, screw in lamps were also very rare and are still not really considered the norm, the U.K. Traditionally using the safer bayonet system. However since Europe uses screw in bulbs they have become more common, especially since places like IKEA only sell lamps that take screw in bulbs.
I might be from germany, but I'm sure that this panel would not pass an initial inspection when this would be a new installation. That panel honestly is just a bloody mess.
adan0sger the second row looks to be a recent addition, with modern colors, and the top half is the 1970s stuff with their old colors.
If you can come to Lebanon and see the best regulations you may ever see
This panel is a magnificent art in comparison to what we have
Thomas Nagy during your editing i recommend taking out some of the higher end of your audio as their is a high pitched frequency in parts of this video
I have wide spectrum audio and have no complaints. I suggest the problem is in your computer audio equipment.
the newer the switchboard the better itll look, as you can see from the RCD and "newer" style B-breakers and wiring
6:47 ah yeah that dangling outlet chilling in the breeze in the backround - classic xD
That number 4 rcd/mcb has been replaced the first one must have burnt out due to the burn makers on the two beside it
This is obviously a pretty old fuseboard. These L-type breakers conform to an old norm which was replaced by the B-type in 1990. At least here in Germany.
The "isolator" is just a fuseholder for "neozed" fuses.
Those B13 breakers are probably for normal Schuko-sockets because they are not really rated for 16A continuous load. But that is a rather new thing. In most installations, at least in Germany, they are still protected with a B16 breaker.
The biggest difference between this Panel and those in Germany (except the mess) is, that in Germany only the live goes through a breaker.
Also, 3 phase is very common here in Germany. Every house built in the last > 50 years is wired for 3 phase.
(Disclaimer: Not an electrician)
The Board looks pretty similar to older ones (80s?) I saw installed here in germany. Just the coloring and the spaghetti-routing seems a bit off for my taste - maybe they used it to mark the different phases?
Regarding pipework: I would guess it's a lot easier to get the cables in and make modifications afterwards. For me it's just something to keep the cables where they belong - there are other common systems which just clip/clamp the cable itself to the wall without any further encapsulation whatsoever.
Love the dronework
L16 is the old standard equal to B16, until 1990 (so this fuse board isn't really up to date)
(L≈"lights", other characteristics were K="Kraft" and U="Universal", equal C.
H="household" similar to A or Z for very high impedance lines)
I personally think this is not the standard in Ausstria. I am from Belgium and this wouldn't pass any inspection! The color code in Belgium is regulated: live wire can be any color except blue(neutral) or yellow/green (ground) or yellow or green (looks the same as earth and can be confusing). We also need to put 2 rcd units. First one after the main breaker is one off 0.300Amps for the normal circuits and after that (fed by the 0.300) is another one 0.030amps for the "wet circuits". We also use 2pole breakers and most houshold installations have a 40 amp main switch (2pole) with a 6 or 10 mm cable. 2pole bus bars are at least 10mm standard. This 2.5 wire is not allowed even not for 1 breaker of 20 amps. Have nice holiday! Jeroen Belgian electrician.
Fresh air bends can be seen in Holland. Factory I worked at was like it all over. Very common I believe
Indeed very common in the Netherlands.
Main reason is it's easier to work with, all our cables are round, pulling larger cables though bends is hard, especially on longer pipe runs.
Also, the low smoke halogen free conduit is tough to bend.
Some applications require you to have a closed conduit system, like in houses where single insulated wires are used, you need the second layer of insulation a conduit system offers.
Also in fire alarm applications, where the cables are double insulated but for extra protection, the "chimney effect" and also to prevent collapsing of cables, "functiebehoud" a closed conduit system is needed.
But my lord that fuseboard is a rats nest. Wrong in so many ways. Many diffrent types and brands of breakers, incoming cables are 10mm2 by the looks of it, after the RCD they jump to 6mm2 (yellow ferrules) and the 2,5mm2 bridges are just plain bodge. Way too thin.
Also way too many points of contact, if you do decide to loop wires like that, at least do it like on the bottom row of Eaton breakers, with ferrules that join the 2 wires together solidly before they enter the cage clamp or terminal.
The bottom Isolator is assume is the service fuses. and I cauld not connect any MCB without using busbars because there is an risk of loose connections and messy wiring the only good thing was the MCB's were not overrated like in the UK sometimes when they use 32A instead of 16A for power circuits.
That “scratch that, just Britain” comment 🤣🤣 💯
The Liberal Humour oh it’s hilarious 😂
In Portugal they also dont pipe the corners!
The ‘corners are like that in The Netherlands too!
Same in germany
Nice video mate, always intresting!
The lack of conduit elbows looks pretty unprofessional, but probably only matters in unusual circumstances, like in a place they'll be hit by something sharp. Suppose this is in some utility area where sharp things leaning on the walls go sliding off it. Where are they going to hit? Right at the corners.
Wow, they should add tomatoes sauce and turn that into spaghetti bolognese! 😀
Also it seem that breaker 4 has been replaced? Look at that scorched marks around 3, 5, and 6.
+Thomas nagy what exactly is wrong with those exposed corners and why wouldn't they pass here in the UK? Surely the cable inside is is fully sheathed and would be quite safe if surface clipped fully exposed. In effect the pipes are simply being used to keep the runs nice and tidy, clean, and to reduce the number of ugly clips needed. To be honest I'm working hard to see what UK regulations it would break. Of course it would be different if it were single insulated conduit cable.
Screw in HRC fuses in the 3-phase incoming carriers??? Wouldn’t have thought that’d do any of the boiler or burner kit any good seeing as you could quite feasibly remove one fuse dropping a phase?!? No mechanical interlock across that device?? Moody install. 🤷🏻♂️
The L Type is simmilar to B Type, L stands here for Light (probably from the 70s or 80s). The Screw Fuses D02 are just there to Protect the Cabeling inside of the Board. The main Isolator wouldb be in front of the Meter.