ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades International D-I-Y store chains?

Djk,

Using solid cable for a piece of movable funiture sounds very strange, unless you are thinking of those built in cooktops?

Paul,

They have a 4th Live terminal.. You leave a metal plate in place that contacts all L1,L2,L3 and obviously connects them to the 4th terminal.

A cooker's not considered a movable applience here. They're normally built-in and only moved for replacement or serious service so solid cable would be commonly used. Flex is occasionally used but not where a cooker is not being moved e.g. a built in hob, 6 plate range or built in oven.

Remember we connect our cookers to 220V so the cables are pretty large!

Also

Technically Cooker connections here MUST be made by an electrician, even if you're just swapping an old one for a new one.

DIY cooker replacement can be quite problematic. Particularly where someone replaces a "traditional cooker" with a seperate oven and hob. Or worse where a seperate oven and hob are installed and crudely wired into the back of a cooker control switch.
The regs here require a seperate 45A switch for each heavy applience and it can be leathal to stick 2 huge cooker cables into the terminals of a switch.

OK, on the 4th line terminal. I've not yet seen that approach used anywhere.

Some older-model British cookers were clearly made in both domestic and export versions. They typically used bolt terminals for the incoming cables, fitted to which were the appropriate number of quarter-inch lugs onto which the internal wiring terminated.

The domestic versions just had a single line terminal with all the feeds to the thermostats connected to it, but there were vacant L2 and L3 positions on the chassis where extra terminals were fitted for export versions -- The feeds would then be connected to balance out the load.

The free-standing all-in-one cooker was the norm for many years, and these are considered fixed appliances here too, and are generally wired with standard "twin & earth" cable.

Separate ovens and hobs have become more fashionable in recent years, and as Dave has said for Ireland, they do seem to be problematical for DIYers. A single isolation switch can control both here, so long as it is within 2m of both units.

Here it's almost the same except the earth would be the same size as the Live and Neutral conductors and insulated in new installations but it's normal cable. The colour code would also be different (Brown, Blue and Green/Yellow)

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 11-12-2003).]