ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Vacation pics

Good on ya Gloria!.
How was the weather there Claus?.
It looked to be pretty good.
Other side of the coin, how was the food?.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 08-09-2005).]

The weather? Between 35 - 39C and clear skies.

The food? Excellent, especially the fish. Restaurants are abundant and food is generally cheap. So is alcohol. (Petrol, though, is just over €1/litre)

Pizza and hamburgers are very popular fast food dishes, both of which are made in local versions. As you can imagine, hamburgers (€ 2) or pizza slices (€ 1) bought at the streetside can be of varying quality.

There was much less candy on sale than at home but various candy-like biscuits fill the shelves of the local "super"-markets. No bigger than kiosks at home, theses are often open 06-24 or even 0-24.

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 08-09-2005).]

Interesting photos. A lot of TV travel shows here are promoting this part of the world as a good vacation spot, and even those "relocation" shows are pushing the region as a good place to buy real estate.

Distribution along a facade of terraced buildings seems to be a very common European thing. You see it very occasionally here, but the urban area of Britain all tended to have underground feeds with each building taking its supply separately from under the street.

In pic #6, where do the lines heading off to the lower right from the pole terminate? On a bracket on the house? What's the loose dark-colored line which crosses them at right-angles? It looks as though it comes from the window on the right.

Yes, the wires terminated on a building, probably on insulators. I don't remember.

There were wires going everywhere: The black could be telephone or TV. (Broadband didn't seem to be in use. Even the internet cafés only had dial up connection, despite new computers with a fancy interface designed for internet cafés running on top of Win XP.)

In fact wiring on the facades was almost only found in towns/cities where there was limited space for poles. Elsewhere there were poles with "service drops" similar to the US. These typically looks like a mess. I found this odd, as almost all wiring in buildings and on buldings at street level was neat and tidy.

I have no picture of it, but there are a lot of earth electrodes. These were approx. 2 x 20 mm steel plates that extended into the ground. Either the earth wire was connected directly or connected to a second metal plate, identical to the first. The two metal plates were held together with a clamp (screwed) in an accesible location. The electrode and the conductor was often encased in the facade, but had been brought out at the clamp to allow access/inspection. This would allow you to disconnect the electrode for testing the impedance to earth.

Together with the widespread use of 500 mA RCD's, this indicates that TT earthing is common. However, some of the underground and overhead wiring was 5-wire, with an earth conductor. I found street lights with both green/yellow earth conductor AND earth electrode for each pole. [Sic!]

I couldn't go around opening panels for any number of reasons but found work in progress to look at. I found what appeared to be 10 mm2 five wire (Euro colours) aluminium direct burial cable. (Unarmoured, similar to Swedish N1XV or German NYM-J) I didn't have any good tool to scrape off the oxide layer not a gauge to verify the material and wire size. But I have never seen copper become light grey.

I found NO sockets without earthing, even in old houses. All were Schuko. The only exception were 3-phase sockets, which were of the type described by Ragnar some time ago. (Very similar but not identical to an old Swedish design)

I did go into a supply house to see what was on offer. They did indeed still stock these outlets. I didn't take any photos in the supply house as I have no idea how to explain to the police in Serbian "No sir, I'm not planning a burglary, I'm just investigating the electrical equipment used in this country".