ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Ring circuits?Spur unit? RCD Device?

Hello I just have a quick question and I KNOW someone here can help me
I have always been curious as to how electrical systems and wiring methods have been done overseas, I do not know if this is still how its "Done" over there but i read that for power outlet circuits in Great Britan they are wired in a "ring".. Originating from the fuse or breaker, picking up all receptacles on that circuit and returning to that same breaker??, with the ring circuit being fused high as all the cord "caps" have individual fusing.. Is this the norm? also, I read that to "tap" off of a ring circuit you must use a device called a "spur" unit.. I am assuming this device is a form of terminal block that also contains fuses or a breaker of some sort to protect the tap or "spur"???
As well, an "RCD" or "Main RCD".. this from what I have read sounds very similar to what we use in bathroom, kitchen and outdoor receptacles as well as pool and spa circuits. a "Ground Fault Interrupter" .. whereby if 5 milliamps difference is detected between hot and neutral conductors it trips open... Is an RCD the same kind of idea only its a 33 milliamp device that is used at the main and protects the entire dwelling??
Just curious!
A.D

Oh No!,
Not Ring Circuits again!.

Ah.... The good old British ring circuit, although in my not-so-humble opinion the "good" part is highly debatable!

Yes, the ring circuit is still widely used over here. It was introduced along with the BS1363 (fused 13-amp) plug in the late 1940s.

Originally the cable size normally used was 7/.029, then with the change to metric 2.5 sq mm, which is about 20% larger than #14. Protection is then provided at the panel by a 30A fuse or C/B (32A on newer breakers).

The fuses used in the plugs are ceramic-bodied types 1-inch long by 1/4-inch diameter, available in various sizes up to 13A.


There can be either a fused or an unfused spur. A single outlet can be run as a spur from the ring unfused. The same 2.5 sq. mm cable is usually used, which means that the 30A protection at source exceeds the rating of that spur cable. However, because all the plugs which may be connected to that spur outlet contain a fuse (max. 13A), the cable should, in theory, be protected.

The spur may be tapped from the ring either by using a regular junction box at some point, or by joining it at an existing outlet on the ring. The spur can even be wired directly fro the fuse/breaker and neutral bar at the panel.

In older installations, an unfused spur was allowed to feed two separate outlets. It was considered that diversity would prevent excess load on the spur cable.

A fused spur unit, or "fused connection unit" is used to provide a fused spur. These units take the same BS1362 fuses as are used in the plugs, and are commonly employed to feed a fixed appliance from the ring (small water heater, pump, etc.). When fitted right next to the appliance, the FCU basically just provides a hardwired equivalent to a plug-&-socket connection.

A fused spur unit can also be fitted on a ring to feed fixed wiring of a smaller size. A typical use would be to feed a few lights via a 3 or 5A fuse.


Yes, and RCD is similar in principle to a GFI. The RCD (Residual Current Device) was formerly known as an RCCB (Residual Current Circuit Breaker), and originally known as an ELCB (Earth-Leakage Circuit Breaker).

American/Canadian trip levels are used only for special locations though. In normal domestic work an RCD with 100 or 30mA trip is currently the norm. Individual breakers which combine overcurrent and RCD features for protecting a single circuit are coming into use very gradually, but a large RCD which protects either the entire installation or a part of it is the norm.

We have several different grounding arrangements in use, and where the system known as TT is employed, an RCD is essential to provide ground fault protection to the whole installation.

BS1363 outlet (single types are also available):


A standard BS1363 (13-amp) plug:


A BS1362 plug fuse:


A fused spur unit:


This spur unit has an integral switch, but they are available unswitched as well. There are also switched versions with a neon indicator.



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 01-05-2006).]

Paul,
What was the reasoning behind the ring circuit?
Was it to reduce voltage drop (not that that's an issue with British 200-250V mains used at the time)? Is it unique to the UK or is it used wherever British 13A sockets are used?
I did install my own 'ring main' for my 12V wiring (solar/wind charging, lead acid batteries and all of that stuff). I did this simply for reducing voltage drop. When you think about it you're getting up to twice the conductor area depending on where along the main you're drawing current and it solves the problem of the voltage drop at the last socket on the line (because there isn't one elctrically speaking).
Perhaps this technique could be of benefit to our US friends?

Trumpy,
I recall finding a book in one of our libraries concerning NZ wiring practices (this was prior to the combined AS/NZ standard). What surprised me was that mention was made of UK 13A sockets and that they were approved for use in NZ. (I know you use the British telephone socket rather than the Australian one). Is that for real and to what extent have they been used? Are they used on a ring main or just with normal AS/NZ wiring practices?

@rings:

In Germany rings are mainly a school topic.

Except for high voltage where they are standard here.

For Europe I'd say: Ring mains are even more British than driving on the wrong side of the road. Even the Irishmen didn't really accept it. (Not quite sure regarding Malta)

Wolfgang

Aussie240, I've never seen a U.K. 13A socket in use here. If they were ever allowed here it must have been many moons ago, but I've never heard of it.

Ring circuits are good for things like outdoor floodlights and such. Where there are long cable runs.

I'm not sure if the regs here in NZ prohibit ring circuits in houses. But nobody ever installs them though.

I've seen various claims and counterclaims over the years. The most usual seems to be that wiring with a ring saved materials, many of which were in short supply in immediate post-WWII Britain (even certain basic everyday items were still rationed until the early 1950s).

Prior to the ring, the standard arrangement was BS546 (unfused, round-pin) plugs and sockets rated at 2, 5 and 15A. Each 15A socket was wired on its own radial circuit back to the panel (or more likely a multitude of small 2- and 3-way units), and protected with its own 15A fuse. There would generally be a 15A outlet next to the fireplace in main living rooms for an electric heater, although they weren't always provided in bedrooms.

The 5A outlets could, according to IEE Regs., be wired three per 15A radial circuit, and were fitted in more generous quantities around the house for lower-power appliances (including smaller heaters). In practice, there were often more than three 5A sockets per circuit as wiring was extended.

The 2A sockets were intended for bedside lamps and similar and were normally wired on the lighting circuits (5A outlets could also be found on lighting ccts.).

The 13A rating of BS1363 plugs appears to have been chosen to provide for up to 3kW. Why 30A on the ring?

In the late 1940s central heating was rare. Most homes had open coal fires supplemented by individual gas or electric room heaters. My best guess is that with something in the region of 7kW to play with, it allowed the ring to supply two such 3kW loads and still leave a little room for smaller loads.

The heavy load of the ubiquitous electric kettle was almost always on the 15A (or 13A) socket provided on the cooker panel, and thus on the separate 30A cooker circuit rather than the ring. In fact in many kitchens of that time, that was the only socket!

Here are some more old threads about the ring:

Ring circuits UK style

Ring circuits revisited

Ring circuits again!


Mike posted a scan from some old N.Z. regs a while back which clearly shows both BS1363 and BS546 (round-pin) British outlets:

1961 Electrical Regs

Wolfgang,
We, [and a few others, like Eire and Japan], don't drive on the wrong side of the road- everybody else does! The true reason was so that on horseback you could draw your sword or horse-pistol in a narrow lane and despatch a footpad or an upstart Johnny Foreigner if he turned ugly! Left handed? Hard luck! Everyone else swapped over 100 years ago for some reason. Anyway, it's too late now, all our motorways [autobahns/freeways] are built for RHD vehicles.

Alan

Never mind India, of course. About a third of the worlds population drive on the left. Anyway, end of thread hi-jack.

Rings are a more efficient use of wire, and give lower impedance and voltage drop, plus better reliability. The side benefit is that all plugs (cord caps) must be individually fused, giving more fire protection.

My French electrician says that for new build or remodels, a British ring-main circuit is (and as far as he's concerned always has been) forbidden. They use radial spurs from the consumer unit with suitable breakers or cartidge fuses. Fused cord-caps (plugs) don't exist, but of course many modern appliances have fuses or overload protection built-in.
On 2.5mm2 wire you can have up to 8 outlets on a 20A breaker or 5 outlets on a 16A breaker. Washing machines, dishwashers driers etc. must be on individual spurs, 2.5mm2 with a 20A breaker each. Cooker/range on 6mm2 and a 32A breaker. Electric radiators, up to 3.5kw total on each radial spur, 2.5mm2 with 20A breaker. Radial lighting spurs 1.5mm2 with a 10A breaker can drive up to 6 lampholders each. There are no inspectors, but to work as an electrician you must register as such and the chambre des metiers needs proof of qualifications or you can't get a registration number. There is rigid demarkation between trades, 'sparks' does not plumb and plasterers don't wire stuff. If a client employs an unregistered 'craftsman' [ie hack] he can now be fined up to $30,000,[E30,000] and of course his fire insurance is void. The authorities are cracking down hard on the cheats, prison sentences are being imposed and they reckon every Gendarmerie now has a 'tax evasion' man. DIY is exempt, of course. Nervertheless hacks still abound and the black econmomy thrives, because social security and tax charges on a small one-person business adds at least E30 an hour to the bill. A couple of years ago there was a massive boom in the black economy when we changed from francs to the euro, as all the mattresses stuffed with tax-dodged cash had to be cut open and spent before e-day! Banks were duty bound to tell the taxmen of conversions above E500. Eventually as the deadline approached, even the crooked builders wouldn't touch francs with a stick.

Alan

[This message has been edited by Alan Belson (edited 01-06-2006).]

Thanks to all that provided all the information!
I was not aware that British wiring was so complex at one time with all the different ratings of power outlets and such. (The now BS 1363 outlet and matching plug looks far more robust than the "junk" we use over here!!) I do think North American standards are poor as compared to European and australian standards... 240V for small appliances? Must be nice! Plug in a 1500W heater to your typical 15 A branch here and yer maxed out (80% rule) Don't even think of plugging in the vacuum!

As for that ring circuit... I was always under the impression that the circuit conductors were capable of carrying the full current rating of the fuse or breaker protecting it.... Now I see where it could be dangerous if a group of heavy loads was plugged into a ring circuit close to the end...
To operate safely the loads would have to be spread out OR connected at the midpoint of the ring I think I read correct?

Wow, I learned more than one new thing today!
Thanks again!

A.D

The common arrangement in Ireland is a little different.

While the ring circuit is perfectly legal, it's just not very common. Electricians, for whatever reasons, have just never liked it.

We usually use 20A radial circuits feeding BS1363 socket outlets. (in older installations 16A radials protected by diazed fuses)

I guess you could call it a hybrid of UK and Northern European wiring practices.

---

Ireland used German-style Diazed/Neozed fuses & panels for a very long time. I guess the ring circuit idea just never caught on.

People just expect to be able to isolate a room / group of rooms at the panel without knocking out the whole floor.

Also, radials suit the more sprawling type homes that you tend to get once outside the urban areas here.

Yep -- We had just as much variety as North American parallel and tandem blades, T-slots, etc. As far as domestic is concerned, there were 2, 5, and 15A connector ratings, and at one time each was available in both 2-pin non-grounding and 3-pin grounding versions. To add to the complexity, the pin spacings were different between the 2- and 3-pin versions, so that a 2-pin plug would not fit a 3-pin socket of the same rating!

The 2-pin version of 15A fell out of use, but that still left five different configurations (the un-modernized house my family bought to fix up when I was a kid in 1970 still had a few of those pre-WWII 2-pin 15A sockets).

By the way, I think most people would probably agree that the 5 and 15A ratings are probably quite conservative. The 5A plugs have pins which are similar to those on European 16A plugs.

As for BS546 15A, who was it at ECN a while ago who referred to them as "Hefty enough to brain a rhino?" They really were huge, and looked quite capable of carrying at least four times the rated current.

Although the ring was introduced in the very late 1940s, of course the older BS546 connectors were still in fairly widespread use for many years after. In fact BS546 is still favored in theatre work today for the rigging, mainly because if BS1363 was used it could be very hard to get at a blown fuse.

Today, the 2-pin variant of 5A lives on as the standard connector just for electric shavers. Shaver outlets fed via a 1:1 isolation xfmr are the only sockets permitted in bathrooms under IEE Regs.


Any long-term ECN members remember the discussion with Dspark a few years ago?

That's one of the things I dislike about the ring. Although the IEE considers it unlikely, the system is not foolproof and it is possible to overload the cable without exceeding the rating of the OCPD. If you connect a couple of 3kW loads near to one end, then the short side of the ring can have its rating exceeded. The IEE Regs. were amended on this point a while ago, but it's still a concern in my mind.

Another problem is that if one conductor goes open for any reason, every outlet on the ring still has power. In fact you can have one break on the phase and another on the neutral, and everything still has power, but the cable could end up being severely overloaded. I've seen it happen.



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 01-10-2006).]

A similar radial arrangement is also recognized by the IEE Regs., with limits as to the floor area served.

They also recognize a 30A radial arrangement, but obvisouly in this case a larger cable is needed -- Usually 4 sq. mm.


On some of the older installations it was more a case of knocking out almost the whole house here!

The original ring specification for domestic wiring allowed one 30A ring to serve an unlimited number of outlets over a maximum floor area of 1000 sq. ft. (the change to metric didn't alter that by much -- it's now 100 sq. m. or 1076 sq. ft.).

Given that a very large proportion of British homes were/are less than 1000 sq. ft., it was very common in the past to find one ring circuit feeding all sockets (with the exception of the one on the cooker panel).

You can still find places which were wired in the 1950s through 1970s which have the typical four branch circuits for the whole house:

#1. 30A for cooker (range).
#2. 30A ring for all sockets.
#3. 15A for water heater
#4. 5A for lights.

It gradually became more common to install two rings, but in my opinion the often-found system of one ring for each floor is far from being the best arrangement. Given that most homes now have central-heating, the upstairs ring often ends up feeding nothing more than a few radios, TVs, electric blankets, and bedside lights, while the downstairs ring still runs all the heavy appliances.

It's still common for the washing machine, dishwasher, dryer, etc. to be connected to the ring rather than being on a dedicated circuit.

*shrug* my typical arrangement for 100 square metres is: 2 10 or 13A circuits, each feeding sockets and lights in half of the rooms, dedicated 16A circuit for each dishwasher and washing machine. Not much different - actually noticeably less power.

One side note: unlike US GFIs RCDs are purely electromechanical devices.

Here there are _no_ limits of floor area or number of outlets a circuit can feed. No 80% rule either... sometimes resulting in severely overloaded circuits. Example: at school the sockets are on 10A circuits. We often plug in a 1200W kettle and a 2000W kettle simultanously (don't ask me why, that's due to some erm internal problems), totalling 3200W. At a measured voltage around 220V (our school is traditionally low, record being 355V phase-to-phase voltage instead of 400 nominal) that equals to 14.5 A... the fuse takes that quite happily for two pots of tea. (even though circuit breakers were already standard in 1978-1980 when the school was built we still are on Diazed fuses).

Here the recomendations are:

1) Lighting and outlets are on seperate circuits.
2) Radial circuits serve no more than 10 points (applies to both lighting and socket outlet circuits)
3) Radials should only serve up to 2 rooms max.
4) Ring circuits, if used, same 100sq meter rule as UK applies.

5) Circuits should be planned according to predicted load... e.g. the kitchen should usually get more than one radial..
Dishwashers, washing machines, dryers etc need particular attention.

Overloading will just blow the 16A diazed/neozed/minzed fuse or trip the 16/20A breaker anyway. Not really a fire hazzard as overloading a ring at one end might be.


Also:
The Department of Environment has directed that lighting wall switches should not be higher than 1200mm or lower than 900mm. This is to allow easier access for disabled people.

Sockets are generally located at about 800-900 mm for similar reasons. (shouldn't have to stoop over and should be accessable from a wheelchair)

only applies to new installations and is not a wiring regulation. It's a building regulation / accessability regulation.

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 01-11-2006).]

pauluk wrote:


A fully electric dryer over here draws about 30A 240V on its own! (I metered my old one at 22A/27A)

Do UK dryers draw less?? (I noticed that your range circuits are not 50A as ours are.. Are we just power hungry here?? )

Randy

Yes, the average UK clothes dryer is 2400 to 3000 watt, supplied by a standard 13 amp plug or fused connection unit from the same circuit as other appliances. The size of laundry loads tends to be lower to compensate too though.

Our dryer is on a dedicated (16 amp) circuit, simply because it was simpler to run the outlet that way

With regard to the stove/cooker/range circuits, I think the overall loading is similar, 4 burners and an oven, but the regulations here allow for diversity within an appliance such as a stove, meaning that although the theoretical draw might be 40-45 amps, the actual continuous load isn't going to exceed 30 amps, and of course we're not subject to the 80% rule for loading. This means a 30 or 32 amp circuit is acceptable for the purpose. Larger stoves (and other appliances such as electric showers especially, being basically a high power instantanious water heater) can require a 45 or 50 amp circuit, this is far more common for the showers than stoves. I think American ovens may be higher loading due to larger size however.

Edit to waffle on about the stoves and showers

[This message has been edited by chipmunk (edited 01-11-2006).]

For that matter, US ranges generally require a minimum 40A circuit.

We do have a derating factor, of course. Any range rated 12kW or less is assigned a demand of 8kW.

Taking a trip to the local big box store, I see most ranges are between 10.5-12kW. That's for 4 surface elements and electric oven. "Dual-fuel" ranges are also available--gas cooktop with electric convection oven (though nothing like the options they have in France, 3 electric surface elements and 1 gas burner). Cases such as these may warrant a 30A circuit.

The typical electric range may have either a 40A or 50A circuit. In either case, a 50A receptacle is used. (NEMA 10-50 before 1996, NEMA 14-50 after.)

[This message has been edited by yaktx (edited 01-11-2006).]

So BS1363 dates to the '40s? I thought it originated in 1962.

(Then again, I thought NEMA 5-15 originated in the mid-'60s. I now know it originated about 1950 or so, was made mandatory for all installations in 1962, but universal enforcement took perhaps another decade.)

And yes, I've seen US 60A devices with no more metal contact than a 15A BS546!

As to cookers/ranges:

Germany / Austria: 3phase+N 16A at 400V (=10,8 kW)
Switzerland (?)often: 3 phase (no N) at 400V (same power)

Germany: any device above 2kW needs its own radial circuit. Wiring here is either 1,5mm2 or 2,5mm2 depending on surrounding material.

Germany has been dedicated to the one pole B 16 A breaker, which is hard to fight, although often oversized according to IEC regs.

Usually the cookers can be wired to fit most European countries as wired Y internally.

Exception is Switzerland where Delta is reported to be used internally.

It might be worth noting that the cooking load is often split across 2 or more circuits thesedays.

i.e. the Hob (cooktop) on a 32A circuit

and the oven (2 ovens + grill) on a seperate 32A circuit.

Also, some ovens that have paricularly huge draws can be wired in various ways using multiple circuits drawing from the same phase. i.e. 32A + 16A or 2 X 32A. The circuits are completely seperate and each only powers parts of the oven.
This obviously creates some complications for isolation / switching.

The normal practice in Ireland, however, is to just use a single circuit or to have the oven and hob supplied seperately.

That's how it's done in our house as both appliances draw quite a lot of power when at peak consumption. The oven uses "pyrocleaning" (heats to >500C to self-clean) and induction hob can draw quite a lot of power if all zones are on simultaniously. Hence, seperate circuits makes sense.

That's the norm in most homes. There are a few slightly higher-power dryers on the market these days, up to 4kW or so. They come with warnings in the books and on the leaflets about the need to be wired on a dedicated 20A circuit.

When it comes to washing machines, unlike in the U.S. most models here incorporate a 2 to 3kW heating element. They often have both cold and hot fill, but then use the element to boost the temperature to whatever is required. It's not at all uncommon to plumb the washer for cold-fill only and rely on the integral heater entirely. (We often have smaller hot-water cylinders for the rest of the house here too!)

Now that is something which I feel is often overlooked when installing rings here. It seems to me that whoever plans the system just looks at the 100 sq. m. rule and/or just thinks one ring for upstairs and one for downstairs will be sufficient. To me, that is not making proper allowance for potential loading.

I've seen suggestions these days to the effect that with increased kitchen loads it might be wise to install a third ring circuit just to feed the kitchen. I don;t see that as being the proper answer either. As the heavy loads are all concentrated in and around the kitchen (washers and dryers are frequently located there in Britain), all that does is leave the two rings serving the rest of the house with minimal loading and you still have the one ring for the kitchen which gets all the high-popwer appliances on it.

Admittedly the heater in a washer runs only for 15 or 20 minutes to heat the water, ditto for a dishwasher. The dryer might run for two hours or more at a stretch though.

The reason for the heater in european washing machines isn't that we have smaller water heaters (the uk's an exception to that .. those victorians really believed that cold water was "more wholesome".... Nothing like a nice drafty home with luke warm water to calm the blood!)

European washing machines use a *FAR* smaller amount of water when filling for the wash part of the cycle than their US counterparts. The length of time the hot water supply would be open for wouldn't allow enough water to run to clear the cold water lag in the pipes ... i.e. no hot water would actually reach the machine by the time it was full. Older european machines filled much deeper and could actually use the hotwater supply quite effectively.

Also, european machines use the gentle heating profile of the water to activate enzymes in the detergent (likewise for dishwashers). When these are gradually heated they perform far more effectively.

And, finally, european consumers expect a machine to be capable of taking the wash up to 95C (near boiling) if selected. That's simply impossible in the typical US toploader which can only was at the max temp. of your hotwater supply circa 60C. Likewise, we expect dishwashers to be able to take the wash up to 85-90C ... european dishwashers in general use "residual heat drying" i.e. the dishes are heated up with the extremely hot water and they quite litterally dry themselves as they're extremely hot.

It's basically a simple and very effective way of completely sanitising dishes, cuttlery, bedlinen, towels etc...

A euro machine will quite happily tumble your clothes in boiling enzyme laced water for over an hour, then rinse them about 6 times, then spin them at 1800 rpm.

Nothing survives! That's why they're quite popular with US families where someone has a dust mite allergy ...




[This message has been edited by djk (edited 01-12-2006).]

Too small in some of them, as far as I can tell. I've seen some of the newer machines which barely seem to fill to the bottom of the drum on the wash cycle.


You learn something every day. So presumably European soap powders are formulated differently for this?

There are indeed reports that some washing powders are different. This can apparently lead to spectacular foaming... (I don't remember which way the problem goes)

I don't know about you, but we always have a bluddy good larf at the adverts trying to con the gullible into buying products they don't need, like washing powder:
Hot wash [60C plus], with perhaps a 'blueing' whitener is adequate & kills all bugs, including legionella and mites- ie basic supermarket own brands. Ads for leading brands? Some simpering female twit beaming happily as little Johnny runs full-tilt into a monster pile of filthy, steaming, oily crap with his best white shirt on!
Then there's Anti-wrinkle-creams and shampoos:
'Bollock-welloff', 'Aqua-sphericals', 'Hydro-molecules', proteins, extract of some horrid toxic weed and all the other quazi-scientific piffle, all advertised by a model in her early twenties. I mean, come on! Is it vanishingly likely that you can smear some jollop, made basically of lard, on your fizzog and look 18 years old again? Do you really want your hair to look like it's been T-Cut and Polished by Rolls Royce Motors?
It gets worse!
'Proctor and Gamble' bought out a NEW! bio-powder some years back; ['New Persil']. Trouble was, it really was 'new' and it 'bio-ed' your blinking skin off as well! Withdrawn from sale as the poor unfortunate users itched like coots!

Rantus terminum
Alan

Here too... but that's what it is - a recommendation.
The dedicated circuit for each load >1.5kW is merely a recommendation too _and_ only applies to new wiring. Single phase loads exceeding 3.6kW (16A) do have to have a separate permission by the PoCo in Austria though.

The typical range is 9 or 9.5 kW here. The cooktop has 2 burners on one phase each and the third phase is for the oven. That means the oven never draws more than 16A @ 230V. Occasionally such ranges are connected via 25A single phase circuits, but that's only done in very old apartments where 3ph is not available, but in such a location that would usually already exceed the main fuse of 20A. So not really a good idea. Not that I think connecting an appliance that is capable of drawing like 41A to a 25amp circuit with 4mm2 or even 2.5mm2 wire, only relying on the OC protection is a good idea anyway...

Separate cooktops and ovens are fairly common here too, usually the cooktop is 3ph, only using 2 phases and the oven single phase, even sometimes connected via Schuko.

Dryers and washers don't exceed 3600W here. Our washing machine runs on a 10A Diazed fuse, but only if there's nothing else on that circuit. The refrigerator already blows the fuse.

Hmmm.... Several places here are now selling big U.S.-style Maytag and Whirlpool top-loaders with 22 lb. capacity. I wonder if Britsh/European soap powders will foam excessively in those and the quantity used needs to be reduced?

These aren't really much different to old top-loaders which used to be found in laundromats all over Britain. They had machines which dispensed a cup full of soap powder, or a lot of people brought their own favorite brand in with them.

I do recall notices in many about not using too much powder. How much that was down to the formulation and how much because many of the laundromats used huge water softeners, I don't know.

The European attachment to using 3-phase for very small domestic supplies just strikes me as making things unnecessarily complex. I've seen places in France with the main disjoncteur set at a mere 15A per phase!

I'm just trying to imagine calling the PoCo here and telling them I want permission to connect a 4kW load. I can almost hear the laughter now!

Last year in Cognac I arranged with EDF for a 3-phase domestic supply to be raised from 10A per phase to a giddy 15! The problem with 3-phase supplies is even if you have high rated breakers you are continuously trying to not overload breakers by juggling which circuits you use. And you pay more the bigger the breakers are, which is why some folks here are still running a whole house on 30A @ 230v.

Alan

The major problem in Europe as I see it is that we've multiple maximum amp ratings on plugs.

CEE 7/7 (schuko/french) - 16Amp
Italy - 16A
Switzerland - 10A (with 16A optionally?)
UK, Ireland - 13A
Denmark - 13A

It makes max ratings for appliances a bit tricky!

Er, 15A 3Phase as the mains??? What Voltage is it again??? 230/400V???

30A 230V mains??? Single Phase correct????


Wow! and I thought that my 100A @230V service was not good enough with everything going!

A.D

[This message has been edited by Rewired (edited 01-14-2006).]

I suppose there is politics behind that.

In Germany we got a standard of 3 x 63 A @400V/230V for every meter even when it is just a small apartment today.

You pay what you consume, the base price for the meter is rather low. A kWh is at the moment at about € 0.15 - 0.20 here.

As an example, a normal water heater is not forbidden but you're supposed to use instant water heater (18 - 27 kW) for their better ecological qualities.

So in Germany the throttle for consumption is the price of energy, bad for people that cannot afford modern equipment.

In my French house I pay a base price depending on the size of amperage of the meter, for my 6 kW /30A adjusted meter it
is € 4,33 per month plus taxes which isn't much, but the price for a supply comparable to the German standard would be enormous. On the other hand kWh is at € 0,0765, or less than the half of the German price.

As it is a small holiday residence, it is sufficient, to heat water, wash clothes and dish and run a little cooker. The main breakers are rather slow, so I had never any tripping although sometimes using up to 9 kW for a short period.

My idea is that the French politics consists in offering a certain rather poor part of the (rural) population a relatively cheap basic supply not regarding their ecological consumption qualities. The throttle to limit consumption here is the size of the meter.

There is a parallel with their cars. Here in Germany automobile tax depends on the ecological qualities of your car. My actual one was free the first three years and is €108 at the moment. My old car (1992) would now cost about €350 per year. A car without catalyser is maybe about the double (very rare now). This means that older cars generally leave the country as it is impossible to sell them. But the motorways are still free.

In France they haven't any car tax at all. So all the old cars remain as long as the owner can pay the petrol. So the little farmer has lower costs as long as he does not try to ride on a motorway.



With regard to Rangers issue, here it is the same that you have report the installation of big consumers. But this more because they have to guarantee the supply in the normed range and therefore they want to know whether the installed power is covered by the PoCo equipment. Another thing is that as we got 3 phase as an absolute standard, they want you to share the load over the phases. That's why 1 phase equipment above 4 kW(?) is to be authorised. Actually I cannot imagine anything that would need more than 3600W without 3phase wiring.

Wolfgang

Neither do I. Large electric water heaters have never been common in Austria or run at 400V between two phases. Ranges are either split over the phases or (ideally) throttled to 16A max and run on single phase (the 25A single phase approach is not exactly up to code).

Actually the French supplies are ridiculous for me. The smalles single phase supply I have ever seen dates from the late 1940ies and is 10A. That was in a very small rural house were there wasn't anything bigger than a few light bulbs and a radio. Vienna had almost exclusively 20 or 25A single phase services for apartments. Three phase starts at 20A, today's standard is 3x25A for apartments or 3x35A for single familiy homes. Anything larger is rare, in all my life I've seen only one apartment with a 3x35A service, IIRC that one had night storage heating _and_ ran a pottery kiln... and likewise I have only seen one 3x63A service. If I remember I can look up the recommendations based on the floor area at school.

Yep. Or quite likely 220/380 in actuality if they haven't physically adjusted the transformers for the new official 230V standard yet.


There used to be 30A (240V single-phase) supplies in Britain. I haven't seen one for a very long time, but I suppose there might still be a few around. I still see 40A services from time to time, although they're getting rarer.

100A is now pretty much the norm for new installations, but there are still a huge number of 60A services in use.

The lower-rated services aren't really a problem until people start wanting to add things like instantaneous electric showers (9 to 10kW) or such like. Remember that we have almost no air-conditioning loads in domestic systems here.

A house using gas heating, and maybe a gas stove could quite easily get by on an old 40A service. Allowing for diversity, the total loading probably nevers gets anywhere near that.

The problem I see with something like the French 15A 3-ph system is not the total power available but the horrendous juggling act you'd have to do with single-phase loads when you can draw barely more than 3kW per phase.


I remember when I first looked at the EDF tariffs a few years ago. As you and Alan have said, they base the fixed standing charge on the service capacity and the price goes up very rapidly for anything above a few kW.

In Britain, you pay no extra standing charge for a 100A supply than you would for a 40 or 60A service. In fact my PoCo just recently scrapped the standing charge completely.



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 01-15-2006).]

As a matter of interest, how does the price of gasoline/diesel in Germany compare with France?

France [yesterday] at the supermart;

95 octane= 1 Euro 20centimes per litre
Diesel= 95 centimes per litre

No road tax for non-commercial vehicles.

As to electrical consumption here, consider the lilies of the field.....

Alan

Hmm... I make that about 82 pence for unleaded at the current exchange rate; still a little cheaper than Britain.

Has the tax on gazole increased in recent years in France? Last time I was there diesel was quite a lot cheaper than gasoline. It looks as though the differential has narrowed somewhat.

Here (border region, might be untypical for Germany)today:
95 @ 1,24
Diesel @ 1,06
Usually petrol here is bit more expensive than in France but the ranges(low cost supermarket <-> motorway station) are more important than the countries' difference. B and NL being 5 to 20 cents higher at the moment.

For information leaded fuel has not been available since about 2000. I don't even remember when exactly. In France it is still sold as so many cars survived.

There are more things about that topic. In Germany for example heating with wood is pretty restricted, in France it is more a basic Human Right to pollute the whole valley with smoke of the old trees harvested on the own property (terrain).

Wolfgang

Is that actually leaded fuel or a lead substitute? I thought the withdrawal of leaded a few years ago was under some EU directive (although at least France has the good sense to ignore such things a lot of the time!).

We have LRP on sale in Britain -- Lead Replacement Petrol, which is still used by a lot of people with cars made prior to about 1986 or thereabouts, which I think is when all new cars had to be capable on running on unleaded.

A lot of people with classic or vintage cars prefer to fill up with unleaded and use a separate additive though.

More on-topic, it's quite interesting to see all the pros and cons put forward for different types of heating over the years. I was browsing some magazines here from the 1963/64 period the other evening.

The advertisments for electrical heating emphasize the cleanness of electricity, the minimal maintenance requuired, and the ease of use, along with comments about efficiency (referring to the fact that with gas or oil etc. some of the heat is wasted out of the flue).

Ads for gas make a big point of how much cheaper it was compared to the equivalent energy from electricity at the time, and how much less labor is required than for a solid fuel system.

Proponents of solid-fuel systems all made a big point of it being the cheapest overall to run, and tried to counter the more intense labor issue with automatic hopper feed systems etc. which require only a couple of minutes per day to load up.

Oil-fired heating has become very common in this country in places which have no gas suppyl, but with the price of heating oil having doubled in a relatively short space of time, a lot of people are now finding it to be less attractive.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 01-16-2006).]

Saving energy is as important as which fuel happens to be cheapest right now. Deciding which fuel to use when you install a system is risky- look what's happened to gas and oil prices recently.
If I were designing a house from scratch now, I'd plump for:-
Geothermal heat source- either a bored well or a pipework lattice laid in the garden coupled to a heat pump.
Insulated floors, walls, roof, low-e double glazing, with a minimum equivalent to 8" of glass wool in walls and roofspace.
Underfloor heating, getting the same 'heat effect' with 10% less fuel, [ie. 2C lower stat. settings].
Double-flux forced air ventilation, 100% fresh-air input, via a heat exchanger to give controlled airflow, with microproccessor control, and recovering about 1.0kw.
Reversible Air-con, to give rapid heat on days when it turns chilly. [Underfloor takes 5 hours to heat the slab]. Latest split model with a COP better than 4. This is not a luxury- imagine cooking on a 4kw range in a house with a net 1kw loss when it's 17C outside and then work out what the house temperature would be!
Apart from my bad mistake of retaining my existing deisel fired boiler, I'm doing all the above in my re-model. Theoretically, the 2000 sq ft house will run on about 2kw with a difference inside/outside of 21C [38F]. I could have done better,[ie sun trapping on S. elevation], but I'm constrained by a shell built in the mid 17th century, limited funds and old bones!
As to burning wood, as Wolfgang mentioned, it can pollute. But if you use the right species, [oak, fruitwoods, hardwoods, but not pine] and dry it thoroughly for a couple of years, smoke is not a real issue. Here in the agricultural North of France, hedgerow trees are an important source of timber for fence posts, farm buildings etc., and are pollarded regularly. Burning the offcuts, if they're dried properly, is recycling carbon- a true bio fuel. And there is immense pleasure from a fire on a cold day. Must be something primordeal?

Alan

It was an EU directive that killed the lead in 2000.

It must have been several years since they stopped selling lead replacement petrol here, because I remember working for a company in 2002 that had no longer any real need for the pumps. More different locations to fill the same fuel was just an extra cost.

The United States banned leaded fuel ages ago. Kudos to them. Today even Africa is going unleaded. Lead is dead.

Unleaded in Africa

Leaded in Europe (PDF)

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 01-16-2006).]

By 2000 many EU countries had already banned leaded petrol though.

LRP's not really sold here anymore as there is extremely limited demand other than classic car enthusiasts.

The oil companies should voluntarily remove it from petrol (gasoline) supplies in developing nations where it is still permitted. It has to go!

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 01-16-2006).]

Not completely, you can still buy 100 octane
low-lead at the race track here in the states, but it costs about 3 times as much as pump gas.



[This message has been edited by IanR (edited 01-16-2006).]

When you think about it, it was incrediably weird that a heavy metal additive was allowed at any stage. Even by 1930s environmental standards that was pretty bad!

No, leaded petrol is still very available everywhere, but for aircraft. Redesigning and requalifying aircraft engines for unleaded would be very expensive, and just using unleaded in existing aircraft unsafe, so lead additive will go on for the foreseeable future.

Thomas Midgley made two major inventions in his life. Both are still widely known today. They were:

- Leaded petrol
- Freons
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi684.htm

Sorry about the threadjack!

Hmm... what should I say... small single-bedroom apartments in Vienna have been found to have a 220V 10A single phase service at times! I've seen one for real, the house had central heat and hot water running on coal, maybe later converted to gas (judging by the like 10ccm diameter of the main gas line, as large as ours for a roughly 8000 sq. feet) and a gas cooker. That left full 6 amps (my guess about the circuit fuse, couldn't check any closer since the house was half collapsed) for 3-4 light bulbs, maybe a table light, a radio and a TV...
20 or 25A single phase services are still very common. Even though during remodels code requires 10mm2 feeders only 25A fuses get installed.

In Vienna supposedly the voltage of the 10/20kV medium voltage network was raised to achieve the 230/400V mains voltage. Wonder why we still got 220/380 or lower at school... we have been down to the tolerances at times. The school has it's own transformer vault stepping 10kV down to 220/380V with two transformers, one supplying the school and one supplying the surrounding area.

Wow!,
Since I last saw this thread, it's gone from Ring circuits to Leaded Petrol.
Amazing.

Yup! From ring circuits to radial spurs to to LH versus RH drive to washing machines, to detergents to mites and bugs to enzymes to 3 phase to breaker sizes to car-tax to fuel prices to house heating to woodburning to leaded fuel to aviation spirit to EU directives to ranges and back to radial spurs.

Who said; "Oh No! Not ring circuits again!"
The trouble is they finish up where they started!

Second lap.....

Alan

Sorry Aussie,
I missed that question.
The BS1363 plug and socket arrangement was mentioned in all the releases of the NZ Electrical Wiring Regulations, from 1932 to 1976, as was the BS 546 configuration.
However, that doesn't mean that either was really ever used here.
You can still get them here though, PDL still make the BS 1363 plates and plugs, although I have no idea why.
I've only ever seen them used here and by golly, I can't for the life of me remember where it was.
{Edit:I know where it was, it was underneath Timaru Hospital, there were long strings of them, I remember now looking at them during a BA course (before I was ever an Electrician) and thinking "what a strange looking plug!", they were the metal bodied type with a plastic(??) socket insert fitted into the lid}
Kiwi,
Yup, I agree mate, the majority of our caravan parks are wired in this fashion, but instead of a 13A fused plug, we have a 16A (Blue) IEC 309 connector and a 16A MCB and the usual cord-line RCD.
Oh and BTW Aussie, our telecommunications system was originally based upon the BT 3-Wire system, I may be grossly erronous in saying that, but I was under the impression that that was how we got the connector spec as well.
Them older Aussie phone plugs were pretty large little beasts, I remember seeing one of them for the first time and wondering what voltage the Austel system ran on.



[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 01-18-2006).]

I heard from a kiwi techie that BS1363 is an acceptable alternative and is occasionally used where an incompatable plug / socket system is required. E.g. specialist applications such as UPS systems.

Djk,
With respect to the non-compatibility angle.
We do have plug/socket configurations here that use either, 2 round (Phase+Neutral) pins or a single round Earth pin to complement the standard flat pins.
But I agree Dave, we didn't always have them configurations either, but that's another thread in itself!.

There are several variants to BS1363 here as well for applications where it's necessary to restrict connections ("clean" supplies, etc.).

There is no standardization between manufacturers on these BS1363-based-but-not-BS1363 plugs. MK did a version with a kind of T-shaped earth pin. Crabtree did one with the rectangular earth pin replaced with a round one with a flat on one side.

Yes -- Those documents you've shown me before are definitely the BT standard, introduced here around 1982.


Edited for typos:

Do you ever get one of those days when your fingers just don't seem to be able to get the letters in the right order?


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 01-19-2006).]

[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 01-19-2006).]

Hi, regarding the BS ring mains used in New Zealand.

Aussie240 was correct in reading about this for NZ.

In the old regs 1987 under reg 50 a ring mains was explained and a schematic drawn with the BS 1363 plug sockets.
Under (e) details re fusing for the latter.

Under reg 163 Test of ring circuitsA test shall be made to verify the continuity of all conductors of every ring circuit installed in accordance with reg. 50 thereoff.

Under reg 100. Plugs, sockets different plugs were described with their respective polarity markings.

I have never seen a ring mains in NZ probably because people more prefer the standard NZS 198. 10 Amp plug. instead of the BS 13 amp plugs and sockets.