Where is the Main Fuse placed in an installation, in your country?.
This is the fuse, which protects the whole installation and if this blows,you've got a serious fault, in your place.
Your Help please.........

In the meter or in an enclosure prior to the meter.

In private residences in Colombia, it is placed after the meter.

In the old days this was a cartridge fuse connected to a large double-pole opens style knife switch on a porcelain or phenolic block.

This was the shutoff for the entire house!

Now a high-amperage circuit breaker before the individual breakers is the norm in good quality professional installations - sometimes you still have a knife switch before the main fuse and breakers (usually retrofits).

Kludges and cowboys still do the knife-switch and cartridge thing.

In England it's a cartridge fuse wired ahead of the the meter.

Here are two examples:

In Austria it's either a set of Diazed or Neozed fuses (still lots of Diazed, that's why they're still available), either in the meter enclosure or in an enclosure ahead of the meter (in appartment buildings there's typically 1 diazed enclosure per floor, located in the stairway). In Italy I just saw a main breaker incorporated in the meter.

David, what sort of a set up, do you have in
Scotland?, for mains fuses?.
Over here, we use a system of keeping these fuses where only Authorised Persons can access them.
For an overhead reticulated area,the fuse is up on the pole, hence the term, Pole Fuse,
with underground reticulation, we use a pillar box-type arrangement, where there are normally 3 400V fuses and a Neutral Bus rated @ 100A, even though, a single house may be run from this, it allows for future expansion.

Hi Trumpy
Arrangements for main fuse are the pretty well the same as in Paul's part of the world.
PoCo installs main fuse (their property)before the meter, where the service enters the building.
Providing you install the consumer unit or distribution board within 3 metres of the meter, and the tails are the appropriate size (25mm for 100A supply) no additional main fuse is required.
I'm drowning in work at the moment & working all hours, but when I get a chance I'll post some pics of our installations.

Power companies over here used to provide a
free length of 25 metres of service main, from their point of connection, no more.
I've hooked up heaps of houses, out in the country, that are set back a fair distance, from the road, the consumer(house-owner), pays for all of the Service Main, normally
3Core+N/Screen, this cable is humungously
expensive, NZ$38/metre + installation.
Now, I get whingeing about the price of getting the Power hooked up.
Administration decisions,eh?, don't you hate
them?.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 11-23-2002).]

In Canada, it is normall after the meter,
but in some urban residential installations
from the 1940s-50s, I have seen the main fuse/switch before the
meter, with the main fusebox fully accessable by the customer.

I would have thought that placing the main
fuse, which should be an HRC type, before the meters, as this would make more sense,
as the metering equipment would also be protected, have seen meters burn out before!.
Also, Paul,in your pictures,it shows the loadside Phase identified,(this is obviously
single phase), but are you required to identify, with Heatshrink sleeving the three
phases in a poly-phase system at the meters?
Your advice, please.
[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 11-23-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 11-27-2002).]