Here in my area in Germany, at about 1965 to 1975 they have switched to use breakers instead of melting fuses in normal building installation (speaking of 10/16A).

I often see picturs from the US where cloth insulated cables are connected to breakers, so did they start using breakers earlier, or did they end using cloth later?

Andy,

The fabric insulated wiring came long before the breakers. Usually, breakers replaces the old style fuse blocks, so that is why you see the old fabric insulated wires attached to newer circuit breakers.

Most of that old wiring is in pretty good shape, except anywhere it has been exposed to heat, like above a light fixture or in an attic. In that case, the old rubber and cloth covering is completely disintegrated. I have some pictures of this that I will post in a few days.

Peter

Peter, I remember using Crabtree C50 circuit breakers way back around 1965 I dont know the exact date that they were introduced.
After that seemed to come the Federal stablok breakers D type, these were installed in the thousands, in those days we had little or no regard for tripping charecteristics, you still see lots of these breakers today. Ok for short circuit protection but not very good for overcurrentprotection.

Sorry about the double post, fingers not in sync with barin, should add that I refer to the UK.

I have days like that Alan! Duplicate post deleted......

I'd say that in residential wiring here it's rare to see breakers in anything prior to the late 1970s/early 1980s. In fact the rewireable (semi-enclosed) fuses were still being installed in some places at that time.

Some older places using the Wylex "Standard Range" have the plug-in MCBs, but these are generally more recent replacements. The Wylex panels in question will accept rewireable, cartridge fuses, or plug-in MCBs with just a change of the carrier base -- No need to even remove the front panel.

The Crabtree catalog lists the C50 series as being the "standard in commercial circuit protection for over 30 years."

I remember my father rewiring the house we moved to in 1970 and using a Crabtree panel with C50 breakers. I wouldn't be surprised if we were the only house in the street with breakers instead of fuses at that time.

The C50s certainly have a traditional, solid feel to them, unlike many of the newer types:



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 06-03-2004).]

Breakers must have been around in Sweden about as long as in Germany, but have had a hard time to catch on. Some electricians still prefer fuses (remember the photos I posted a while back?) Only in the last decade have the breakers become the norm.

They were available in Ireland for quite a long time but it's rare to see an installation with all breakers before the mid 1980s!

You'll see plenty of installations with diazed/neozed fuses and an RCD or two. They're configured exactly the same way as a modern distribution board, just with neozed instead of MCBs

I don't know why, but it took Irish electricians a while to switch over to using MCBs.. I think it could have been a cost issue in the early days. I know that many electricians in the early 80s were not comfortable with anything other than Neozed/Diazed which had worked well for many many years.

Even today we still usually have 1 single neozed fuse on the board as the "main fuse" rather than a breaker.

Neozed and Diazed were and still are excellent systems though. You can't overfuse them (well at least not without considerable tampering!) and they're pretty much as effective as an MCB and as easy to install. However, they are a BIT less convienient than switching a tripped MCB back up. However, we had a Diazed system with an RCD for years and in all that time a fuse never blew!

Same in my current house, I've never yet seen an MCB trip.

The RCD has several times though in both cases.. usual cause : damp clothes iron connections! or a wet kettle!

DJK what are the charecteristics of Neozed/ Diazed fuses? Are hey the same as BS88? Have a copy of the ETCI rules (1993 reprint) had a quick glance cant find any specific ref to N/D fuses. I remember Crabtree used to use this type of fuse as protection in some of there motor control gear. In industry I saw many moddifications where maintenance persons had no spare fuses. They were quite frightening.

First mention here of a Circuit Breaker was the old Voltage Controlled ELCB's, under the 1935 regulations.
And these were installed (as most thing's were back then) by your Friendly Power Supplier.
The 1955 EWR's were enough to make an Electrician cringe!.
They called for nasty things like seperate switches on motors and control circuits.
If the '55 Regs weren't enough the 69 Reg's really broke the donkies back,calling for silly things like D Curve breakers on Motor circuits and C curve breakers on everything else.
Some people that were working in the field,at the time are still seeing stars from this dramatic leap in thinking.
And then came the '76 Regs, this was a better way of thinking, we still had porcelain fuses but thier days were numbered, as far as Domestic switchboards were concerned.
But enter the NZI Flush-board, sure it had all the MCB's, but it would only take the NZI branded MCB's.
And the board had a live busbar that ran the whole length of the panel, no shrouding, many an Electrician here welded thier screwdriver to the back plate with that type board.
Meanwhile we still had the old Phenolic surface board, under the '76 Regs, Electricians could basically put what they liked on them, provided ther were no live parts.
The Overhaul of the Electricity Regulations stopped all of this in 1992, however and MCB's have been used ever since, for fear of retribution from the EWRB here (and others)
The regulations were changed to a Australian/New Zealand Standard in 2003, now we do the same job but it costs us so much more to be "safe".

Most interesting, I have been having a look through a load of old stuff that i have kept, your quite right about the old ElCB,s and as I said in a previouse post I can remember installing circuit breakers in the very early 60s. Yet looking in the various regs books of the time twelfth edition there's very little direct reference to circuit breakers it was a mysteriouse tecnology then in fact the first trip charcteristics didnot appear in the regs until 1981. We just blundered about installing by name until then dont think we even recognised that some took longer than others to operate. Oh happy days.

My Grandmother's house in suburbial Toronto was built in the early 1950s, and had (apparently original) breakers for the circuits, but had a fuse main and a flat rate fusebox for the water heater.

A point of note, her husband worked for an electrical supply house.

Some info about Diazed/Neozed.
http://www.ad.siemens.com/et/beta/html_76/products/sicherungss.htm

Siemens seems to only specify Diazed for higher voltage applications thesedays.

Neozed's a lot neater, safer (from a shock hazard point of view) and ideal for 230/400V stuff.

Those minized switch-fuses are common in Ireland on modern consumer units as a 63A isolator.


There is a large range of Diazed and Neozed fuses available. Maybe one of our Scandinavian or German electricians who has used the system more recently might know what the curves/characteristics are?

This Korean site shows you some of the Diazed family quite clearly:



[This message has been edited by djk (edited 06-08-2004).]

For domestic use (general purpose circuits and main fuses) I've only seen gL Diazed fuses, that means "full range conductor protection" and is claimed to be somewhere between the old fast and slow blow fuses. All I know is a 10A gL fuse acts noticeably slower than a 10A B breaker (ever tried to run a floor sander off a 10A circuit? With fuses the motor would try to start up, the lights would dim and then the fuse would blow. With breakers there was darkness almost immediately).

People only bought slow acting fuses for all uses, not only those which they were inteded to be used for. Do you see a parallell to the Americans overuse of 30 Amp edison fuses?

To get around this, the gL/gG fuse have replaced the slow fuses. If anyone asks, you tell them it is a slow fuse. The curve is supposed to be slow for moderate overcurrents (e.g. a starting motor) and fast for very high currents (a short circuit).

Trip curves and more can be found here: {In Swedish, English and some German }
http://www.ifoelectric.com/resource/diazed.pdf

The leading Swedish manufacturer of fuses have sold over 3 billion Diazed fuses to date!

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 06-08-2004).]

Given the info so far it would appear that Max earth loop might be going to be less for any given circuit. So radial circuit lengths may need to have been considered more closely.
Cant for the life of me think why the curves did not appear in the Irish Codes if the fuses were / are so popular there.

They were and are still in the codes somewhere! They haven't been used, other than as a main-fuse protecting the entire consumer unit, since the early-mid 80s.

In general, where a new circuit is added to a neozed/diazed board the electrician will add a breaker. The boards use the same DIN rail system.

In many cases the fuses would have all been replaced.

Diazed fuses are no-longer permitted in new installations. This has nothing to do with the effectiveness of the fuses but rather more to do with a potential shock hazard when changing them. Modern Neozed and Minized fuse holders don't have this problem.

Neozed is permitted, but MCBs are recomended and have been the norm for quite some time.

Most installations from the mid-1970s onwards are MCB based and the standard siemens and hager MCB boards begin to appear around that time. However, Fuses, were still being installed by some electricians right up until the mid-80s.

Neozed fuses are STILL the norm as the main protective device on almost every consumer unit in Ireland and it's only in the last few years that we're seeing 63A / 80A main breakers appear.

Normal set up:

63/80/100A supply fuse (typically BS or IEC) sealed.

Meter (sealed)

Main isolating switch (power company provided [built into some recent meters]) connections to this switch are sealed by the contractor. It's designed to safely and completely isolate the system when it's being worked on and not for switching loads.

Consumer Unit:
Main switch (for isolation)
Main fuse (commonly 63A neozed) Main MCB has started to replace this little by little.

to 30mA RCD (where required i.e. not necessarily on cooker / lighting circuits (in older installations) )

to final circuit MCB (or Fuses in old installations)

Where MCBs are used 20A radials normally feed the sockets. (16A MCBs are sometimes used)
Where fuses are used 16A radials normally feed the sockets.

32A ring circuits are also used, but not quite to the same extent as in the UK.

(BS1363 sockets and fused plugs are the norm in any modern installation here (they begin to appear in the late 50s/early 60s). ( Schuko remained a permissable option, but was not widely available and was rarely used.) Round-pin BS546 was also used but disappeard as soon as BS1363 became available. The 5A version is still used in lighting applications. The 15A version was common place in theatre lighting but has been replaced in recent years by blue CeeForm industrial plugs (required by the health and safety at work legislation) )

Fixed appliences are almost always connected by means of a fused spur in both ring and radial systems.

Lighting is normally 6 or 10A depending on how it's configured and what the loading is.

Cooking can be 32-45A (UK style socket/cooker switch cooker control units are not permitted as the socket would have no RCD protection)

Instantanious showers are the same but ususally use an RCBO or a seperate RCD/MCB combination.

djk, thanks for that realy comprehensive drscription, I endorse the irish way of thinking with the socket on the cooker outlet. Am I right in thinking that you provide fusing ither side of he meter and then final circuit protection. Thats somthing thats seldom done in the UK other than perhaps TT system. Most times here its straight out of the meter into an isolator that integrated into the consumer unit.Then straight onto cpd's via common rail busbar.

yup, there's protection on both sides of the meter.

The power company provides it with a service fuse, which is very similar to the UK version.

The meter has an isolating switch on the bottom to allow any electrician working on the system to totally isolate it.

and then on the consumer unit we have another main fuse and isolating switch. Sometimes this is provided by a Minized switch/fuse unit.

Older installations wouldn't have the isolating switch on the meter but would still have fuse protection on both sides and a main isolator on the fuse board.
It's just the way it's always been done.

They've been VERY slow to allow anything other than a melting VDE specified (i.e. neozed) fuse as the main protection on the consumer unit. a Main MCB is a very new departure and is still rare.

DJK, Dont have a problem with that! sounds good to me after all when we get on to industrial installations we do it.We have a panel board or simular with Mccb incomer straight after the meter or even BS 88's. Yes I'm with the Irish on that one good on Ya.