Seen from Norway: This will not change any risk evaluations. Does something indicate the need of more power than available? If no, why add costs, and it is no reason for fixing somethings that works. If no regulations makes such demand, keep it!

dsk

When I was at highschool the GFCI's was introduced, and we could get extension cords with one. I asked a teacher on th Electro line (Education of electricians) if should buy one, and he replied:
T: Have you got electric shock?
Me: Yes
T: Did you get hurt?
Me: No!
T: Then you cope with it!

I bought one

dsk

Denmark has long traditions of ungrounded installations, just like old US buildings with 3 prong sockets, Then they discovered the need of grounded outlets, and could not go for the same standard as all the surrounding nations do. They did go for a 3 pron plug solution, and later the changed to this 3 prong solution. Both made so most other standards fit without ground. In addition to that all boxes are so small that I feel for the electricians who has so small room for everything. When that is said, the quality of the material/equipment I have seen looks good. GFCI's does protect you....

dsk

(PS we have our weak points here in Norway too DS)

That sound reasonable, I got them from a telco man, and some of the oldest exchanges here were made in Belgium.

Thank you!

No, left as is... 15a for #14 and 20a for #12

Actually I got these too, but that must be for low voltage. (I have 15 (1 broken))

It was very similar here in Ireland until the late 1990s, when the market was fully opened to competition. Before that Telecom Éireann, which was a state owned corporation from 1983 until 1999 (and before that the Department of Posts and Telegraphs aka: P&T) ran the PSTN here.

They used to be fairly locked down until the late 80s when they let consumers do their own wiring and buy their own handsets, but before that Telecom did your internal wiring, installed all the RJ11 jacks and rented you the phones and in the 1970s it was either hardwired or used big old operator-board style classic wall jacks similar to an electric guitar plug, again only ever installed by P&T and the wiring schemes were often unnecessarily over complicated.

Initially competition was limited to just carrier preselect services, and then local loop unbundling arrived, although it had fairly limited impact due to the nature of the Irish network.
We've only about 4.7 million people, but because it's quite scattered outside a handful of cities, that population is served by well over 2000 local exchanges. In reality most of them are just remote concentrators containing line cards and DSLAMs, but they were uneconomic to unbundle. So, you ended up with unbundled services only at exchanges with perhaps 5000 lines. A lot of the smaller exchanges would have as few as a hundred lines and they weren't all rural either. Telecom tended to use a lot of distributed switching in the PSTN/ISDN days, even in urban areas. Often you'd have say a housing development or business park served by a small cabinet-based RSU linked to the local Ericsson AXE or Alcatel E10 switch by fibre.

Eventually the regulator had to intervene in the market and force down the wholesale access charges to ensure competition actually functioned.

We always had a large uptake of cable television, going way back to the 1960s, so the cable networks in the 2000s began to really see a huge upsurge in use for broadband and VoIP. They actually have more than 50% of broadband and voice in a lot of urban areas at this stage.

Eircom then rolled out VDSL cabinets which were capable of 100mbit/s using vectoring and those are providing service for a whole range of ISPs and TV providers and so on as a wholesale access network.

Eircom then became Eir and their wholesale/access division was rebranded Open eir. They've begun to rollout a lot of FTTH, including in rural areas.

A huge % of Eir's fixed services are 100Mbit/s VDSL at present.

Then along came Siro - a joint venture between ESB (The Electricity Supply Board) and Vodafone. They're building out a competing wholesale fibre access network that's using the ESB's power line infrastructure and ducts to carry fibres into homes. That's also available to a whole raft of ISPs - Vodafone, Sky, Digiweb, tons of local ones etc much like eir.

So, it's gone pretty seriously competitive now, with 3 competing access networks i.e. two direct FTTH networks and Cable TV networks.

The two FTTH networks sell 1Gbit/s services but can support 10Gbit/s (and has been demoed and trialled).
While Virgin Media's cable networks currently sell services to residential users that top out at 500mbit/s and up to a 1Gbit/s for business users. They're likely to also start selling 1Gbit/s for residential as they're competing with the two FTTH nets.

Virgin Media (Liberty Global) doesn't have to allow wholesale access on its cable network (as yet). So it's the only single-ISP access network.

There's also a 4th access network being rolled out by a contractor paid by the state. Again a whole sale network, so you won't buy service straight form them and it's aimed at reaching the few hundred thousand rural homes that aren't commercially viable for FTTH from any of the mainstream players.

It's become pretty aggressively competitive and the speeds are going way up, including in rural areas which is great. We'd a really dismal period in the early 2000s when Eircom dominated the whole thing and was dragging its feet on speeds and competition was still quite stifled.

As for the PSTN / POTS network - it's officially on sunset at this stage. If you order any new services from any of the phone companies, unless you've some very specific reason, they'll provide you with an access gateway that contains a VoIP ATA for phone. The TDM networks are being wound down quite rapidly.

A lot of the old Eir core network seems to have moved to VoIP at major node level with the existing AXE and E10 local switches really acting as access nodes for that and new subscriptions or people upgrading packages typically are moved by their ISP to a VoIP over broadband product unless they specifically object and demand an exchange-based dial tone or they're in a really remote area without fibre to home or VDSL.

Also the number of landline users of any tech POTS or VoIP is plummeting anyway as mobile phones are just absolutely dominant. I have a landline that came bundled with my internet using VoIP and I honestly don't even know the number. There isn't even any handset connected to it and I don't think I'm unusual.

I got a number of these. Could it be from a telephone exchange or???

dsk

I agree. A fridge or A/C that is tripping the GFCI usually has in internal short in the compressor. I have proved this several times using a current probe on a scope and an old style 3 prong adapter with the pigtail. (actually an accessory for my Ecos tester)
There is a thunderstorm going on inside that compressor and if you cut into the freon line, the gas coming out would smell like an electrical fire and the oil would look burnt. If nothing else, they are wasting electricity but if there was any kind of fault in the EGC, you have a hot case or grounding conductors. That is not a good thing in a commercial kitchen where things are frequently wet.

If this was controlling a receptacle where the installer has no control over what the user will plug in I with agree you but with fixed loads the switch is sized to the load. The answer is in the nameplate rating of the furnace.




That is spelled out in 404.14(F)

Some years ago I got this adapter. Countries with Schuco standard outlets has this to prvent ungrounded devices to be plugged in where grounding is imprtant, as in bathrooms etc. The scaring thing is that someone suggests to plug in that one on the washing machine cord to prevent the GFCI to trip.

They've been introduced in the recent update to wiring rules in Ireland too IS 10101 (a rather heafty 700 page tome or digital download!)

There was also a change to the wiring regulations being controlled by the NSAI (National Standards Authority of Ireland), whereas previously it had been a managed by a body called the ETCI (Electrotechnical Council of Ireland) which has been scrapped. Also the CRU (Commission for Regulation of Utilities) has taken over parts of the inspection regimes etc.

AFDDs are recommended for all circuits where there is a particular risk. Now required in all sleeping accommodation and in areas with things like fuel storage, wooden structures, irreplaceable valuables etc etc.

It also extended RCDs to all circuits in residential type premises. Lighting circuits (other than outdoors and in bathrooms) had not required RCDs in previous rules.

AC Type RCDs are banned in residential and similar work.

We've also banned plastic distribution boards (consumer units). From this point on they must be made from materials that are completely non-combustable, which in practical reality means metal boards from now on in residential and small business etc.

Other than that the major updates are a requirement for cables to be CPR compliant, with a minimum rating of Class Dca s1b,d2,a2 as per EN 50575

There's some extra specifications for residential / small commercial electric vehicle charge points.

Also inspection and testing processes have been completely redesigned to bring them into full alignment with CENELEC standards and residential installation sign off must now also include checks for compliance with the Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) Directive 2014/30/EU.

Rings were banned in kitchen / laundry rooms in previous revisions back in 2008, so now the minimum requirement for a kitchen is two 20amp radials (with a recommendation of at least 10 sockets). Obviously this does not include fixed appliances etc.

The old British-type "Twin and earth" is no longer allowed either (previous updates to the wiring regs). The earth conductor must be the same size as the live and neutral conductor and must be separately insulated.

The other recent changes (going back a few years at this stage, I haven't posted here in a while!) has been the banning of DIY work other than like-for-like replacement of fittings and minor additions to existing circuits. Anything involving the distribution board is now off-limits, other than to licensed Electrical Contractors and you can be charged in court for doing so. There have been a few €3000 fines and one 6 month prison sentence so far, but this was for someone falsely portraying themselves as an EC and leaving a system in a highly dangerous situation, but at least the regulations are tightening.

Another bit of trivia: the moulded shells of the German FPE MCBs carry an MPAD mark, which was essentially a trading standards system for cast parts, specifying the manufacturer and material type. The material is given as Type 31, which is plain old bakelite. The manufacturer code is TM, which translates as "Kunststoff- und Metallwarenfabrik Johann Kuehnl & Co. K.G., Karlsruhe i.B." (Plastic and Metal Products Johann Kuehnl). The manufacturer code isn't included in any of the lists that float around on the web so that took some digging and asking around.

I complained to my AHJ that all the 'crete guys think i'm some wingnut, his reply was that they had all decided to make contact with said trade . I'd say that was the 'extra mile'.....~S~

gfretwell

Where does a plastic box come into it? They are not permitted in any run of metal raceway unless the box is fitted with a listed means of assuring continuity between its KOs, if fitted with KOs. Given the code language I wouldn't think that a field installed bond could satisfy the prohibition against the use of Nonmetallic boxes for metal raceways.

314.3 Nonmetallic Boxes. Nonmetallic boxes shall be permitted only with open wiring on insulators, concealed knob and-tube wiring, cabled wiring methods with entirely nonmetallic sheaths, flexible cords, and nonmetallic raceways.
Exception No. 1: Where internal bonding means are provided between all entries, nonmetallic boxes shall be permitted to be used with metal raceways or metal-armored cables.
Exception No. 2: Where integral bonding means with a provision for attaching an equipment bonding jumper inside the box are provided between all threaded entries in nonmetallic boxes listed for the purpose, nonmetallic boxes shall be permitted to be used with metal raceways or metal armored cables.

Since Isolated Ground Receptacles do not have the grounding port of the receptacle bonded to the mounting yoke I don't see what a plastic box would achieve either.

--
Tom Horne

Just a quick look gives me the idea that your proposal should be something like

Add the following text to 300.10 "The use of metallic female couplings shall be permitted to join two connectors of differing wiring methods".

Then give your substantiation.

Trumpy:

No, you are not the last one. After reading the above comments, I opened calc in my phone!!

Surprise when the grandkids ask...."you didn't know that"

I did the seeds. I wouldn't have done it if I really understood the problems. I seem to be OK now.