ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Who needs circuit breakers anyway?!

Austrian breaker handles are always color coded. With the old cartridge fuses green was 6 A (not available any more), 10 A red (also no breakers) 13 A beige (breakers only) 16 A grey, 20 A blue, 25 A yellow.

Your Austrian color code sounds very similar to that listed for fuses in Ireland:
green=6A, red=10A, brown=16A, blue=20A, black=35A.

As somebody once said, the nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!

Wylex has stopped color-coding the handles on the breakers pictured now, but they still do it on their "standard range."

By the way, Ireland has now started using the "Schuko" plug in addition to the British 13A type.



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 08-01-2002).]

Definitely interesting!

I just came back from a one week Italy vacation where I noticed that all the light switches were mounted down = on.

That's the same as light switches here: down=on.

As you can see from the pics above, circuit breakers are up=on. Main switches have changed over the years: The pre-war side-handle types were up=on. Then the post-WWII consumer units went to down=on. Now with the use of circuit-breakers becoming more common, the main switches are changing back to up=on, as above.

I find the American approach of up=on for everything far more logical. And although I grew up with light switches being down for on, having gotten used to it the other way in the States, I prefer up=on.

I stumbled across an old posting from Paul:


Tell me more! Are the Irish switching to radials? If so, are they using 16 or 20A? Why Schuko? When?

Wish I could find some more information on this, but I'm afraid I don't have any more details.

I just saw a passing reference that the Schuko plug and receptacle are now being used. I assume that means that they're wiring them on 16 or 20A radial branches. (I sure hope people aren't just putting them on existing 30A rings!)

I don't know when these were introduced into Irish standards, or indeed if they are not officially introduced but just being used by common practice. I was in Ireland in 1998, and don't recall seeing any in use then.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 09-23-2002).]

I found a picture of a Danish panel. Who needs breakers when you can have fuses on a DIN rail?




[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 10-17-2002).]

Wow C-H...

That is one cool panelboard!

The only thing similar in the US are these, and they are sold for OEM use.
http://www.boltswitch.com/O-1374.pdf http://www.boltswitch.com/O-1352.pdf http://www.boltswitch.com/O-1473.pdf

Interesting photo, C-H.

I'm trying to work out the color coding used in Denmark. As per the common Euro-standard, I'm assuming that the light blue is neutral, and you can just see the green/yellow earth wires at the back (top left).

From the main cables entering the GFI (bottom right) I would say the phases are black, red, gray, although from one of the switch/fuse blocks it could be black, red, white.

It gets a bit confusing after that, as one block seems to have white for all three phases, and one even seems to be using green as a phase! I notice the cables linking the GFI to each fuse block seem to be black for everything, too!

I blew up the pic to twice the size and saw the following: At the upper left block there's a green, a red and a yellow wire. The next block has three blacks. In the background there are brown wires lurking around.
The connectors look like wirenuts with screws.
Strange mix!