alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Jeez, that consumer unit looks nearly as bad as what was here in France, when we bought.

High up on the wall was a home made panel, plywood on battens, with what I took to be two fuses. On inverstigation, one was a 16A ceramic fuse, one was a brass barette to cut off neutral if needed. No earth. No RCD's.

I now have two Legrand consumer units, SIX RCD's, a parafoudre, (stops lightning spikes damaging the house wiring, since almost all supply is bare wires above ground), and about 50 circuit breakers...so far.

I've had to learn double pole wiring, but most of it is similar to UK.

I just wish the sockets and stuff were the same price as UK. A double socket here can cost upwards of £20, and still needs to be wired together so that both are live when you connect up. Compare with a decent MK one, hard wired, switched and all for around £4.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Do you have double pole circuit breakers over there?

Best thing since sliced bread...no more tingles from the neutral or popping the RCD when working on a isolated ciricuit but still need the power on (for lights/tools etc).

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

I think Jay is being facetious as they are the common cause of roof/ceiling fires (PSU screwed to joist or layed ontop of loft insulation overheating etc)

Not wanting to start a argument, but a RCD won't guarantee you from a nasty MR16 spot/PSU causing a fire. Certainly, you do improve the odds by having one though.

Brun

Quite a few gu10s fitted running on 240v - am I gonna die?

c_maguire

It's a miracle you are still alive. Get a lottery ticket today, I think you could be lucky.

Joking aside, here are 2 of many daft things that go on elsewhere (Dubai in this case) that make your setup exemplary.

We install an 8 colour press and I tell the company that minimum cable size for supply is 90mm 3ph and earth, but 120 would be *** cover.
Their contractor (always Pakis over there) says 120 is massive and it doesn't need more than 90. Two days later they've changed their tune and now it has to have 150, which is massive. And they've already bought it, and a separate earth cable. I tell them that's idiotic. The press cabinet is designed to take a max 120 cable but has two inputs on the clamp so for high power presses two cables of 120 can run in parallel. They won't accept this so end up cutting the ends of the 150 down to fit in the 120 clamp. When they then start cable tying the separate earth to the armoured 150 I told them to pack it in and use the 4th core as earth. They really are that stupid. And all the time they are quoting their rules to me you could see all sorts of nonsense going on. Not 5 metres away there is a 60cm single phase fan running to keep these idiots cool, with the earth wire cut and the bare ends of the live and neutral pushed directly into a wall socket.

I asked them to buy us an extension lead and they come back with a 30m lead on a drum that says 'Made to British Standards', and made in China on the label. I opened up the plug to find it was 2 core with no earth and the screw clamping the neutral was loose and the wire fell out. Two days later, being run over probably for the 50th time by some daft **** of non-white origin, there was a loud bang and it became a 15 metre lead.

The amount of melted sockets over there is not surprising. They have UK sockets but a lot of goods come with Euro plugs. They don't change them, they just force them into the UK sockets.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

GU10s are ok as long as some roof insulation numpty hasn't layed loft insulation straight on top of them causing them to overheat. They should have a insulation guard/cover to space the fitting away from insulation (aka "loft cap" amongst many other brands)