Shall I keep three phase electricity?...

[chocccie]

My farmhouse has three phase (phase three??)  electricity.  The house is to be rewired and I was on the verge of changing to single phase.

But ....  I have a shell of a building right next to it which has its electricity supply from the house.  I'm planning to convert this building, so my question is, shall I keep three phase and take the supply for the new building from the house supply (as the farmers before me did) .... will this avoid the ....oh, can remember the name... the bloke who'll come round and tell me I need twenty seven plugs in each room, seven in each bathroom, blue tooth internet conection in each bedroom, etc, etc.... before I'm allowed a new electirity supply (con..something).  (As you can see, my French is incredibly impressive) ....

...... or will I end up paying more for electricity than I'll save on plugs/wiring?  Advice very gratefully received.

I've never had so many decisions to make in my life!!!  Maybe I'll become a "you decide dear" woman!! 

 

[Nick Trollope]

CONSUEL - the people responsible for electricity "standards".

I would, in the 21st C, change to single phase because;

a) you don't need to balance loads

b) the wiring is cheaper (at least the control equipment is).

c) I believe that the supplies are cheaper

The only problem is likely to be if the "street" wiring is not capable of supplying all your power as a single phase. Because we are greedy, we wanted a 15Kw single phase supply, but the best EDF could give us is 12Kw (we had a 9Kw 3-phase supply before).

If you ask EDF to convert you to single phase, they will do it, probably without a CONSUEL inspection, IF THEY CAN. If they can't, you are stuffed. Cost is about 250E IIRC. They will change the main breaker and the meter and (probably!) connect the existing 3 phases to a single phase, they rest you will have to get an electrician in for.

Ask EDF

 

[Gyn_Paul]

Nick,

Is this charging to convert something new?

My 3-phase farm building was converted to single phase free of charge when EDF came to reconnect the supply. I admit is was some 4 or 5 years ago though!

Ditto changing the single meter to a creuse/plein (sp).

 

paul

[chocccie]

EDF were going to come and change to single phase for free (and you don't get much for free!!)... but I then wasn't sure whether I'd regret it later.

[La Guerriere]

3-phase is really at its best when the three phases are pretty well balanced and there is next to nowt in neutral. If you've got one single house plus another to convert, it's not going to easy to have a balanced system. Farms used to have 3-phase for running machinery and so forth.

The other problem with 3-phase is safety: if you get a shock off mono, it will generally give you a nasty, but you'll probably survive. A shock across phases on 3-phase will probably kill.

If you can get a new mono supply from EDF without excess cost and without invoking the dreaded CONSUEL, you've got it made.

Jim (on mono in 50 and in Oxfordshire)

[cabman]

"The other problem with 3-phase is safety: if you get a shock off mono, it will generally give you a nasty, but you'll probably survive. A shock across phases on 3-phase will probably kill."

Slightly worrying!

I'm not sure which we have, single or 3-phase.  How can I tell?

[Nick Trollope]

[quote]"The other problem with 3-phase is safety: if you get a shock off mono, it will generally give you a nasty, but you'll probably survive. A shock across phases on 3-phase will probably kill." Slightly...[/quote]

Let's not get too melodramatic!

The chances of getting a phase-phase shock off a 3 phase supply is pretty remote - certainly 410V will kill you, but so will 230V. In either case, a modern 30mA breaker will save your life...

As to how to discover what sort of supply you have look at a) your compteur (meter) or b) your bill. Either will have the number of phases marked on it.

 

[Nick Trollope]

[quote]Nick, Is this charging to convert something new? My 3-phase farm building was converted to single phase free of charge when EDF came to reconnect the supply. I admit is was some 4 or 5 years ago th...[/quote]

Probably. Or perhaps I have got "plonker" tatooed across my forehead. Either way, the lady in the EDF office in Dinan took it as a personal insult when I told I had left my chequebook at home....

[Opel Fruit<P><BR>Opel Fruit, Dept. 53<P>]

Ours was converted from 3 to single phase FOC. However, they have had to return 3 times to put right the botch jobs...and replace the cabling from the UGLY concrete post in the road to ours - they left it bare in places. And the compteur wiring and fitment is a joke.

Free = crap?

[Gyn_Paul]

Ah yes.. That's a point. When they converted the 3 to mono, they left the other two phases with dinky little connectors on the ends (a mains tester poked into the end confirmed they were indeed live) strapped with gaffer tape to the 4-wire spirally-thing which takes the strain off the supply cable. All well and good (ahm!) except that they left them pointing UPWARDS, and since the whole thing was about 10cms  further out than the tiles it was in a direct line for the rain falling off the roof. This whole thing being just to one side of the front door.

I wasn't there at the time, but can imagine it made quite a flash when sufficient flow of rain filled the connector and eventually made contact with the metal bracket and the wet wall.

We only noticed it when we came back the following month and saw this melted black thing with bare metal poking through. I took pictures of it and showed them to EDF who didn't seem to think it was particularly urgent to come and fix it, despite its being easily within reach of someone stepping out of the house.

I wasn't particularly happy about having bare metal with 230v @ God-knows-how-many-amps but there was little I could do about it except drag a couple of big tubs of plants under it to make it harder to accidentally touch it.

Still and all, it was creepy!