UK fuse box in France ?

[lafleur]

I am renovating my house and need to install a larger fuse box . My son is an electrician in the UK and can get a Legrand ( made in France ) fuse box there . Would this fuse box work and be legal in France ?

[Alcazar]

Work? Yes.

Be legal? Hmmmm, at risk of being "shot down" again by our resident Aussie know-all, I'd say possibly not.

As far as I know, all French mcbs are TWO pole, ie, cut off both live and neutral, where English fuseboxes tend to use ONE pole mcbs, which only trip the live, and all neutrals are gathered to a common connector.

I have tried to buy two pole mcbs in the UK, but they are harder to get hold of and lethally expensive over here. Better, and cheaper to buy in France.

I THINK the fuseboxes themselves, (the actual enclosures), are interchangeable, as fittings tend to be on a rail, which USED to be known as DIN, (and probably still is), but you may not save a great deal.

Quite a few places in France are now doing good deals on pre-equipped fuseboxes, complete with a type A RCD, a type AC RCD, and loads of mcbs, all prewired, just awaiting installation and connection. Works out cheaper than buying seperate, but no choice of mcb values Choice of different size enclosure though, with different numbers of mcbs.

I've seen 'em from Legrand too. All the stuff in my property will be Legrand, chosen for it's reputation.

Alcazar

[Ian Hoare<br>All the best<br>Ian<br>La Souvigne Corrèze<br>http:www.souvigne.com]

[quote]I am renovating my house and need to install a larger fuse box . My son is an electrician in the UK and can get a Legrand ( made in France ) fuse box there . Would this fuse box work and be legal in F...[/quote]

Hi,

Please don't take this as a put down, but why bother? Fuse boxes here aren't that expensive, neither are the bits inside, especially if you get more than 10 at a time! However, beware, their equivalent of our Earth leakage circuit breaker (interrupteur différentielle) is hugely expensive when sensitive and capable of switching high power. When I did my installation you had to use 300mA for most of the house, with 30mA in humid areas (bathroom and kitchen iirc). I think that's changed, with 30mA sensitivity being compulsory throughout. I have to say I don't bother to keep up as I have a tame electrician I can ask if I need the latest changes. Anyway, when I was rewiring, a 30 mA "ID" that could switch 20A was a reasonable price, but the next one up, 63A cost 5 times the price.

As Alcazar said, buying in the UK for use in France may or may not be legal. But one thing that's certain, is that it will NOT encourage the inspectors to pass the installation and it's of dubious wisdom.

 

[La Guerriere]

Yes, there does seem to be some differences in philosophy t'other side of the channel:

The basic "box" and the DIN rails do seem to be similar, but the French system is to have a 30mA RCD on all circuit groups, but no big (80 or 100 amp) two-pole incomer switch This is also downstream of the EDF disjoncteur de branchement, which limits the power (amps) going through. The individual circuit protection which are probably best as disjoncteurs equivalent to MCB's rather than fuse carriers (still legal), are normally two-pole (phase et neutre) rather than single pole as in most UK systems.

Stick with French kit: it tends to be a bit more expensive than UK, but that way you will always comply with NF specifications.

And somehow, no matter how you work it, you always seem to end up with HODS of circuits: its something to do with the limits of numbers of sockets on a circuit and the requirement for separate circuits for things like washing machines etc etc. I have a house in UK and a maison secondaire over the other side, and the French one needs about twice the number of circuits to comply with NF C 15-100

Jim La Guerriere

 

 

 

[La Guerriere]

Oh, and by the way, I'm sticking with Legrand as well. You'll find that in theory you can get ABB, AEG, Schupa etc stuff cheaper, but it doesn't seem to have the same reputation, and the one great thing about Legrand is that you can always get the bits. Everybody sells it, it's a bit like MK in the UK.

Jim Again

[Alcazar]

That was my thinking exactly........I looked long and hard at who sold what, before buying anything, and everyone seemed to have/sell Legrand.

Just out of interest, I had owned our property in France for almost two years, constantly putting off doing owt with the electrics, since they seemed to work OK, We only visited during school hols, and didn't stay long in the long summer break, having two teenaged lads who wanted campsites (with amusements, and, above all GIRLS)

However, two incidents made me sit up and take notice:

Firstly, one day, the power went off, and it wasn't the EDF disjoncteur. On checking, I found that the entire house was "protected" by a single ceramic 16A fuse which had fused.

The next day we had a minor flood in the cellar, and on bailing out, I dislodged the "earth" which was a piece of 1.5 mm sq green and yellow covererd solid copper wire, PUSHED into the end of a very rusty steel rod, also PUSHED into the ground.

It was our last day, so all was shut down, but the start of the next visit saw a new fusebox, new feeds to it (correct colours, even....our old ones were BOTH blue), connected as the French norm with neutral on the left, (our old ones were vice versa), and a proper earth rod in solid copper, complete with borne on the wall above it. The earth rod came from Screwfix, the rest bought in France.

Alcazar

[Ian Hoare<br>All the best<br>Ian<br>La Souvigne Corrèze<br>http:www.souvigne.com]

Hi,

Drifting even further OT, I was amused to read of Alcazar's mishaps which incited him to re-wire. When we moved into our own house, I was determined not to suffer too much from the lightning strikes which are so prevalent here. I happened to know of a UK company making fully professional arrestors, and so procured one for each phase of my supply. After reading up on the earth requirements for proper barrier protection, I decided NOT to do that wiring myself, but confided it, and the reading of the (highly) technical specs to the local electrician.

Poor chap, he spent three days installing the earth! First he had to drive 7 (count 'em) spikes into the dampest ground he could find which was in the middle of what was to be our Garage and then tie them together with 20mm² copper cable, which was in turn tied to a bus, from which ALL subsequent earths were run. This was to avoid current differentials in the earth.

When we came to restore the house next door, which we bought to run as a B&B, we decided to do the re-wiring ourselves this time, and as the cellar of the house was really damp, we were able to drive our spikes there, before concreting it. We were lucky in that we could get away with only four of them to reduce the impedance low enough.

As for the pre-existing fuses. I draw a veil over them, except to say that I have never seen an electrician go so white in the face as ours did after seeing the installation of the "Petit Bricoleur" frenchman who sold us the house. But I had been expecting to have to rewire, so was unfazed.