Hello from Tallinn, Estonia, on the Baltic Sea across from Helsinki, where my wife owns a little house. She has “hired” this newbie to remodel and renew a small bathroom, so it’ll be an interesting July…
I am in the middle of reading Rex Cauldwell’s superb Wiring A House, one of the titles in Taunton’s For Pros By Pros series, revised and updated 2002. It’s so clearly written; even I can follow it so far. (THANKS, REX!)
Would there be someone on this forum who could fill me in on European wire guages? What corresponds to our 10, 12, and 14 guage in the U.S.?
And, what European wire would I use to connect an electric 100-liter water heater? (That’s a typical unit here.)
Or, is there a handy-dandy chart somewhere on the web that someone could point me to?
And, do Europeans have GFCI’s? I actually haven’t seen any while visiting friends’ baths, nor in stores. (Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places.)
Anything else I need to know, before beginning work in the 230-volt world?
Y’all don’t worry, I’m still in the planning stages. I plan to have a pro come in and check my work, and do the final hookup to the service panel. (The service panel itself was professionally installed a couple of summers ago.) And, if I don’t feel up to it, I’ll replace myself with a pro. (I know well that reading Rex ain’t the same as being Rex!)
Thanks in advance!
–George in Tallinn
Replies
A quick google indicates that GFCI's are called RCD's (residual current devices) and maybe more often part of breakers are a separate device than part of a receptacle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-current_device
Also earth leakage device in UK
http://www.epanorama.net/documents/safety/gfci.html
It would be very dangerous, in terms of having the work fail inspection, to try to covert US wire sizes and other practices to European.
First while there are some common know wire sizes/vs currents in the US (for example 15 amp #14wire, 20 amp #12) there are a large number of conditions and special cases. Those number are only starting points and sometimes a give wire size can be used on a circuit with a higher or lower current rating.
And those depends on the type of load, the type of wire insulation, the tempature of the area tha tthe wiring is in and if many wires are bundled together.
So not only does the diameter of the wire (guage) need to be translated, but also have to know all of the conditions and special cases between the 2.
Also different standard groups will start with different background and will have different emphasis of the criteria used to make their decisions. So even if everything else is same one might say a give wire is good for 40 amps and the other 35.
Also, at least in the UK there are different "earthing" (grounding) method and I think that they are going to a common on, but I don't know what that is and I don't know if one method is common across Europe.
You will be much, much better off with a European DIY book or code summary book.
We do have a few European memebers, Maybe they might have some suggestions.
I don't know how active DIY is in Europe, but I think that it is common in the UK.
A google on UK DIY Forums give a number of hits.
http://www.ukdiyforum.co.uk/
http://www.diyfaq.org.uk/
http://www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk/
http://www.diynot.com/forums//index.php?sid=37516fc962412ae643e969bbad055cee
I see that the last one has a section on Electrics Outside the UK.
Also googling european electric code and I got this.
http://forums.mikeholt.com/showthread.php?t=96565
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60364
And a google on iec 60364 diy books gave some promising hits.
For a start.
http://my.opera.com/wer.131/blog/index.dml/tag/ELECTRICAL%20SAFETY
http://www.squidoo.com/elecsafety
On that last one you will get a warning of ADULT CONTENTS. But it appers that is just for the links to adult sites.
.
A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Ya musta got curious Bill! good list of references.
Only thing I know was when in UK last month and needed to wind a couple of inductors to carry 45A (liquid cooled aerospace application), the closest thing that 'looked the right size to me' was to double up on some 1.5 mm wire they had at the shop.
Seems to work. <G>
I found this conversion chart online: http://www.simetric.co.uk/siwire_elect.htm However, as Bill said there may be more to it than just finding an equivalent size.
Definitely you need info for the country and city you're working in. I know that in the U.K. they do "ring" circuits, looping back to the breaker box. In the Netherlands, they have three phase power at home. Things obviously get very very different over there....
-- J.S.