It is quite common in older French property to find that the electrical system is supplied in 3 phase, as opposed to single phase.  

When called to quote on electrical work on french properties by new proprietors, I am often asked what is the difference and what does it mean? And more often than not, there are numerous common problems such as when the kettle is switched on the power cuts off or when the hoover is used the power trips. This is because small electrical items can draw a large amount of current. E.g. A kettle can draw around 8amps for the period that it is boiling.

A 3 phase system can work well if you have and use a small amount of electrical appliances or a large incoming supply. With single phase these problems are less likely.  3 phase is a balance of loads. 

For example, using an incoming supply of 60amps [60A], the supply is split into 3 x 20A. Old houses in France usually have outbuildings so having 3 phase means that the supply might be split as follows: 20A for the house, 20A for the barn and 20A for the workshop. Bearing in mind that many years ago there would have been less use of electrical items such as kettles, hoovers, radios, tumble dryers, washing machines. Therefore, very little tripping of power in the kitchen. If you have purchased a property today with 3 phase and plug in all of your appliances – you are very quickly going to over draw on the 20A. E.g. a washing machine may draw 10amps, your freezer may draw 4-6 amps, then when you put the kettle on, another 8amps could be drawn and click you exceed the 20A and the power trips out. With single phase you have 60A feeding the house, you have one large supply coming directly to your dwelling. So your appliances can be switched on with no problem of overload.

I have recently worked on a property which had to be reverted back to 3 phase purely because there was not enough power to the house. I.e. it needed 90Amps minimum which could not be provided by single phase. Therefore I have had to very carefully balance all 3 phases at 30A.
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No phase can be exceeded, so a qualified electrician has to carefully balance the phases so that should all items be working at one time the current drawn will not overload any of the phases.   

I was asked to rewire a small house at Melleran in August. The current owners are looking to sell the property and were aware that the old installation was outdated and impractical. It was agreed with the customer that the new system would be installed in surface mounted trunking due to timescale and practicalities.

I installed new cabling to service sockets, switches and lighting to 3 bedrooms, bathroom, toilet, kitchen and lounge and attached barn.

While the installation was in progress, the customer asked if 3 electric radiators could be added. Of course! It was easy to add the circuits at this stage and I installed wiring for future additions. The fuseboard was then fitted and connected and the installation tested.

The install was completed in the 2 weeks as promised and I wish them all the very best with their future sale.
To see what the electrical diagnostic entails visit here

Testimonial:  Paul rewired our house promptly, efficiently, was flexible and highly professional at short notice. He arrived on time every day and worked very hard and was obviously very knowledgeable and experienced. I enjoyed having him around and liked his sense of humour and thoughtfulness. I used him by recommendation from another highly satisfied customer and would recommend him to anyone myself. I will use him again and feel confident in doing so.

Gite owners recently required my services for their workshop area. Having had a new roof on a large barn area, it was perfect timing to address some electrical issues and upgrade to accommodate the busy 'laundry' area and a newly planned games room. The existing wiring was not suitable for the power required.

I started by installing a new feed cable from the main incoming supply at the main house to connect to a newly installed fuse board in the workshop. From the new fuseboard wiring, sockets and switches were installed as per French normes to accommodate the heavy usage of appliances attributed to gite ownership.

A satellite feed was installed on the first floor games room, and the customer had also chosen some nice large domed lights to be installed there too.

This was a great project to work on, one where the customer had the foresight to make better use of space within the barn and ensure that functioning areas were compliant.  

Electricien Anglais En France has worked with a number of gite owners to ensure that accommodation and working areas are compliant. 

Over recent months, we have been fortunate to be working with house buyers at a variety of stages of their house purchase process.  Which means we have seen a fair number of electrical diagnostic reports.  It is important for both the seller and the purchaser to understand what is contained within the electrical report, as depending on the report, could have an affect on the purchase. 

When selling a property in France it is now a requirement to have a variety of compulsory and advisory diagnostics reports available at the sellers cost.  One of these being an electrical safety inspection or 'État de l'installation intérieure d'électricité'.  This is carried out by an independent survey/diagnostic  technician.  If your home is over 15 years old then an electrical report will be required.

All diagnostics/reports are carried out by independent survey technicians with appropriate certificate of competence through a certification body.   The technician will carry out a visual inspection as to the safety of your electrical installation, for which there are 6 key points as follows:

• Presence of a main RCD/Isolator. There MUST be a main switch, which can turn off the complete electrical installation
• Main RCDs designed for earth protection.
• MCBs designed to protect the cables that supply power to the individual circuits which are correctly designated for the load of the circuit.
• Bonding, earths which are bonded to pipe work in bathrooms and showers where presence of water increases the chance of electric shock.
• Highlight equipment that is out of date and unsuitable for use or risk of direct contact [exposed cables]
  
• Mechanical protection; missing joint box lids, trunking covers and worn cables.
  

The electrical report remains valid for 3 years and must be included to the sale of agreement or the deed of sale.

From a sellers point of view, and is dependent on the nature of the report, is to consider any remedial action before committing to a sale. Areas to consider would be any English wiring or installation of English switches or sockets, as this are against French norms [NF]. Please do bear in mind that the report is just visual. A diagnostic technician will only be carrying out a visual inspection, they cannot see and won't see any hidden error or faults. This would be a good time to consult with an competent and qualified electrician to assess and price what needs to be done to remedy any identified issues in the electrical safety inspection report along with any other recommendations.  These costings and those of findings from other diagnostic reports may have an impact on any negotiation of your house sale.

When purchasing a new cooker in France, there are some things to consider.   Below are 2 very important points to be aware of to avoid unscheduled expenses and disappointment.

If you have previously had a gas oven and want to change to electric, you  must make sure you have a dedicated circuit for the electric cooker connection.  An electric cooker can draw high current, especially when cooking those Christmas dinners.  Many newer cookers have 2 large oven compartments,  grills and hob.  If all of these are being used together  a lot of current will be drawn.  I recently dealt with a duel fuel cooker which was gas hob and electric oven.  This could still draw a maximum of 7.7kW or just under 35A!  The feed must be a dedicated circuit feed via 6mm thick 3 core cable from a 32A fuse at the fuseboard.  It is also of upmost importance that this circuit is earthed.

Another important consideration is do you have 3 phase or single phase supply?  If you have a 3 phase electrical supply, be careful when buying your new electric cooker.  Not all cookers can be wired into a 3 phase system.  If in doubt, ask the retailer.  If the paperwork says 'double pole connection' this means single phase. With 4 pole being 3 phase.  If you connect a single phase cooker to a 3 phase system, you will most certainly overload that phase and potentially be subject to power cuts.

If in doubt, do seek the advice from a qualified electrician. 

I had been asked to carry out some work to replace ceiling and wall lighting in a lounge as the customer wanted to update the light fittings. 

On commencement of works I had noticed that there were 2 fuseboards.   While 2 fuseboards are not a rarity, as you would have them supplying different areas i.e. main house and outbuildings [all separate dwellings, independent of main house must have their own fuseboard].  On this occasion it was most unusual as the fuseboards were placed next door to each other and was to purely allow for increased usage in the house. In this instance, the better option would have been to increase the size of the fuseboard and have everything on one board.  

The old fuseboard was not RCD protected and the new fuseboard had been fitted with RCD protection. My findings had identified that the circuits had not been protected by the main RCD on the new board and had in fact been wired incorrectly.  The incorrect wiring meant that the mcbs [miniature circuit breakers] would not trip in the event of a fault on the circuit. I advised client that this would have to be rectified.  While the work was carried out by a 'qualified' electrician, I was very surprised to see this kind of incompetence.

So before I began changing the light fittings, I installed an RCD and rectified the incorrect wiring on the old fuseboard.  I then correctly rewired the newer fuseboard so that the mcbs were protecting the circuits.

With the boards now wired correctly the RCDs began picking up the earth faults and were tripping respectively. This was traced back to a faulty old double socket which was disconnected.

If I could advise anyone it would be:

• Please make sure that your work is carried out by a qualified, competent electrician. 

• Make sure to check the siret number. This can be done online and will show you exactly what the person is qualified to do.

• If you cannot check the siret, ask for the carte professionnelle. This has all the  information on the back of the card including work qualified to carry out.
  

It is not uncommon to find that you have 3 phase electrical supply in a French property, particularly in farms or buildings with industrial use, where you will need high current.  Most new installations [new builds and rewires] are now supplied in single phase. 

3 phase means that you have 3 live terminals and 1 neutral at the metre supplied by EDF and the fuseboard is a lot bigger. The supply comes in normally at a higher kVA i.e.  15kVA. This actually means that there are 3 lots of 5kVA [25A] on each phase and the current drawn must be balanced on each phase as overloading on one phase will potentially cause nuisance tripping.  

An electric cooker/hob, for example, draws a high current and is available for either 3 phase or single phase.  If your home is 3 phase then your cooker/hob needs to be installed as 3 phase.  Bearing in mind that a cooker/hob is 32A, the installation of the cooker/hob means that the current drawn will need to be balanced across all phases.

Unlike 3 phase, where there is a need to balance the load, with a single phase supply circuits can be freely assigned, ideally by a qualified electrician.  Please bear in mind that you need the right kVA for the size of your dwelling. The most common are:  6kVA,  9kVA,  12kVA and 15kVA and can only be determined and set by EDF.  The unit price of your electricity is affected by the amount of kVA. 

For example when we moved into our rented property it was set at 12kVA and not taking advantage of tariff bleu creuse for the hot water tank.  There are 2 of us at the dwelling with a 200litre water tank, we have very few high drawing appliances  and no electric heating. We asked EDF to reduce the kVA to 6 and apply tariff bleu creuse to heat the hot water tank over night.  Our trimester bills are extremely manageable.

To demonstrate an example of cost differences across kVA, the image below was sourced from www.frenchproperty.com and shows the annual standing charges, base rate and night tariffs of each kVA. Figures shown are as of July 2012. 

This does not necessarily mean that this will apply to all customers, as is dependent on the size of your house, your electricity tariff [of which there are many], your appliances, size of water tank, if you have electric heating and the general state of your electrical installation. 

We hope this provides some clarity about 3 and single phase and if you have any questions, you know where we are. 

I  have seen many a property with relatively good electrics in them.  Then there are others, which are pardon the pun, literally quite shocking.

It seems that many an expat has purchased a property and applied their own knowledge to electrical installation. Which I believe and agree is fine up to a point, and that point is when you start to overload the supply that already comes into your home.  Or the work has been carried out by an 'incompetent' electrician.  Electrical wiring is completely different to the UK, my extensive training and understanding of electrics along with knowledge of French wiring puts me in a good position when it comes to making your French home safe.

This is where the knowledge of a qualified and competent electrician pays dividends as we understand the load of appliances and the impact that they have on the various circuits around your home. We know  where additions to existing circuits can be made and where new circuits need installing.   

I was recently asked to visit a house to look at their electrics.  A visual inspection and testing revealed that certain aspects of the present electrical work were fine, particularly those carried out by an electrician. The aspects which were not fine, were those carried out by the current or previous homeowner.  The diagnostic report verified these findings. The homeowner was somewhat surprised as they never had an issue with the electrics over the years.  To be fair, a reasonable amount of knowledge was applied to the internal work that was carried out, but much of the property was not protected by earth, so some fundamental aspects were completely missing from the home.  My philosophy is that if you are selling a home, it needs to be a safe home that you are selling.

I have also seen homes with UK boxes, boards and sockets, which are an absolute no no.  Outdoor circuits wired with incorrect cabling and fittings and cookers not on a designated circuit.  All these add up to frequent tripping within the circuits due to overload, under sized or damaged cables.  Just because you can turn the power on doesn't mean that the journey from supply to source is the right.

The basis of my business is to make your home electrically safe.  Research suggests that many fires in domestic homes across France are attributed to electrical faults.  Even some of France's beautiful properties have been destroyed by fire due to electrical fault, La Rochelle earlier this year, for example. 

I am in favour of diagnostic reports. They outline the basics but they do have 6 key areas of safety that need to be adhered to when selling your property.  

If you are in any doubt about the condition of your electrics be it frequent tripping, power outlets or lighting not working or no external earth connection  always refer to a  qualified electrician such as ourselves, we will be only too pleased to help. We are fully equipped to conduct relevant testing before recommendation and repair.