Hitler's Bunker

Now, this is a little behind what's actually happening, but that's because I haven't been able to work on the blog for a while.

When last I left any mention of what was going on, work had reached the stage where we had just had our first wood delivery. A massive amount of interest that generated too, I must say. Mind you, I can't blame you. How interesting can ten cubic metres of chopped wood be?

Our electrical cabinet before the work was completed.
Notice there isn't a fuse in sight - nor is there an earth -
just to make things really interesting

Well, shortly thereafter, we got the electrics finished. We didn't think that constituted much to see as far as that was concerned, since I'd already posted pictures of the electrical dreadlocks that spewed from various places around the house.

I can't tell you how good having electrics again felt; being able to plug into sockets and actually have things hanging off the end working.

What we didn't bank on, was the difference in wiring protocols in France, meaning that the nice, simple wiring conventions of England went out of the window, and asking for surface mount to save money in this case, resulted in something totally unexpected.

Here's a list of the typical fuse board in an English two to three bed house:

• GF Lights
• GF Sockets
• Cooker - if it's not gas
• 1st Floor Lights
• 1st Floor sockets
• Immersion Heater - if there isn't an oil or gas boiler.

That's chickenfeed as far as ours is concerned.

Our consumer unit - one or two more trip
switches than a conventional English unit 

You see, in England, one cable effectively feeds all the power sockets on one floor and one for each of any others. They're called ring mains. The same principal goes for the lights and apart from high-drain items, such as the cooker - unless it's gas and the immersion heater for the hot water - unless there's a gas or oil boiler, which would both have their own trip switches or fuses, the electrics are reasonably simple in an ordinary house. The house we moved from had just six trip switches, the one before even fewer.

Obviously, there are more complicated systems out there, but the above list represents a pretty much run-of-the-mill set-up and the simplicity is because almost every appliance from a radio to a hairdryer; TV to food processor has its own fuse in its plug. Each appliance is rated according to its power usage and an appropriate fuse fitted in its plug to protect itself and other appliances on each ring main.

At least, that's the theory. It doesn't always work in practice as my circular saw was fitted with a 13 Amp fuse even though it was rated at just over five. Well there are only three fuses out there aren't there - three, five and thirteen ...

Here in France, there are no fuses in the plugs, but the trips in the 'fuse' box are what look after the household electrics.

Instead of the ring circuit used n Britain, smaller 'spurs' are used. Each of these is usually rated at 16 amps for sockets - higher for electric cookers or water heaters, which gives a total of about 3500 watts per spur and there can only be a maximum of eight sockets on each spur, depending upon their usage.

The above means that there are many more trip switches than in the English 'fuse' box or consumer unit - many times more.

I suppose that's why it's so damnably expensive and why it looked for a while like our electrical cabinet had sprouted dreads.

Our wiring now is a far cry from what was originally there when we bought the house. Were were junction box access points all round the house, but there was no clues left as to where they went, what they fed or what.

To give you a clue as to how tangled our original wiring was, we asked the boys to replace the electrics in the garage. It was duly wired in and tested, but then what was thought to be redundant wiring was removed from the opposite side of the kitchen and the garage went dead. The boys wouldn't have minded so much, but the wiring they disconnected was going to the front of the house, not the back where the garage was - or so they thought.

All we know is that there was a dearth of sockets that were at all useful in the house until we had this done and it meant that out of all the rooms in the house, only three had at least one socket. Now we have protected and earthed sockets, lights and all the other electrical niceties that a house should have.

Oh and if you're wondering why this blog entry was entitled Hitler's Bunker, it's because during its conversion to a butcher's shop, a fair amount of reinforced concrete was used, which would have made it impossible to chase all the wiring into the walls anyway and some of the switches have ended up in some somewhat unusual places.

We're calling it character!

Next, the plumbing ...