My First Consumer Unit

The backfilling has begun! A big yellow JCB type machine has been busy slinging mud around, generally in the direction of the hole around the chalet. One slight disappointment is the absence of any earth cable, although this is not the end of the world (it can be installed as a 2 meter spike in the ground) I was told that this would be done before the backfilling. Well some things don't change. In order to avoid any complications when or if the electrics are installed I decided I needed a consumer unit on the wall so the carpenters can use extension leads to power their power tools. So this weekend my son and I drove down to Morzine and met up with Rob and his family who are staying in their chalet for a week. Rob and I went down to the DIY shop at the edge of town and I bought this:

A consumer unit. This was priced at over 300 euros but I was charged 192 ?? I think it was Robs account that got us a discount. Sounds well worth getting an account !







So I slapped this on the wall round about where the final consumer unit will go
and wired in one of the breakers to one of the plug sockets. Then as that had taken all of 10 minutes I threaded the big three phase cable generously donated by the builders through the red ducting from the garage door to the consumer unit and wired it up.

Very nice !

I bought the power in at the top because, most likely this is a temporary fitting and I wanted to be certain that I would have enough length of cable to allow me to move the consumer unit around if I have to.




The other end of the cable comes out by the door:

The three phase cable has four cables running in it, three phase and one neutral. It is very heavy.

Now when the electrician turns up to provide a temporary electric supply he should be bright enough to connect up this cable as long as we have an earth as well. With no earth the plugs will be very dangerous to use. I bet that wont stop them!


Just to the right of this photo you can see the temporary supply box. This contains some electric stuff and will eventually sit below the power pole on the other side of the drive and connect up to the overhead wires. Then a cable will run from the white box through the other red duct and can be connected to my cable and that will give me electricity ! Simple huh !

The backfilling has started and they have connected up the sewage pipes to Robs septic tank, well I think maybe it is half mine as I paid enormous amounts to have it moved, any way the sewage appears to be connected. The drains running at the bottom of the back fill connect in to the down pipes from the gutters. I didn't know this before but it seems stupid not to really.


This is the back corner of the garage the 2 90 degree bends one will be turned up and connect to the down pipe from the roof the other will direct the flow across in front of the garage and out presumably under the road ?





It is the end of May and although, yes the backfilling has begun, nothing else has. The backfilling will take about 2 weeks to finish according to M Bergoend (the concrete guy) He was up at Robs place this week trying to persuade Rob to get his drive tarmacked. He was saying apparently that I am going to have my drive done and that Rob should get his done at the same time. Well I am not getting my drive done. That is so low on the priority list as to be off the scale.

I will have to watch what is going on other wise they will spend all my mortgage on stuff I don't want (yet)