Badger Électricité

Sockets & their wiring - Part 2

As French socket circuits don't use the UK ring main principle (which allows the quite large rating of 32 amps) the number of outlets allowed on any one circuit is limited. There are two sizes of wiring allowed for use with sockets, which creates another level of restriction. For the moment please assume that one socket means exactly that - a single socket outlet.

Circuit wired in 1.5mm² cable: maximum number of sockets = 5.
Protection must be via a maximum 16 amp rated MCB (disjoncteur divisionnaire) only - no fuses are allowed.

Circuit wired in 2.5mm² cable: maximum number of sockets = 8.
Protection can be via a maximum 20 amp rated MCB (disjoncteur divisionnaire) or fuse of 16 amps maximum.

That's all fairly simple...... However, if you feel that only having 5 or 8 outlets on a circuit is really going to cramp your style, or create a silly number of circuits, don't panic! You are allowed to count double sockets as a single outlet, so your circuit of 5 sockets can actually be 5 doubles = 10 physical places that you can plug in to. A triple outlet counts as 2 sockets, as does a quadruple one. The reasoning for this seems to be that if you have 5 sockets strung out at 3 metre intervals there is plenty of scope for each one having a fairly hefty device pugged into it, whereas doubles are more of a convenience to plug in several small devices in the same location (TV & satellite box for example).

As no ring is involved when wiring a French socket circuit there is no need to string one socket after another in a "daisy chain" fashion. In other words, if it was physically convenient you could take the circuit from your consumer unit, daisy chain through two sockets, then into a junction box where another 3 outlets are wired out as individual runs in a star, or radial format. Just observe the rules about junction boxes, but that's a subject for another rambling.....