Badger Électricité

Don't hide away....

If I had to name one aspect of the domestic wiring regulations in France that underlines their common sense it is the attitude to junctions/joints in any circuit.

The rule is incredibly simple; any joint in any cable or wire must be accessible.

In other words there is no opportunity for a cable to change size or colour or split without it being obvious by opening a junction box ("bôite de derivation"). Unlike the UK you cannot hide a juncton box under a floor, sealed away beneath boards, carpets or laminate flooring. This regulation explains why you find so many flush fitting junction boxes on the market, to be buried in solid walls or plasterboard ceilings & partitions. On the surface these are just a plain white plate, which can be painted to suit. As a box has to be accessible it is forbidden to paper over them (but you could stick wallpaper to the lid to match in, as long as the screws are left exposed). This all means that anyone investigating a fault doesn't have to be responsible for damaging any precious decor. It is allowable to have junctions behind cupboards/kitchen units etc., as long as their prescence in indicated somehow. Access can then be via a removable panel, or removal of the shelf, picture or whatever, that is concealing the box.

A junction box is not limited to being used by just one circuit. If circumstances create the neccessity it is perfectly normal to have a large junction box containing links/pairing/switch loops for sockets, lighting circuits, heaters & any other circuit of the same voltage. This gives rise to the large "bôite de combles" that you might have seen on the shelves of a brico store; these are intended to be fitted in voids (combles) as a hub for anything that can be serviced from that void. The result of such a box with multiple flexible conduits radiating out from it is sometimes referred to as a "pieuvre" - an octopus!

In order to help future fault finding of, or alterations to, wiring, it is imperitive to lable the circuits within a junction box (or anywhere else for that matter). Failure to do so will could result in the poor soul who has to deal with the system at a later date hunting you down & doing unspeakable things by way of revenge. You have been warned.