Date   : Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:05:35 +0100
From   : philb@... (Phil Blundell)
Subject: Leccy @ Acorn World '09

On Sun, 2009-09-06 at 23:41 +0200, Rick Murray wrote:
> Phil Blundell wrote:
> 
> >> many outlets as you want, with a radial you may only have a maximum
> >> of three outlets. 
> > Where do you get that from?  I don't think anything in the regulations
> > imposes such a limit
> 
> It's 3 here...

French regs are (despite CENELEC's best efforts) still rather different
to the UK regs, so you can't infer too much about the one from the
other.  It's only in the last couple of years, for example, that the UK
regs have permitted socket-outlets to be installed in bathrooms, whereas
this has been standard practice in France basically forever.  Even now
the rules governing their placement in the UK are considerably stricter:
you still aren't allowed a socket-outlet within a 3m horizontal radius
of a bath or shower, which of course means that they are effectively
forbidden in small bathrooms.

Still, it'd be interesting to know the reason behind that restriction on
number of outlets.  Do the French regs provide any explanation?  The
only thing I can think of is that in the French system, you have 16A
outlets on 16A spurs and hence a single appliance is entitled to draw
the full rated current for the entire circuit; whereas in the UK the
maximum that you can draw from one outlet is 13A, against a nominal
circuit capacity of usually 20A.

p.