France in Focus

Seventeen years ago I bought 3 Ha of land with a wreck of a house which required virtualy everything renewing/rebuilding. There was no internet except a feeble dial up service so no help available there regarding regs etc & my french was rubbish so common sense & lots of pictures were my guide.
None the less I rewired & replumbed the place , amongst other building things, & checking over the years, when the information available in the web evolved along with my french, I seem to have got most things pretty much correct as the regs demanded at that time..
Recenty I had doubts as to the polarity of several sockets so I checked every one of a almost 60 , including doubles, sockets in the house & barn & found that probably one third were wired with live & neutral transposed.
I was helped by a mate to second fix the sockets & when I began the process of correcting the problem I found it appeared that my mate, although wiring to the correct L & N markings on the sockets, had not adhered to the convention of L on right when viewing the face of the socket.
On checking I found that every socket I had bought (in my innocence) from Brico Depot was incorrectly marked with L & N transposed whereas Legrand stuff I had also bought was correct & of course much better quality.
Other than a PITA it's no big deal to swop over 2 wires on the 'duff' sockets.
Too late to complain to but worth checking if anyone buys from the likes of Brico depot.

Polarity of French sockets; anything in the French electrical code NF C 15-100? No, they mention wiring colors, wire gauge and maximum cable distance (voltage drop). Inside the tableau électrique it's another story:
le neutre est branché à gauche et la phase à droite. Following also the inscriptions on the disjoncteurs and on the secondary side of the main switch, the disjoncteur de branchement. In the case of phase reversal by the EDF/ENEDIS you have a problem with the old single pole types ( the first two): the neutral wiring will still carry the full mains voltage after switching off the circuit it is supposed to protect.

So looking at it from a regulatory point of view there is no formal obligation to adhere to the left (neutre) - right (phase) arrangement for sockets. It is a convention, good practice and indeed much neater.

Phase reversal and sockets, dangerous? This would be a major problem for about eighty percent of the EU population, countries with the Schuko sockets. A probability of 50 % to insert a plug the wrong way, a polarity disrespect by design? Haven't seen a caveat in the tv manuals of Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, JVC, Philips etc. IMO only three potential problem areas. For those who still listen to their fifties/sixties radios equipped with the (in)famous U tubes, no transformer needed, chassis can be live (plastic cabinet). Two, for those using an american step-down transformer in Schuko countries and to conclude case three les chaudières à ionisation (ignition phase sensitive).

And even if you do your best to wire every socket conforming to the left/right convention, another practical question on the horizon: all those universal euro cables, so many producers around, do they follow the different Schuko and French prise électrique conventions? I'm afraid not.

About double sockets, what about this phase reversal, produced by the well respected monsieur Legrand himself, a law-abiding person: in the old Neptune series, frontside and backside.

Thanks for that reasurance RA. I thought it was OK but I'll still change 'em over in due course so it's all the same.
Presumably the dejonteurs, branchement & differential still function with reversed polarity on the sockets.
I've tried a VT 35 tester on the 'wrong' sockets but it'll only tell me I've got reversed polarity & only lets me check the ID if I connect it via a 2 way adaptor which has one outlet reversed which brings things back to normal as far as the tester knows.
All ID's trip between 20-25 mA.

@ L Austin France, the French name interrupteur différenbtiel is not too bad, much better than the old elcb terminology. They only react to an unbalance in currents, don't need a connection to earth. Unless it is you.....Checking goes with a built in resistor., creating a fault current of 2.5 * I nominal (30 mA). Only a quick and dirty check, to keep the mechanism inside moving.