French fuse box urgent help needed

[alicat]

Calling @gavroche or anyone with experience of living in France

I am staying in a flat in France that belongs to a young colleague who is away on holiday.

I came back from an evening out to find no power in the flat. I found the fusebox and flipped the switch the other way. Still no electricity.

I have had a look and there seem to be fuses in all the individual boxes except the boiler. Is it a case of isolating all the switches one by one, finding the offending fuse and replacing that one when I can get one in the morning.

I am reluctant to bother my colleague since she is enjoying a well-deserved break and probably is not very clued up on that sort of thing....

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[alicat]

Fastest fix on record. I decided to flip the switch again so it showed red not green. Everything seems to be working!

 

[Beebo]

Fastest fix on record. I decided to flip the switch again so it showed red not green. Everything seems to be working!

That was what I was going to say.

 

[alicat]

That was what I was going to say.

I never envisaged the French would have a system where red is on and green is off. Or maybe I should have done. How lucky we are to have circuit breakers. It is so much easier to see what is wrong. The trouble with things like that is that after a while I can't remember what I have tried and what I haven't.

I am now enjoying the wonders of electric light and a celebratory beer.

 

[ColinJ]

How lucky we are to have circuit breakers. It is so much easier to see what is wrong.

Not in the house that my sister is now renting! I got a call from her saying that her power had gone off after a problem with her iron. I told her to unplug the iron and then reset the circuit breaker. She did that but still nothing worked.

That was about all I could do over the phone so she was going to get an electrician in to look at it but her ex-husband called round to pick up my nephew and discovered that there was a hidden circuit breaker feeding power to the other circuit breakers! He reset that one too and the power came back on ...

 

[perplexed]

We go to France quite a lot, and no break in a village cottage would be complete without a power cut. The owners probably think I'm a bit weird as one of the first things I ask is 'where's the fuse box', and I'm never without a torch.

 

[subaqua]

I never envisaged the French would have a system where red is on and green is off. Or maybe I should have done. How lucky we are to have circuit breakers. It is so much easier to see what is wrong. The trouble with things like that is that after a while I can't remember what I have tried and what I haven't.

I am now enjoying the wonders of electric light and a celebratory beer.

its the same in UK

red is ON - red for Danger

 

[alicat]

Oh, that makes sense. Just glad I got the power back on before I got terminally depressed, the food in the freezer started to defrost and the batteries on mobiles and laptop ran out.

We go to France quite a lot, and no break in a village cottage would be complete without a power cut. The owners probably think I'm a bit weird as one of the first things I ask is 'where's the fuse box', and I'm never without a torch.

Actually we seem to have a lot of power cuts in Staffs too. One memorable one was during the final sprint of a crucial stage of the TdF a couple of years ago.

 

[gavroche]

Glad you are sorted. I can put my French brain back in hibernation until needed again.