Electrical installation: 3 experts - 3 opinions

If you are a layman (you mention it several times): how come you are doing it yourself? I find that somewhat absurd – it’s not like painting or something.

Brief regards

Does one exclude the other? Is the risk of a house fire higher with 1.5mm² and 13A than with a 2.5mm² cable and 16A?

So you connect sockets to the next larger room and lighting as well?

The large living/dining/kitchen area would be protected by two circuits for the standard connections (stove and major appliances separately).

I understand what you mean, but except for "it might happen that your breaker trips" and "then you sit in the dark," I lack a real reason. That is acceptable to me and has happened about five times in my houses and apartments over the past 30 years. If it were to say the cable gets too hot and burns through the wood fiber insulation, that would be different, but as a layman, I see little cause for concern since I only use a 13A breaker.

Hello everyone,

My wooden house is basically finished and I want to handle the cable installation myself.
I will have the builder’s electrician show me where to lay the cables, which beams I’m allowed to drill through, etc., but I’ll leave the fuse box, sockets, etc. to the professionals.

It already starts with sourcing the material or rather with choosing the cables.

- Expert 1 (architect and trained electrician): One 5x1.5 mm² (with 13A fuse) supply line to each room and from there with 3x1.5 mm² cable to lights and sockets. Reason: less material, smaller fuse box, less work.

- Expert 2 (master electrician): 3x2.5 mm² cable to each room for sockets and 3x1.5 mm² to each room for lights. Let sockets run on 16A fuses. His reason: if the socket fuse trips, you still have light in the room and the load capacity of the sockets increases.

- Expert 3 (master electrician): For himself, he would take Expert 2’s option. But he could also live with Expert 1’s option, but then with a 5x2.5 mm² supply line and then 3x2.5 mm² to sockets and 3x2.5 mm² to lights.

Of course, my goal is also to reduce costs and effort.
Since I am tackling each room individually, it will be difficult to overload a 1.5 mm² line with a 13A fuse. I’d have to run a TV, a 2000W vacuum cleaner, a hairdryer, light, and radio all at the same time in one room for something to happen, right? Rather unlikely, isn't it? My father had several rooms combined in the old house and maybe once every few years a fuse would trip. Then you just went to the basement with a flashlight and flipped it back… done!

That of course large appliances have their own separate circuit or the stove then has a thicker cable is logical.

As a layman, I see no need to have multiple fuses/circuits for each room.
But are there experts here who have a different opinion?

Regards,
Tito

It was a long topic for us and everyone tells you something different. Our sockets are now connected with 1.5mm² cables (2 to 3 supply lines per room) and a 16 A fuse. This has been done for decades I would have felt better with 13 A fuses but now it is like this.

Ultimately, there are hardly any consumers that really draw "a lot" of current. The only ones I can think of are the iron and the vacuum cleaner.

Regards, Steffen