wolfi

Come on - if it's properly done, the Schuko System is better than the "ring":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_circuit
But you need experts - and a RCD is recommended!

PS and not totally OT:

When working in the garden it happened to me and my neighbour twice already that we cut through the chainsaw's cable ...
And I also had problems once with a faulty wiring - thanks to the RCD nothing happened.

fidobsa

Not sure who you are quoting there but there are drawbacks and advantages to both systems. The adoption of ring mains in UK was to save costs by using 2.5 mm cable instead of the 4 mm specified for radial circuits. This is because the current is shared between two pairs of wires in a ring rather than one pair in a radial. In practice you seem to get the worst of both worlds in Hungary, 2.5 mm cable but used on a radial circuit. When I asked an electrical merchant for 4 mm solid core wire for use in conduits I was told it was not a stock item but could be ordered.

In UK you tend to put in a ring for each floor so if you need to do any repairs or alterations you have to turn off the sockets to the whole floor and perhaps run an extension cable to a different floor. You can still have the lights on though, as they are on a different circuit. Having the lights on a different circuit also means you can run them on a lower current mcb. With the radial you can have a circuit for each room so you may be able to minimise disruption to the rest of the house when doing any electrical work. The lights will probably be on the same circuit as the sockets though, so when you isolate the power to do repairs etc you might be in darkness.

Shotgun

Come on - if it's properly done, the Schuko System is better than the "ring":

When I had my house rewired by a local electrician, I remarked to him what a stupid system this was compared to the ring and thirteen amp socket system of the UK.

He agreed with me totally, and particularly with regard to the "two handed" flimsy sockets and plugs of Europe.

It's also much simpler using twin and earth cable instead of single wires.

wolfi

Come on, people!
I know the Brits always do it differently - whether it's better or not ...
Both systems have their advantages.

Anyway a modern system on the continent often has three phases in every room and different circuits/fuses for lights and sockets.
A typical one family house has at least a dozen fuses, so if anything goes wrong and one fuse opens, most appliances and lights will continue to work.

A lot has changed in the last 60 years! I remember how it was when my parents built their house - the electrician doing it was a relative of us and told me some stuff ...
I almost decided to go into electric engineering but decided on mathematics instead because I wasn't too good with the soldering iron ...

PS:

One winter we had a storm here near Hévíz and one phase had a short circuit ...
Following Murphy's law of course the central heating was on that phase - so we started our kandalló ...
And the sockets in the living room for TV and phone too - but i put all that stuuf on an extension cord from the kitchen.
Luckily we also have a shower in the guest room running on an electric boiler - so we could use that.
It's always good if you have some kind of backup - at least once a year we have a partial or total fail of the electricity and the gas supply also is sometimes turned off for maintenance - the local restaurant once switched to a reduced menu because of that, The cook told us that without gas he couldn't do a good steak ...

fidobsa

From what I've seen, the construction of Hungarian houses does not lend itself to the use of twin & earth because there are no suspended floors, plasterboard ceilings or dry lined walls. In particular, you normally run the socket wiring under the floorboards in UK, hence the usual positioning of the sockets, just above the skirting board. In Hungary you are more likely to have parquet or ceramic tiled floors so there is no easy way to bury wiring. If you had all the wiring buried in the plasterwork it would be a big job to upgrade or renew old wiring. I was able to replace the old aluminium wires with copper be just joining new to old and pulling the out out of the conduit.

I am in the process of rewiring a bedroom in my Croatia house. This was wired with the equivalent of twin & earth but with very thin wire, probably 1.5 mm. I have channeled out the walls to take conduit. This is a lot of work but probably not as bad as it sounds, as most of the bricks are quite soft.

Razorbite101

Yes almafak,Zalakaros. We are between Zalakaros and Zalaszabar.
We have have just come back from Hungary and my first time seeing the house. It is in pretty good nick,but will need some work. The lights all work,but the sockets leave a lot to be desired,all lopsided or loose or completely hanging of the walls.We will rewire with UK style backboxes with a mixture of 13A 3 pin sockets and UK/EU universal sockets.
We also need a new boiler/central heating system.
And we will need to rework/refit the stairs(existing stairs is too steep and the threads too narrow).
As we don't intend to move to Hungary until we retire,which at the moment is approx 15 years, we can take our time with the upgrades

fidobsa

One thing worth mentioning for those who want to do a quick and easy check on the safety of their sockets or the sockets in houses you are viewing. You can buy a device called a Martindale socket tester which you plug in and it buzzes if the socket is correctly wired. There are also 3 lights used to indicate specific faults such as no earth:

Martindale Classic Check Plug Socket Tester

In Hungary you need to use it with a travel adapter and you have to plug it in both ways round because of possible live / neutral reversal.