Taiwan electrical (un)safety part deux - insider action!

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
1

You may remember my thread ranting about Taiwan’s complete disregard for electrical safety. There have been two interesting developments: firstly, the first floor circuit in my house has blown up exactly as I predicted 6 months ago and secondly, I had a very interesting chat with a local electrician.

This house is no more than three years old and is not cheap given the location. When I first moved in I was apoplectic about the wiring conditions but received the usual Taiwanese landlord response: ‘it’s fine, no problem, it’s completely safe to install interior lights outdoors in typhoon-prone areas… WAIT A MINUTE… ARE YOUR SHOES INSIDE THE HOUSE? ARE YOU MAD, DON’T YOU REALISE THE GHOSTS WILL LIVE IN THEM AND MAKE YOU DIE?!’

I told them that I didn’t care how many PhDs their friend’s son had in Being a Shit Electrician - water was going to get into the external wiring causing excess stress on the cable and at some point the whole thing would overheat. 6 months on, and guess what?

This kind of heat damage to 10mm core cable suggests multiple serious problems. The main breaker downstairs should have tripped, or the breaker for the floor, or the 50A breaker for the consumer board, or the individual circuit breakers.

While we’re at it, the total maximum load + breaker for this floor’s lighting and socket rings is 15A. What in all holy shit? 15A is too high for a lighting ring and too low for the socket ring. 15A x 110v = 1650W. My fridge will be eating 500W with the compressor running, lights about 400W max, computer 250W, good job I don’t have a TV or microwave because… WHOOPS, OVERLOAD!

Also, the ELCBs you see in those pics don’t work. The left one is connected to a redundant socket ring and the right one isn’t connected at all. It looks like the original electrician made at least a half-assed attempt at a safe installation, realised that 15A was going to keep tripping and instead of splitting the lights/sockets and/or using heavier gauge cable just disconnected the ELCB. Fan-effing-tastic.

Okay, NEXT! I insisted my embarrassed landlord get an electrician out pronto, who was amazingly competent. I had a long chat with him about Taiwanese vs. European standards and he lamented that it pained him to see such stupidity on an everyday basis but admitted that he was also responsible for unsafe jobs himself. People want what they want - and in Taiwan, they want it cheap. He told me what we all know already - the minute he tells someone what is safe or not is the minute he has no guanxi, and no guanxi means no job. So from now on I will try to give Taiwanese sparks a break and instead encourage my friends to spend that extra NT$400 here and there to make sure their houses don’t burn down.[/img]

2

Illary -
Glad there has been no harm to you or your family.
I se this shit everyday and it never ceases to amaze me. :loco:

3

Wonderful post !
I have found also that as I speak with more and more tradesmen their story is much the same, i.e. “I know it is shit, but I have to do what the customer wants not what is right>”

Thanks for the informative post :notworthy:

4

Obviously your electrician forgot to sellotape the red and black wires together and connect them to the pink, blue, orange, white and brown wires on the left, and replace the chewing gum. Don’t press the green button. And don’t drink cold drinks when you’ve got a cold or you’ll die. Happy plumbing!

5

Thanks - fortunately my family consists of a stray dog and me, and my dog isn’t much interested in electrical appliances.

[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Illary -
Glad there has been no harm to you or your family.
I se this shit everyday and it never ceases to amaze me. :loco:[/quote]

6

What is dangerous about installations like this is that they look great - neat, tidy, safety breakers installed (you don’t actually have to connect them to anything - they work by magic, duh). There’s just the small matter that a dyslexic dog could tell you that you could jam an 18-piece cutlery set in every socket and your house would come down before anything trips.

[quote=“shifty”]Wonderful post !
I have found also that as I speak with more and more tradesmen their story is much the same, i.e. “I know it is shit, but I have to do what the customer wants not what is right>”

Thanks for the informative post :notworthy:[/quote]

7

:bravo:

8

Made a nice foto on one of this thunderstorm days last week. Amazing how improved the technology is here, the spot lights are directly powerd by water it seems:

Oh, and of course nobody thought that might be dangours and considerd to switch of the electricity.

9

I distinctly remember the slogan ‘electricity and water don’t mix!’ being drummed into me on a yearly basis at school from ages 5-10. There was a competition each year for the best electrical safety poster - may I suggest we run a similar mandatory contest for all Taiwanese who even want to think about plugging something in?

My own entry will feature a local tradesman pissing on a power socket with the slogan, ‘that’s shocking!’

[quote=“mingshah”]Made a nice foto on one of this thunderstorm days last week. Amazing how improved the technology is here, the spot lights are directly powerd by water it seems:

Oh, and of course nobody thought that might be dangours and considerd to switch of the electricity.[/quote]

10

Can anybody tell me why my sockets melt the plugs of anything I insert into them?
5 in the last year really kind of freaks me out
:astonished:

11

[quote=“shifty”]Can anybody tell me why my sockets melt the plugs of anything I insert into them?
5 in the last year really kind of freaks me out
:astonished:[/quote]

Oh that’s perfectly normal. It’s because the son of the Minister of Electricity and Other Foreign Magic in 1951 owned a factory which made defective plugs. In order to allow his son to offload these dodgy connectors at a decent price, it was decided that Taiwan would implement a One Hundred Volts of Electricity Contend, A Thousand Amps of Current Flow policy. This meant that huge currents were and still are required to make anything electrical run, and as the resistance in a wire is proportional to the circumference of the telephone number of the “electrician” you first called out (measured in Chabuduos), great heat is generated by any appliance bigger than a pocket calculator plugged into the mains. This heat causes the crappy plug to melt and the dead plug/appliance/user to be replaced with a new one.

HTH.

12

llary, if you can recommend a good sparky in Taipei, I would be more than happy to have him come around and do our place properly. I have no idea what goes on inside the walls, but it can’t be pretty.

13

@Hexuan: :roflmao: :notworthy:

14

I’m not in Taipei but if anyone in central Taiwan fears dodgy wiring and genuinely doesn’t have the means to get it checked out then I will happily go and investigate FOC. I’m not touching anything (even for money) because a) I could be blamed for anything that subsequently goes wrong and/or b) some FAP policemen is liable to pop out of the consumer board and arrest me for illegal work / being cool without a license. At least I can tell you what’s wrong, what’s potentially very serious and put you in touch with a reasonable local electrician on ‘best behaviour’ warning. And have a good laugh.

15

Thanks mate.

16

Interesting post overall, but you may be over-reacting on one point. 15A is standard in the USA (also 120V) for a lighting ring and 20A for wall socket rings. I’ve never seen a 5A or 10A circuit breaker.

17

Given that most of Taiwan doesn’t use ring configurations for sockets and the floor area of this house is very large, I personally think that the 1st floor sockets should be split into two separate circuits (kitchen and living area). 120v (I actually measure 112V) x 15A = 1800W, which does not leave much headroom considering that you are powering a living room and kitchen on a long cable run. Fridges, waste compactors, microwaves, rice cookers etc. all drink the juice. 15A is about right for the entire first floor lighting ring but the anally safe British guy in me says that splitting this circuit would be ideal (just splitting the indoor/outdoor lighting would also solve the problem of outdoor lights being on the same unprotected circuit).

Disclaimer: you’re talking to someone from a country that’s so anal you can fail your driving test by crossing your hands on the steering wheel. But I think our requirement for switched socket outlets is smart. So there.

18

Not to mention ground fault circuits on kitchen lines and anything near water…no, I wasn’t going to mention those.
Heck, we’ve got like 20 circuits in our house (2 story) here in the States. There are 2 separate circuits in the kitchen alone, and the dryer is on a separate 220V circuit of its own.

19

[quote=“ironlady”]Not to mention ground fault circuits on kitchen lines and anything near water…no, I wasn’t going to mention those.
Heck, we’ve got like 20 circuits in our house (2 story) here in the States. There are 2 separate circuits in the kitchen alone, and the dryer is on a separate 220V circuit of its own.[/quote]

Good good, llary is very pleased. I really think there is no such thing as ‘too safe’ or ‘too anal’ when it comes to electrical safety. Spend an extra few hours and NT$1,000-$2000 doing it right first time and you will have a safe installation that will last a long time.

The annoying thing is that even in the UK it costs maybe NT$3,000 for a fully populated residential consumer board with RCD breakers plus NT$500 for an earth leakage breaker (the latter has saved my life at least once). Given the price of a full electrical fitting job, why oh why oh why does everyone feel the need to save that extra NT$500 here or there? It cost my landlords NT$2,000 to fix the problem that is going to happen time and time again, btw. In many cases it’s a combination of ignorance and sheer laziness. A proper ring main split into two circuits takes about 30 minutes longer all told than running one long parallel circuit. If you’re running the cables anyway, why not just run two sets and make a proper ring while you’re at it? Ring mains are standard practise in inger-land for a reason - there is a more even distribution of load across the whole circuit which means you can gobble more amperage for the same cable size. That extra 30 minutes running the cable is recouped by using 2.5mm core wiring instead of 4mm core (although I wouldn’t be surprised if my sockets are powered off telephone wire).

In the UK we even have to consult little diagrams that show the minimum radius between baths, showers etc. and different classes of electrical equipment. Putting a standard indoor socket next to a sink like in every single Taiwanese bathroom would probably get yourself barred from the electrical trade for life. I don’t really like how a lot of American bathrooms have sockets either but at least you use RCDs.

20

[quote=“hexuan”]Oh that’s perfectly normal. It’s because the son of the Minister of Electricity and Other Foreign Magic in 1951 owned a factory which made defective plugs. In order to allow his son to offload these dodgy connectors at a decent price, it was decided that Taiwan would implement a One Hundred Volts of Electricity Contend, A Thousand Amps of Current Flow policy. This meant that huge currents were and still are required to make anything electrical run, and as the resistance in a wire is proportional to the circumference of the telephone number of the “electrician” you first called out (measured in Chabuduos), great heat is generated by any appliance bigger than a pocket calculator plugged into the mains. This heat causes the crappy plug to melt and the dead plug/appliance/user to be replaced with a new one.

HTH.[/quote]

:bravo:

I’m going to steal this and pass it off as my own.