Searching for Swiss Failures

The travel to Switzerland was a quick visit to many places: Zurich, Baden, Lucerne, Bern, Grindelwald, Interlaken, Montreux, Lausanne, Gruyere, Vevey, Geneva, and then French cities Annecy and Lyon. Guess which country had sketchier electrics!

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Zoddy
Raphaël (River) Champeimont

By: Mehdi Sadaghdar

[avdimetalia]

Hi Mehdi, I'm a trained electrician in Switzerland, and your videos helped me pass my apprenticeship! To answer why Switzerland sometimes has two RCDs in parallel, it's due to selective protection. If there's a fault in one group, only that RCD will trip because they have different time delays. The smaller RCD typically trips within 30ms, while the larger 4-pole RCD is designed to trip at either 100ms or 300ms, ensuring the smaller one trips first. This setup prevents the entire system from shutting down when a fault occurs in just one group. If you have any further questions I'm glad to enlighten you on electrical installations in Switzerland, since it is quite different compared to even neighbouring country's.

[joeldd]

The GFCI with the yellow indicator is actually a combination of GFCI and normal braker and since you can either trip it with a ground fault or overload, it indicates the tripping reason with the yellow indicator where yellow stands for ground fault and white for overload

[pastek]

15:40 Swiss person here! These people have simply reached the end of their contract.
In Switzerland, every citizen signs a contract with the state in exchange for peace and joy. When the contract expires, you have to float your way to the underground (that's where the breakers are by the way), and you get turned into gold and stored in a bank.
That's why Switzerland is so rich and has such a small population.

[binky_bun]

Switzerland has to be my favourite of all the countries I've visited. It's expensive but beautiful and the infrasturcture is amazing

[RikkiSan]

Normal People: Goes to Switzerland to see the Alps and beautiful country.
Mehdi: WHERE'S THE BREAKER!?

[pedrogeraldo]

hi, swiss inhabitant here. breakers are usually on the basement or hidden in an admin room to keep nosy people like you from doing things they shouldn't :)
also bathrooms have their own isolated circuit to avoid all room outage, just like you saw :)

[TheEngieTF]

Mehdi: We're going to Switzerland!

Switzerland hotels: *Hide the breakers! All of them!*

[juzoli]

Don’t try this at home!
Mehdi: It’s all good, I’m not at home.

[dominikmeier]

Hi Swiss electician here.
The outlet at 4 min. is called "Sidos" it's one of the rare ones that have ground fault protegtion integrated. We use them in switzerland, if we ad another outlet to an existing breaker which doesn't have ground fault protection.
Outlets with child protection dors are extremely rare. The are only common in extension cords. I have never installed one in my 10 years as an electician.
The Red Socket is called CEE32 it has 400V and is rated for 32A.
The waterspouts are connected to ground for lightning protection reasons.
3 phases in one socket was rarely done earlyer in high current demanding places. For exampel a Restaurant Kitchen. But it is forbidden for over 10 years now.

[polishfuze]

At 16:10 the connector is a standard 3P+E+N outlet which supplies ~400V between the phases and 240V between a phase and neutral, for anyone looking for it it's an IEC-60309.
Also afaik the electrical code requires a single GFCI plug for apartment/hotel room in this case, but for the guest's convenience many hotel include several ones for a single room, eg. one for the washroom and one for the rest of the room. The double in-series GFCI is an additional safety feature but one of them should be a selective type.

[-thanelines]

15:41 How to get home after work in Summer? Bring your Waterproof Bag, store your Goods, have a swim and arrive at home refreshed and full of joy.

[cobravello]

just a thought - you could also spend a night at an airBNB, which are usually private apartments and houses, which can be wired differently and sometimes less professionally than decent big hotels, maybe more fun stuff to be discovered there :)

[CowboyPants-hp]

The Freddie Mercury statue at 16:57 was installed in Montreux because he stayed there for quite some time, and Queen bought Mountain Recording Studio there. The last Queen album, Made In Heaven, was recorded there.

[MrLuigiDeFreak]

Another swiss electrician here. The outlet you found outside in zurich at minute 4:00 with no voltage is a "Sinos"-outlet. This type of outlet has a built-in RCD. If you look closely you can see the yellow test-button and a black switch on top. So it was probably just off. And a funfact for you: The outlets that are flat are called "T12, Type 12". They are prohibited to install and sell new since 2017. Only the ones with the holes (called T13, Type 13) are allowed to newly install. The reason for it is that, much like in america, the prongs are still touchable on the T12 when you plug them halfway in which can't happen with a T13.

[Sylvain_code]

Small correction: Switzerland uses the "Type J" socket, which is almost but not fully compatible with the European "Type F / Schuko". The neutral pin is different; and European plugs can have slightly thicker pins that won't get into the Swiss socket. The reason the sockets are in group of three is for convenience, not having to have a multi-socket adapter/extension - and often one of the sockets is controlled remotely, to plug in a standing light.

[cedartop]

I'm an electrician from Switzerland. In my own home I do also have two RCDs in series. I rented an appartment once where I found out, that the RCD of the bathroom group did not work correctly anymore. Since I have kids I decided to prevent that from happening. Therefore I've installed two short time delayed RCDs (around 170ms) before the light groups. So half the house would be dark in case one of the RCBOs (around 25ms) would not work anymore. I checked all of them and they work indeed selective. Now I feel a lot calmer whenever they do anything with electricity involved.

Ah, both of the RCD have 30mA tripping current. The selective ones with 300mA are only used in Switzerland on farms for fire prevention and also on solar powered houses when they make use of island mode. In this case, you would no longer have the short-circuit currents of the normal power grid.

[t.sb_]

Heya, Dutch electrician here. The red 5 pole connector you saw in public is 400V 3-phase. (used to be 380V) It is Neutral, Earth and 3x live.
This is to power industrial machinery, mainly big 3-phase motors such as pumps or other big moving machinery. It also allows a way higher current draw than a standard 240v single phase.

[GabrielKleinCH]

It was a pleasure to have you in my country :)

In our standards:
* Power plugs are 10 amps (16 in France).
* Flat power plugs are not allowed anymore in new constructions. (the 3x3 you display at the end).
* The big "red" plug is CEE11 = 3 phases/11kW, you have CEE22 too.
* Live is at the right of the V, neutral at left, earth in the middle.
* The "plastic protection" in the wires is mandatory since a few years.
* 30 mA default current is the standard.

[eisenhammer]

16:44 The grounding wire on the rainwater pipe is for the lightning rod, it uses the metal tubes as a wire/part of the lighning rod

[Superbus]

Hey it is not unexpected that the electrical systems here in Switzerland are in top shape. Even in private residential houses there are regular inspections. Every few years an electrical engineer/ electrician is sent by the state to check your system. And they are thorough. Its not just a visual inspection but also measuring everything and testing that every protective system works as it should