European electrical codes

Does anyone know of any place online where I could learn something about european wire sizes, standard breaker sizes (like 15amp for lighting, 20 amps for recepticles, etc.)

I would GUESS that, since they use 220v, breaker sizes would be about 1/2 the amp ratings for similar types of service. If you know what standard ratings are & associated wire sizes, please let me know.

Thanks for any info or help.

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At the risk of stating the obvious I would say that you probably won't get a good answer without specifying exactly what country you are interested in. Europe seems like a small place on the map but as far as electrical safety regulation, pretty much every country has their own standards in addition to the IEC (the international standard body) and CENELEC (European electrical standard body). Besides, the standards are always changing. But since wire size / amp rating ratio does not depend on voltage, you can use the same wire gauges you use in your home country.

For UK get yourself a copy of the standard named "BS 7671:2008 Requirements For Electrical Installations. IEE Wiring Regulations. Seventeenth Edition". There are bunch of snippets from it online and of course if you want the whole thing, a number of places will sell you the book for $120.

Since, again, every country has their own standards organizations, you'll have to secure the corresponding standard:

DIN VDE 0100 for Germany, NF C 15-100 for France, ET 101 for Ireland and so forth.

I just did a quick search for French electrical practices out of curiosity and this particular article keeps popping up on different websites:

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the fact that everybody keeps repeating it does not necessarily validate the info in it of course (and I am not familiar with France to tell) but the data seems fine to me. They do mention a bunch of different breaker sizes being in use from 2A to 32A

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