Hi
Does anyone know if French Electricity Regulations allow for the equivalent of a lamp lighting circuit like we get in the UK?
Cheers
Suz
My mistake, been working on to many old circuits recently and was thinking fusibles not disjoncteur.
As you say, 16 and 20A disjoncteur are the norm for lights and sockets respectively.
My bad!
Alex
For old installations you can use 10A if you have a fuse-type breaker or you can use a disjoncteur individuelle which should be 16A for lighting. You cannot use a 10A disjoncteur for light circuits. For sockets you can use 10A fuse/16A disjoncteur if you use 1.5 wire and only max 5 (I think) sockets on the circuit. For 8 sockets max on a circuit use 16A fuse/20A disjoncteur and 2.5 wire.
Hi Kate, Suz,
I think Kate's reply should have read 10A (max 16A) disjoncteur for the lighting circuit (with 16 for the prise/sockets).
Alex
If you mean a ring main as the uk regs i believe not
The regs allow for up to 8 points of light per circuit on 1.5mm wire with a 16A disjoncteur. Spots totalling 300W in the same room count as 1 point of light. Is that what you wanted to know?
Cheers for that so 10 amp fuse can take upto 75 watts or 10 leds correct
Amps = Watts divided by Volts.
Therefore, assuming a voltage of 220, it would need 2,200 watts to reach 10 amps.
I think the regulations remain unchanged and that only eight points is still the max per circuit in France - if Badger reads this, I would be interested to know if this is still the case? I am nervous as I have been thinking of selling and do not want some enthusiastic diagnostic chappie to note that I have 39 LED GU10s around the terrace on a single switch… 
Yes, that is still the case. Every “point” should also be no larger than 300VA.
What defines a ‘point’ is slightly moot. With the lowering of lighting loads due to the phasing out of energy wasting incandescent lamps in favour of LEDs (via the path of CFLs) it’s very unlikely that, domestically, you are going to be loading a 1,5mm² lighting circuit to anywhere near capacity.
Although NF C 15-100 allows it I would never use a 16A disjoncteur to run a 1,5mm² lighting circuit. As a 10A DJ would be good for 2,3kW you’re very unlikely to hang enough lamps on the end to overload it.
I’ve always treated a ‘point’ as a switched lighting circuit i.e. if you have three wall lights that are wired to one switch, that is one point. 8 downlights in your kitchen on one switch is one point, etc. Such treatment tends to give the average house the minimum number of lighting ciruits (3) that ae required by regulations.
Clearly, there is no minimum number of points per circuit, & lighting circuiting should be approached for convenience as well as load. e.g. I tend to not have lighting circuits cover more than one floor, unless it’s stairway lighting. That allows you to split power & light on any given floor across two different différentiels, thus leaving power on if the lights develop a fault, or vice versa - it’s a safety thing.
They won’t notice. They don’t look that deeply into an installation.
It’s far better to use the actual nominal phase to neutral voltage, which is 230V.
Thank you