I am renovating my cellar. The electrician wired the room a couple of years ago and until now i´ve not had the money or time to finish it off. I was looking at the wiring for the wall sockets today and realized that for every box there is at least 8 wires stuffed into it separated into 2 groups of wires. 1 group of wires has 5 colours…brown, black, grey, green/yellow and blue, the other group had green/yellow, blue and brown. I mostly have double sockets so this setup is then repeated for the second socket next to it. How do I install the socket…what is grey? My wall socket has only 3 input holes…so what do I do?
Thanks for any advice.
Best Answer
Do NOT touch the 3 hot wires together. From what I have heard, unlike the US, Germany provides full 3 phase power to residences. That means those three hot wires are each 120 degrees out of phase with each other, so touching them will create a short circuit. If you use a multimeter to measure the voltage from one to the other, you should see somewhere around 200 volts, and 220 between any one of them and neutral/ground. Regular outlets in Europe are 220 volts, so they are only wired to one of the three phases, and neutral. Different outlets should each use a different phase so the load is roughly balanced between the phases.