[gaiusmarius]

i need to make use of a cable that was installed by an electrician years and years ago. it has 5 wires inside. but i only need to use it to power a normal plug. so my question is how do i go from a 5 polled cable to a three polled cable. have just used the socket in the wall, but if someone forgets not to use certain other sockets for the vacuum it can be too much. so i want to make use of the safer cable that draws power from the fuse board.

so i want to be able to power this controller:


from this source.

this pic just shows you where it was connected together to make it longer. it ends with one of those black clamp things. so how do i go about this? cut the plug off the controller and then?

any help greatly appreciated, i am sick of changing out the sockets. there will always be someone who uses the wrong plug and over loads the circuit if i power every thing from 1 circuit. that thick 5 polled cable is powered by both circuits.

gaius

[soursmoker]

sorry I can't help but try hitting up rives. He seems to be the go to go around here when it comes to Electricity shit...

[moses wellfleet]

Are the 5 wires a 3 phase cable?

[gaiusmarius]

yeah it is, but we only hooked it up to 2 phases as the electrics are done a bit funny and there are only 2 x 10 amp fuses, if thats what you mean.

sorry for the blurry pic, maybe a better pic will make it more clear. basically that cable is taking power directly from behind my fuse board, it's hooked to the back of two 10 amp fuses. i used to have a bigger controller wired to that cable, but that controller cable also had 5 wires inside the it, so was easy to hook them together. the controller i need to use now is smaller and only has 3 wires inside the cable. before you ask i don't have the old bigger unit anymore.

[moses wellfleet]

So you are converting 3 phase to single phase. Should be a matter of bridging a couple wires so you are left with one live.

[gaiusmarius]

so cut the plug off the timer/lamp controller and join 3 wires to the 4 wires? so i have red blue, black and earth, so i suppose i join blue to blue and then the red and black with the red. and earth to earth? so stick the red and black in one end of the joiner and just have the single red in the other other side? seems instinctively dangerous to join 2 wires like that, but maybe thats due to my less then complete understanding of electricity.

[moses wellfleet]

Ya wait for more input from other members first. I have seen a 3 phase plug connected to a single phase cable before, but I am no expert

[gaiusmarius]

just to be exact, there are only 4 wires being used inside the thick cable, as can be seen in the blurry pic. i mistakenly wrote 5 in the first post. so it's a matter of connecting 4 wire source cable to a 3 wire fixture/timer/controller what ever it's called.

[rives]

Ok, I'm confused. It looks to me as though the current connection is 4 wires, which here would be 120/240 with a ground. However, it seems to me that you were from across the pond, and I don't think that you guys even use 120v. 3-phase is almost invariably a commercial/industrial power arrangement and is almost unheard of for residential use here. Googling the European wire codes show "old" & "new" versions and unfortunately they have used the same colors but in opposing fashions. The later version uses red, yellow, and blue for hot wires, black for the neutral and yellow/green for the ground. I also see brown, black and gray tossed in as alternate colors for hot wires with blue as the neutral. Do you have a meter and know how to use it? Is there a schematic for the controller that you want to hook up?

[gaiusmarius]

shit you make it sound complicated.

yes this is Swiss electrics and we have 230V running to every where and 380 is for industrial use.

what i remember from here is that blue is always N. and yellow/green is always earth. i dont know if i still have the papers for the timer controller, all it is is a relay and a good timer powering three plugs.

will look for the schematics.

our normal household currant connection runs with 3 wires. the electrician used 4 wires so he could take power from both fuses instead of just from 1 fuse.

if you need a pic of the cable hooked to the back of the fuse board let me know.