Just a little juice, please...

Electricity in Europe is different... Ok, this is a long story, so bear with me.

One of the things that really appealed to us about the house we rented in Tertre is the wonderful kitchen. It is huge by Belgian standards, and pretty nice by American standards, as well. Nice convection oven, vitroceramic cooktop, an electric grill, a steamer, and a deep fat fryer... all built in. Well, the problem turned out to be that we never use the deep fat fryer, and because the steamer is missing its lid (a little glass thing that happens to cost over 100 Euros!) we rarely use the steamer. And the vitroceramic cooktop had only two elements, so we never had enough room to really do much cooking. Imagine that you could only cook in two pots at a time, and then only if they were both relatively small. Use a big pot, and there's no room for another one, even tiny-sized.

After doing a survey of how things were put together and looking at what was available on the market, I got the bright idea of changing out the deep fryer and the steamer for a couple of ordinary electric cooking units (the little two-burner, "modular" things). I looked in the local market and didn't really like what I found, but then saw that the IKEA store happened to sell these things. So off to Brussels we drove, and a few hundred Euros later (no, the cooktops were not that expensive, but you have to remember that IKEA is a very dangerous place... lots of temptations) we drove back to Tertre with our loot. Minus the cooktops, however, because those are never "in stock" and would be delivered in about 10 days.

Well, the appointed day finally came (after a delay caused by my scheduling conflicts), and the delivery truck arrived, as promised, with the cooktops. IKEA is very good about things like this, and the delivery guys even spoke really good English (I could have managed in French, but it would have been a real struggle).

And then the battle started...

I decided that I should go ahead to remove the deep fryer and steamer, so cleared out the drawers below, unplugged them from their outlets, and then tried to lift the units out.

Nope, no go. More looks using a bright flashlight, knocks on the head, things falling into the eyes, and I see the little screws that hold the retaining clips in place. Out comes the little phillips screwdriver, and the first set of clips comes undone. Then I go to the second set of clips...

Oops. The screwdriver is nowhere near long enough, so I go searching through the tool bin for one that will work. Voila! And back to the knocks on the head. I manage to get all the retaining clips removed, take a short break and have a beer to congratulate myself on a job well done, then get back to work.

Ok, lets start lifting these puppies out! I said, lets start lifting these little sons of female dogs out! Nope, ain't happening. I could lift the front of the units out, but the back was firmly held in place. Yup, I think there's another clip to undo, but it is in back and I can't see it (remember, these are deep units). So I go search out a mirror and with the help of the flashlight, I can see those darned clips. I get out my trusty screwdriver to release them...

And the screwdrive will not reach. Try as I might, the screwdriver will not reach far enough to engage the screw. I go rummaging through tool bins to no avail. I find a long rod and try to bash the clips out of the way (they rotate in and out of position). This is a significant effort, since I can't see the blasted things without the mirror, nor without a flashlight. I have to prop the mirror just so, prop the flashlight just so, and then move the rod into position, while watching in the mirror. This is a really, really hard hand-eye coordination exercise. I finally manage to get the rod into position and can tap it with the hammer, but the clip will not completely disengage.

Now I'm getting upset. I fear I might have to go to the store and actually buy a really long screwdriver (one of those 14-inchers, I think) to do the job. But I still have hope. I start rummaging again through the toolbox and manage to find some assorted parts... a half-inch-socket wrench extension... then a quarter-inch-socket extension... then the half/quarter inch adapter... then a screwdriver tip, and finally, the quarter-inch socket that would fit the screwdriver tip.

So far so good. Now comes the really hard part... how do I manage to get a Rube Goldberg screwdriver to engage a screwhead that I cannot even see without a flashlight and a mirror held at an odd angle? After some more bashes of the head, the flashlight or mirror falling over separately or together several times, and some new scars-to-be on my knuckles, I finally figure it out... you've got to close your eyes!

Yes, that sounds counterintuitive, but it works. You use the mirror to get things reasonably lined-up, then get a good picture in your head of which way you need to move things, and how far, and then you do it without looking in the mirror. After you have made the move, then you look to see how well you did. A series of small steps and you are there. And the final one, well, that's by feel... you line the screwdriver tip up with the slot, close your eyes, then press it into place. If it feels like it dropped into the slot you give a little twist...Voila!

Finally, after about 3 hours of bad language, I managed to get the fryer and steamer removed from the countertop. And then it was time to start on the electrical end of things.

As I said at the beginning, European electricity is different. The good thing is that they use plugs for virtually everything. Nothing in our house is hard-wired into an invisible box in the wall. This makes it really easy to change appliances, especially since most things are standard sizes.

The bad thing... well, it starts with everything being 230 volt/50hz. If you have American appliances, you have to buy a transformer. If you have an appliance with an American electric clock, you can't use it, because the clock will lose nearly 10 minutes every hour. Fortunately, I didn't have to deal with these issues, as the cooktops were very standard Euro-spec. I double-checked the circuit breakers, just to make sure I wasn't over-amping the lines, and I could see that I would be OK. The existing cooking unit had at least another 18 amps of capacity on it's circuit, and there was capacity on the circuit that had held the fryer and steamer, as well. All looked good so far.

Now, I've got to make a little aside here... Some months back the landlord had some electricians in to do some necessary repairs. I was very attentive during this, as I knew European wiring was different, and that I could learn something by watching and asking an occasional question. Unfortunately I had an American electrical paradigm in place, so even though I got good answers to my questions, I managed to miss something.

When I looked at the circuit breakers to check capacity, I thought it odd that each one had two wires. In North American systems, they all have one wire (for the 110 volt circuits), except for your 220 volt circuits, which have 2 wires to the breaker. What should have clued me was that a few of the breakers had 3 wires... And one of the plugs I had to use had four prongs... but I was still thinking in my American paradigm and blithely went on.

To explain my confusion, it may be helpful to explain (for the unitiated) how American wiring works... The standard American house runs most of its circuits on 110 volts, and a handful of large appliances on 220 volts. To do this, there are two "live" lines that come into the house, plus what is called a "neutral" line. You get 110 volts by running current between either of the live lines and the neutral line. You get 220 volts by connecting the two live lines. You try to balance the loads on the lines by putting about half the 110 volt circuits on one live line, and the rest on the other one. Pretty simple system, actually.

Now to put the one new cooktop onto the circuit with the other cooktop, I have to change the plug, because the existing one is not rated for the amperage I need (the breaker and the wires are fine, though). So imagine my surprise when I pull apart the plug and outlet and find that I have a 4-prong plug and there are 4 big wires running to the outlet. I check the plug internals and find that one of the prongs hasn't been wired. I scratch my head some, then get the voltmeter out again (I had use it to make absolutely sure that the circuit was absoloutely dead before I tore into it), flipped the breaker back on, and started to probe...

Ok, Black to Blue, I've got 230 volts. Black to Brown, I have 230 volts. Blue to Brown... Ditto, 230 volts... this is getting strange. Then any one of them to the Green wire show 130 volts... definitely strange. I double check and it is the same. It appears that I have no neutral wire... It appears that no matter which pair of "live" wires I choose, I have 230 volts. I think about this strange thing for a while, and finally figure out what is going on... I check in the circuit breaker box, by pulling the cover off the panel and look at the wires coming in from the meter... Yup, 4 wires. Yup, the Europeans are using 3-phase wiring, which I know only a little about (I've got to confess that I managed to avoid taking the Fundimentals of Electricity course as I went through Engineering school).

Anyway, I finally decided that there were a couple of ways I could hook up the second cooktop, but there was thankfully enough capacity that I could just do it in parallel with the existing one. I finished the wiring, flipped the breaker, turned on the units, and it worked, and the breakers didn't pop, and the wires didn't get hot. The third cooktop, thankfully, just plugged right in to an existing outlet, and that was really, really easy.

I guess I've got to inquire of some friends who are a lot more familiar with this 3-phase stuff and find out what I need to know. In the meantime, the new cooktops are working nicely. (PHEW!) And now, we can finally cook with more than two tiny pots at a time. There's a little more finish work to do, but that's a job for tomorrow. And the steamer and deep fryer have to go to attic storage, since I'm sure the owner of this house wants them back in place before we leave in a few years.

Now, as an aside, in looking at the wiring, you might think that you don't need those silly transformers to run your 110 volt appliances... you can just run a circuit from the live wire to ground, and voila! 130 volts! You still have the 50hz issue to contend with, but most American appliances will actually run nicely on 130 volts. Unfortunately, the Europeans have figured out how to prevent this from happening... And what they do is to put a ground-fault interrupter that goes between the meter and the circuit breaker box. Any teensy little circuit that goes between a live wire and the ground wire will shut down the entire house! I suppose it is technically a safety issue, but at the same time it sure keeps those pesky North American appliances out of the European economy.