Case Study

Upgrading the Electrical Wiring System

in Older Housing yields Added Value (1)

Stefan Fassbinder
Deutsches Kupferinstitut
February 2008

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The high-quality rewiring of

domestic electrical systems in
older residential buildings can
yield a significant step up in
home comfort. In this two-part
article, we describe some
examples of electrical
refurbishment work aimed at
illustrating how electricians can
tap into this market.

We begin in the city of Jena in

Thuringia in the east of Germany.
Many of the residential areas in Figure 1 A semi-detached house in Jena built
Jena are situated on the slopes of the around 1935 with a fully refurbished electrical
Saale valley. One such development
comprises detached and semi-detached houses all built in the 1930s and 40s. These
solid, comfortable residences were built with typical German thoroughness, but with
electrical systems that reflect the requirements of that time. For its time, the electrical
installation work was fairly modern using copper wires within a protective metal sheath.
But each house was fitted with only a few wiring circuits comprising two copper
conductors with a 0.5 mm² cross-section and protected solely by a 6 A fuse. One such
semi-detached house (see fig 1) is owned by the seventy-year-old pensioner Herta
Engels, who has been a customer at the local firm of electricians Elektrotechnik Harz for
almost 25 years.
Jörg Harz has been running the company for about ten years mostly as a one-man
operation, though he does employ temporary agency workers for some larger jobs.
Business is tough, especially in an area with a relatively weak economy. His office is in
the former porter’s lodge on a local industrial estate. The focus of Jörg Harz’s work is the
high-quality renovation of the electrical wiring systems in older residential buildings. He
has come to realize that this is a market with considerable potential, provided that it is
exploited in the right way. The electrical refurbishment work in Herta Engels’ house, for
instance, was a four-week project. According to Jörg Harz, the key principles for this sort
of work are:
• Respond to the customer’s needs and explain the different items on
the quotation using language that that customer can understand.
• Maintain the dialogue with the customer not only during the planning
and bidding phase, but also while work is underway. Identify and
explain potential improvements and make proposals to the customer
directly on site.
• Work discretely and with care and emphasize thoroughness rather
than haste.

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The distribution board and the basement area

The distribution board in
Herta Engels’ house (fig. 2)
now has three residual-
current devices (RCDs): one
tripping at 300 mA, and two
at 30 mA. According to
safety regulations, one RCD
would have sufficed to
ensure compliance with the
TT earthing system typical
of the local area. The TT
system for each semi-
detached house has its own
main service cable and
therefore its own earth rod
electrode. And although the
customer in this case does
not understand in detail how Figure 2: Service box, distribution board,
a TT system or an RCD telecommunication wiring – all new, generously
functions, she does know dimensioned, safe, redundant and to the complete
satisfaction of the client
from talking to Jörg Harz
that her wiring system is
safe, and that a fault will no longer cause the entire house to black out.
With a new telephone extension fitted in the basement (fig 3), Frau Engels can now also
take calls when she is working in her utility room and no longer needs to hurry upstairs
only to find that she has arrived a moment too late. A simple solution and one whose
benefit will increase as Frau Harz gets older. New lights have also been fitted so that the
basement area can now be fully illuminated (fig 4).

Figure 3: A telephone point and Figure 4: Basement storage area

numerous power sockets in the now with its own lighting.
basement are very useful

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Exterior installations
Frau Engels had a total of seven motion detectors (fig 5)
installed on and around her house. Convincing the
customer of the advantages to be gained was, in this
particular case, no easy task. Her first reaction was:
“Why do I need so many?” But now there in place, she
wouldn’t be without any of them. She is delighted at the
fact that the garage door now opens automatically when
she arrives back home in her car when it’s dark and that
the path up to the front door is illuminated without her Figure 5: Seven motion
needing to first find the switch. Getting the exterior detectors provide added
installations in place was no mean feat for master comfort at night and make
electrician Jörg Harz and not just because of the extra the house safer
work involved in persuading his client of the potential
benefits. A cable had to be run from the house to the garage across the garden with a
minimum of “floral damage”. But Jörg Harz succeeded here too. His client is happy and
enjoying the fact that the work has helped to simplify her daily life.

Does more comfort, security and functionality mean

increased power consumption?
Motion sensors are often seen as “permanent consumers”. Because they can be
triggered at any time, they are always on standby. Tests carried out on a selection of
typical commercially available models showed that the standby loss was just under 1 W,
irrespective of whether the connected load was switched on or off. So do these few watts
make any real difference to the electricity bill? For Herta Engels, there was no noticeable
increase in power consumption after the motion sensors were installed. Not only had her
power consumption always been subject to fluctuations (the electricity bills from the last
few years showed consumption levels ranging from 1700 kWh to 2400 kWh), the motion
sensors were installed in the same year in which Frau Engels replaced her electric hot
water system with a modern gas-fired central heating system.
One could also have pointed out to the customer that the electric motor fitted to the
garage door can also make an appreciable contribution to overall power consumption –
though this doesn’t have to be the case. Swapping the cheap transformer often supplied
with these motors for a higher-quality toroidal-core transformer has been shown to
reduce standby power losses from 8 W to 2.5 W. After hearing this, Jörg Harz agreed to
look into the matter and see
whether this was appropriate for
the model installed at his client’s
premises.
While most customers have
heard about electrical devices
that guzzle power in standby,
they don’t usually know whether
a better option is available in their
particular case. Qualified
electricians should therefore be Figure 6: Plenty of outlet sockets were installed
prepared to answer questions next to where the TV and telephone are currently
situated (left); sockets were also installed behind
from their clients about excessive
the wall-to-wall shelving should the furniture be
standby losses.
rearranged at some future date (right)

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The living areas and the kitchen

Jörg Harz has a policy of
fitting two-way or three-
way switch circuits in all
rooms that can be entered
from two or more different
locations. He feels that no
one should have to feel
their way across a
darkened space in order to
find the light switch. This is Figure 7: Electric power and lighting are now available
wherever they are needed (left). The kitchen was even
particularly relevant in
fitted with a TV antenna socket (right)
Herta Engels’ house as
nearly every room is
accessed through at least
one other room. For example, the kitchen can only be reached via the living room. The
electrician also took care to ensure that enough power sockets were installed not only
where the phone and television are currently located, but also behind the wall-to-wall
shelving unit, which is where the phone and TV set may well migrate to if the planned
rearrangement of the furniture goes ahead (fig 6).
Electrically powered roller blinds have been installed throughout the house. The electric
power and lighting systems for the 12-m² kitchen were planned to provide power and light
wherever needed, while at the same time blending in unobtrusively with the overall
design of the kitchen (fig 7). Cable with a conductor cross-section of 2.5 mm² was used
for circuits expected to carry a significant load – despite the fact that for the lengths of
cable run used in the house, 1.5 mm² cable would have been sufficient to ensure
compliance with the relevant standard (and thus keep the associated voltage drop within
acceptable limits).
The kitchen alone has four switches for controlling the ceiling light.
A TV antenna socket has also been installed, although a
television is not used in the kitchen at present.

The bathroom
Access to the bathroom is through the kitchen.
The roller blind in the bathroom was also to be fitted with
an electric motor, but this proved tougher than expected
as there was no power cable in the vicinity and the
bathroom tiles had to remain undamaged. There was only
one spare tile available and that was needed because the
wall light had to be moved to the other side of the mirror
(fig 8) as its position immediately next to the shower unit
contravened the German VDE wiring regulations. This was
the cause of extensive discussions with the client who Figure 8: The wall light
initially had problems accepting that the lamp should be had to be moved. It was
moved – after all, the lamp had been there for decades previously located to the
and “nothing had happened.” right of the mirror and was
therefore too close to the
shower.

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But Jörg Harz is no fan of “grandfathering” – the concept of granting exceptions so that
an existing situation is not forced to comply with some new regulation. Grandfathering is
a nice term for what is in fact poor practice and it offers effective protection against
innovation and improvement. So the lamp was moved, as it was just one small part of a
much larger refurbishment project. After having to accept four weeks of dust and noise,
Herta Engels would be the first to agree that the work performed represented a very
major and significant modification to her house.
The next challenge in what could be termed the “minimally invasive” renovation of the
bathroom was getting electric power to the roller blind and installing the operating switch
knowing that there were no spare tiles in the house. But a solution was found. Jörg Harz
has a masonry drill bit that is 1.7 m long and he was hoping to use it to drill horizontally
through the concrete ceiling. Unfortunately, there was a structural steel joist in the way. In
the end, there was no alternative but to cut a chase in the ceiling for the cable and then
to repaper the ceiling – but at least the tiles remained untouched. Only one tile above the
window was carefully removed by the electrician and was replaced after the cable had
been installed. From there the cable had to be run down through the interior of the
window frame. Obviously, the additional effort involved hardly made the renovation work
cheaper, but the dialogue between the electrical installation specialist and his client
meant that risks could be minimized and the long-term benefits to the customer
maximized, while the customer also understood what she was paying for.

The bottom line

Herta Engels was asked whether the project was, in hindsight, too expensive. Her
response: “Of course it was expensive. If the money’s not available immediately, you
have to save for a while, if needs be maybe for a couple of years.” The work was carried
out in stages. The switches and cables were installed first, followed by making good and
carrying out any necessary redecorating.
Building a porch with stairwell, exterior plastering work and exterior electrical
installations, installation of a six-metre-long plastic (PE) conduit for the new earth cable.
Removal of the overhead supply line by the local electricity company and installation of
the underground cable. Installation of the new meter and distribution board. Installation
work in the basement, living room, upper floors and, finally, the kitchen.

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Good, but not good

enough
Hamburg’s Fuhlsbüttel area is
home to a residential estate
containing blocks of rented flats
built between 1965 and 1975.
Here too, the renovation work
was exemplary – at least on
paper. Each flat was equipped
with two electric instantaneous-
flow water heaters; one for the
bathroom and one for the kitchen.
Each heater has its own power
cable (4 x 6 mm²) and is separately fused (3 x 35 A).
However, the electrical installation work in Hamburg was carried out without the sort of
dialogue between electrician and customer that took place in Jena. When the old
distribution board was replaced by the new one, the electricians carrying out the work
should have realized that there was insufficient lighting, especially as they had to arrange
additional temporary lighting so that they could see what they were doing. This would
have been the opportunity to talk to the landlord about putting in extra lighting. After all,
the landlord was clearly interested in upgrading the electrical installations in the flats. And
even if the landlord had rejected the proposal, most tenants would have agreed to have a
lamp fitted and to cover the costs themselves. But it didn’t happen. After the electricians
had finished their work and moved on, the tenants were left with a storage cupboard that
now contained a new distribution board but was just as dark as it ever was. One
disappointed tenant headed to the local DIY store, bought a lamp and carried out his own
makeshift installation (see photo). Whenever he opens the storage cupboard to look for
his broom, he now does so very carefully so that the rather temporary installation does
not come crashing down. He first has to fish for the lamp’s power cable and then to push
the two-pin plug into the wall-mounted power socket next to the distribution board. The
customer was disappointed with the service offered by this firm of electricians. The
original idea of adding value to the apartment by upgrading the electrical installation was
highly promising, but a lack of customer focus or thoroughness while the work was
carried out, has meant that things have not quite lived up to expectations.
Jörg Harz makes sure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen to him. Listening, planning