electric meter. attaching a plug outside

@Suzi Masterson

Suzi,

Not sure what your planning on doing but doing anything at the meter box itself would be a no no unless your the utility company. Better to wire in a separate installation via a new fuse box with suitable fuses and cables  just for your heaters on the cable that comes into the house. That way you leave the old stuff in place until you want to tackle that bit.

Very simple to do and leaves you to rewire rest of the house later. Weve been rewiring our shack in phases and always leaving part on the old set up and learning as we go all works fine.

Rgds,

Ozzy

Suzi, if you have the new meter outside and new wiring from the meter to the house, and then the very old wiring inside, you may find it won't cost much to get an electrician to put in a new fuse box, as Ozzy suggested.

It cost me less than 500 leva to get an electrician (someone who works for the local electric company earning a few extra leva after work!) to get a new fuse box put in to replace the old one and the scarily unsafe wiring to the back section of the house fully redone.

We still have the front rooms to get rewired, but they can wait until we're ready to renovate those rooms. I think he connected the old wiring for those rooms to the new fuse box, so the breakers will trip if there's any problem. It all feels a lot safer now!

I would not wire a socket unless it comes from a fuse box. I am pretty sure it's only possible and legal in the UK to only come from the fuse box.

I'm trying to get my head round a meter in the garden and what's it's purpose if you cannot connect to it .. it sounds like you think you can ?  Is this something the electric supply company put in for you ? Does it have a fuse box with it

Try to answer the questions and I may be able to help

Another question

If there is a fuse box .. known in UK as a  distribution box ,does it have an on and off switch ?   

Is it supplied with a way you can connect to it without having to wire it in.  Eg a socket

its a meter box ive been told. ive not seen the house yet! tried a few weeks ago when all the snow came on the 1 day we had. we got stuck and barley made the flight home again.

im planning another trip straight after the new year. the agent has advised not to come until another week.

i need to know before if its legal. its very doable and legal here in the uk. i have it where i am

    I'm trying to get my head round a meter in the garden and what's it's purpose if you cannot connect to it .. it sounds like you think you can ?  Is this something the electric supply company put in for you ? Does it have a fuse box with it
Try to answer the questions and I may be able to help
   

    -@philip Mckay

Even in the UK, there are meters outside the properties but the wires are connected to a fuse box.

@SimCityAT yes. my external meter has a double plug socket underneath it. its actually very dangerous because its an internal plug. but an external 1 would be safe

There you go then Kath

Question answered by SimCity 👍

Sounds like you really need to make sure it's a external water proof plug to connect to it  .. when are you going there ?  Hope not during the winter coz sounds like your walking into hell this time of year Kath and looks like a hard winter all over BG ..

You said something about heaters .  5 ?  5 heaters?  Mmm! to many kath. That's for sure .. one heater per connection to the main meter.  You need a couple of extension plug in reals with   a trip device  built in .  You can get easily in BG ..   have u got builders there already Kath ?

If your intending to stay there I'd leave till the weather is warmer ..  being ill prepared during a BG winter is quite dangerous .. January is the coldest month in BG..   I always go to ski in January because if it's snowed it's going to stay as snow . But when we get to our place it's gonna be very very cold inside to house and on top of that it's going to be damp .. the 1st couple of hours are hell Kath .  And I'm prepared .. getting all the 6 LPG gas heaters going takes time and some won't start straight away.. your body temperature loss will be a lot and just because iv got LPG heaters going it takes up to 3 days to normalise the temperature  .. I have 2 electric fan heaters but there not very effective as the air is so cold they barely send out warm air to start with,  I only use them when I get there to keep the missus warm while I fire everything up. 

I'm not trying to scare you but BG is not a place to be if your ill prepared in winter

Is the water on this house you have ? Do you know where the stop valve is ?  Inside , or outside ? 

When I leave my homes there I have to make them winter ready.

Water is shut off , taps opened system drained.  Water in the toilets removed with a mop and bucket so the ceramic bases do not break with ice .. gas bottles filled ready for my arrival.

I always leave a coke bottle half full of water in the kitchen .  If it's solid ice gives you a good indication of temps inside your house .. water won't freeze properly  till is -4 

@philip Mckay sorry phil i was joking with 5 heaters after how cold it was when we were there last time

its the legality im not sure about. saftey i know its fine done properly. its legal in the uk.

@philip Mckay

we are doing another initial visit after the new year to see the house properly. we arent moving until the end of jan.

worst case we book into the local hotel. its not far from the house and lovely. i do have a plan b

the hotel is still cheaper than rent in the uk!

Suzi, that sounds a bit odd. In our village, all the new meters are on the power poles on the street outside the houses. The most we can access is a little door for the on/off switch, everything else is behind a locked panel. There are definitely no sockets. The old meter apparently used to be inside but I found it in a cupboard. The space where it was removed from the old fuse board is obvious.

What you described is probably legal -- you're not stealing electricity if the sockets are on the house side of the meter and whatever electricity you use will register on your meter. But it doesn't sound very safe!

I don't want to put you off, but Winter is probably not the best time to make the big move. If there's any way to wait until March when things are warming up, that might make the transition easier. Then by your first winter you'll have everything in place already.

The older houses are designed to stay warm when the fire is kept going most of the time, but as Phil said, they take days to warm up from cold. The solid uninsulated walls and earth floors that keep things cooler in summer will suck up a lot of heat before rooms start to feel warm. Wood stoves work well because they dry any damp from the air as well as add heat, provided you can source dry firewood. Hopefully you'll have a shed full there! I used a 2000 watt fan heater in my place on the old wiring  without blowing any fuses, but it wasn't anywhere near enough to warm things up to a comfortable level.

You'll also want to have some way to hang thick curtains or blankets over the windows to stop the heat escaping at night. The old single glazing is very thin glass and my windows had no putty so were very drafty. I could warm up the main room in the evening but by morning it was cold again. If like mine, the house is full of the original owners' stuff, you'll probably find there are lots of blankets you can nail up if needed and pile on the beds.

Phil is also right about the water stopcock valve, too. Ours is at least 4' down a deep hole in the garden, filled with bags of straw as insulation. I could barely reach it lying on my tummy hanging head first halfway down the hole! After my first visit, I bought a special long-handled wrench and it's still a challenge to turn it on and off.

Ideally, arrange to stay in the hotel for at least the first few days. That gives you time to find out where things are, what resources you have available, and let you start sorting things out without having to worry about clean dry beds and how to cook as well.

Lol ..

If the electricity supply company have installed you a external meter and plug in point then it's legal.. BG does not have the sort of legislation like we do in UK when it comes to electricity..  and even here if your on a building site you would also have this arrangement your describing that your electricity provider has put in place for you.  Sounds like your near a town so you should be able to get a multi point extension lead easily ..

Yes hotels are very cheap outside of the big cities and that's where I stayed when I was building my place in Samokov.   I wear long John's sets all the time up in the mountains during winter  . Not very sexy lol but essential even on the plane there  as I still have 50km to drive up the mountain from Sofia .. anything can happen.   One journey went with wizz air and arrived at 2am in the morning . Got about 20km in the middle of nowhere and a rock the size of a tennis ball from off the mountain was in the road I hit it in the front  wheel and it bent the inside of the metal wheel upwards an tyre flat within seconds .  I had no torch.  Thankfully my little son had his fishing dynamo torch with him in his bag  so he wound away the lever while I changed to tyre. There you go I never go without a torch now ..  it could have been a nightmare just stuck in total darkness  no houses.. cold at 3am in the morning ..  up the side of a mountain.

@janemulberry im booking the first week in a hotel before i fly back to collect the dogs and cats to fly over. unfortunately end of jan is the latest we can move. id planned on march. but where i am my landlord had other ideas even though its not legal. hey ho. spent money on the house or fighting him.

im going to try and sourse wood if there isnt any (there wont be. im not that lucky haha). ill also be bringing my 4 gas heaters. they wack out a goodly amount of heat as well.

we dont have central heating where we are now. so very used to the temperature drop over night. it can be brutal when its minus

@philip Mckay

thank you. i didnt explain myself at all well. sorry. i have fog brain today . my brother will fly over to help with the electrics. hes trained as an electrician while we lived in france. we moved back before he took the exam though so hes not qualified.

ohhh i hate the mountains in winter driving from sofia. so dangerous. its amazing the lessons we learn the hard way i forgot my coat when we came last time. because we only came for an over nighter i thought i wont buy another. i wont waste the money. we then got stuck in the middle of no where in the heavy snow that came the other week. im outside freezing while the locals are telling me off for being so stupid (all nicely). im leaving one in the house when we come next time

If you have the Calor gas type heaters, they should work well. Many people use them in Bulgaria, and the propane gas bottles can be refilled at pretty much any garage. If you mean the smaller camping heaters that use the disposable cans of gas, make sure to bring plenty of the cans with you! I have one as a back-up cooking stove, and though I did find somewhere that sells the butane canisters online and will deliver, they're more expensive in Bulgaria.

And maybe this move is when your luck changes for the better? I hope so! At least you'll have a warm coat this time.

@Suzi Masterson

And there was I thinking you were a damsel in distress

Sounds like you will be ok with gas heaters and your very own electrician .  Filling heaters isn't so easy anymore .  Up in samokov they will only fill gas bottles if they have installed the metal hut as it's illegal to fill from the pump now .. good thing about that is that you can get them filled anytime if the day and not have to wait till after 5 pm . However as a Bulgarian friend said to me rules are make for breaking lol..  if your bringing the calor type you will need to source the Bulgarian regulators as UK ones don't fit the bottles.  There about 20 leva ish..  oh and bring some jubilee clips as they can be hard to come by in BG.   

Probably your gas heater hoses are permanent clipped on so you will have to saw off the rubber hose ..  hence the jubilee clips

@philip Mckay i am thinking  of just picking up new once when we do a couple of days over there before the move. get it ready there. and pick up a woodburner, if needed. arrange wood etc. its going to be a very busy couple of days. and ive now learnt that straight after the new year its an extended bank holiday.

dont think anyone could describe me as a damsel in distress haha. im one of those people that can just get on with anything and make it work

@Suzi Masterson

Well my Bulgarian friend sent me an advert on WhatsApp  for a company called potrebno.com  selling LPG heaters for 136lv which is very good ..  well worth looking at .  I have only seen them for 260 + leva..   

@philip Mckay thank you

were going over around the 8th jan to get a proper plan in place. fingers crossed this is doable

And if those very low-priced ones are no longer available, Emag have the big freestanding gas heaters starting from 179 leva, without the gas bottle.

@Suzi Masterson As with any electrics Suzi you need to be able to isolate the incoming supply before you connect anything! You need a meter to test and confirm its not live!.Rewiring is pretty easy ,3 ring mains one for upstairs one for downstairs and a separate one for the kitchen , 32 amp. It's basically a daisy chain that goes round in a loop ,, the live neutral and earth come out the consumer box then the cable  goes round your sockets and comes back to the same 3 connections in the Consumer box !

@georgewheelwright the agent is being beyond amazing and going to look at the house for me after the new year and see if its connected. if yes happy days. i have someone going over for a week before me to gut a room and get power to 1 room.

im leaving anything electric to someone that knows what their doing. its way way out of my skill set

They don't do ring mains George  in BG just radial circuits ..  I put ring mains in my place in Samokov ..

They fitted me 3 phase domestic coz originally wanted 18kw  per apartment..  just to make sure everything was safe I fitted 3 distribution boards one for each phase lol  .

Electric is all a bit noddy in BG  after working with UK electrics

@janemulberry

That's still a very good price Jane 179lv

It's good to talk

@philip Mckay OMG, what am I going into lol,,I've never seen domestic 3 phase in a house? Is it for more current ? ,ive installed many 3 phase machines etc ,and although I've rewired a few places we used to rent I,m not 18th edition trained ,I just get it checked by a sparkie when I'm finished  !. So it would be safe to assume any house we buy will need rewired?. What about a standard 32 amp ,supply for cookers ? Thanks for your advice 👍