Wiring lights and sockets for Indonesian school

[Keefa]

Hi, I'm hoping that someone out there may be able to help me.
My wife and I are working on a little charity project to set up a school library in a poor village in Sumatra. As part of this I have been asked to extend the limited electrical supply to the rest of the school (6 extra rooms).
I have done a little electrical work in the UK (DIY stuff) and am ok with how to wire up the lights and sockets. However, I am a little confused by the way in which the existing wiring has been done. I have done a sketch of the connections in/out of the MCBs but the use of wire colour has got me confused as to what is going on.
The current setup supplies two rooms each with an internal and external light circuit controlled from a dual switch. They each also have a 2-pin mains socket installed.

Untitled

• Keefa
• 9 May 2010
• 1

By looking at the connections at the back of the switches and sockets I have been able to determine the following:
2 of the RED wires go to the lighting circuits
BLACK wire goes to the socket (Neutral?)
1 RED wire goes to the socket from the switch (Live?)
I do not know where the BLUE wire goes.
The 3 MCBs are linked together by wires in the output terminals. However, only one line is actually passed through these MCBs is this the correct way to do this? Is this the LIVE supplying both lights and sockets?
I know that this is very vague but I have very limited equipment here (no multimeter) and would appreciate any insights or suggestions on how best to figure out what is going on and how best to connect up the new lights and sockets (these will also be fed from a couple of MCB units).

Yours (very) hopefully
Keefa

 

[bongos]

Youre probably not going to want to hear this but without a multimeter, trying to work out what exactly is going on here will be an absolute nightmare.

Chances are that the wiring will not be in any conventional method and could be doing all sorts of bizarre things. I seem to remember some 'intriguing' wiring when I stayed in some budget locations in Lombok a few years ago.

It's not so much the lack of electrical experience that will stop you here (although it would be wise to find out as much as you can from locals before doing anything) but the lack of test equipment. Even a basic multimeter would be a massive advantage here. At the moment any info I suggested would just be complete guesswork and thats not a good idea with electrical work.

Can you possibly get hold of a multimeter and start working things out? Or order one for delivery from online?

 

[Keefa]

Agreed. I understand that it is all guesswork. I'll see if there is anyway I can get a multimeter or maybe speak to a spark here (although I wouldn't hold out too much hope on that one!).
Forgetting what goes on after the MCBs, does the way it is shown in the image make some sense to you? Is this the way you might wire this?
There are no earths involved anywhere.
Any small insight might be invaluable but I understand that guesswork is unwise to say the least.

 

[bongos]

Forgetting what goes on after the MCBs, does the way it is shown in the image make some sense to you? Is this the way you might wire this?

Not really no.

If you could post a pic of the installation and the fuse box with the cover off then possibly.

There are no earths involved anywhere.

Probably not good - but depends on what type of earting system they run in Indonesia. I would guess similar to our TT style although it doesn't sound like you have one....

 

[1john]

I wouldn't expect anything to be easily explanitory, I had an apprentice not so long ago that was south african and had worked there for a few years doing electrical work before he had to come to the uk, someof the stories were amazing, two that spring to mind -

1 - he seemed slightly alarmed that I was going to throw away the old wooden wylex fusebox, old twin cables and bakolite accessories, these would have been sold on and installed somewhere else apparantly

2 - an outside light was installed down a garden once, a single cable was strung down the garden for the live feed, the neutral was provided by way of metal pole in the ground

It seems the cost of life is cheap, although understandabally people can only have what they can afford.