This is the electric panel of my wg-apparment that has been a WG for at least 14 years. It's owned by a company that owns half the building.
Yesterday, a bad quality half-broken cable from a laptop, burned itself down and luckily didn't cause any damage. But I had to unscrew the fuse manually before letting anyone touch the socket to remove the broken cable. (Electricity didn't go off)
I was told that the hausvervaltung or the owners are not obliged to update the installation. Neither us as Tennants are supposed to touch anything in the apparment without their authorisation.
There's no FI-schalter…
I find this situation super uncomfortable. That with a cheap update you can protect lives. But seems like to be able to do anything you have to go through a burocratic loop, that I don't know where it starts.
I guess that there's many apartments in this situation in Berlin. As there are many old buildings.
Someone has experience with this?
by keylanomi
16 comments
Please go to r/LegaladviceGerman . I am pretty sure you need an FI to rent out an apartment.
>But I had to unscrew the fuse manually before letting anyone touch the socket to remove the broken cable. (Electricity didn’t go off)
BIG RED FLAG!
as others suggested r/LegaladviceGerman , also contact the Mieterverein to inform yourself about your rights.
I personally would insist on a replacement under the threat of reducing my rent until it its fixed.
Is it dangerous? What exactly is dangerous there?
There are power strips with built-in FI-Schalter available. Though I’m not sure how much that helps it might be a temporary solution.
“Cheap update to protect lives” <- the word you got wrong is “cheap”. You need to remodel the whole distribution, install a cabinet that holds the protective switches, probably a new main wire, almost 100% certainly the whole wiring in the appartment. That’ll cost a lot of money and makes no sense if you’re not remodelling the whole appartment which means higher rent and so on.
When it comes to electrical installation the magic word in germany always is “Bestandsschutz”. There is nothing you can to, no Mieterschutzverein or whoever can change that.
Yes the situation CAN be hazardous but like another person already said the secondary side of a laptop power supply can burn down a cable without triggering the fuse on the primary side, you would have to have AT LEAST 16 amps (usually way more) and maybe it blocks that much current on the primary side.
I have no clue about it, but no matter what if I were you I’d buy new fuses and replace all of them if one was faulty…
Why do you think it is dangerous? That installation has no exposed electrics unless you unscrew the protectors. Leaving it as is is the safest option.
If it doesn’t have FI there is no cheap solution, only full remodel of everything. There are screw in FIs but they aren’t legal anymore I think.
I am not sure if a tenant is allowed to change them, but for the screw in fuses there are also replacements fitting in those sockets which work like “modern” fuses (they look similar but have a big (usually black) and a small (usually red) button on the front).
There is a concept called *Bestandsschutz* (~”grandfather clause”): If you make any *changes*, you need to bring it up to current code, which indeed requires an “FI-Schutzschalter” (RCD / GFCI / RCCB / ALCI) for all sockets. But as long as it stays the way it is, it is in many cases enough for it to have been compliant to the then-current code back when it was installed or last modified.
But if the faulty cable merely shorted live to neutral, an RCD wouldn’t have tripped anyway. And explicitly switching off a circuit (And securing it! Otherwise, someone unaware of your plans might turn it back on) should always be the first step, rather than relying on your assumption that something has tripped, purely based on the observation that something no longer has power.
This is old, but not dangerous.
Fuses like these are meant to protect the cables inside the walls etc. from burning due to overloading.
No fuse, not even the newest models, will differentiate whether you plugged in a 1.000 Watt device or just a burning wire. And how should it?
Without enough information given, I can only assume about your situation.
If the damage in the cable is at the low voltage side after the converter, the voltage regulator itself will likely prevent higher amperage than it is rated for, thus not even exceeding the 100 Watts or something similar. Nothing can detect such a fault, when watching voltage and current at the fuses, it would look like a 100 W device operating at full load.
If the damage is at the 230 V side, it all depends on what is shorting out. It might just be a contact between phase and null, with small enough surface to have high enough resistance to heat that cable up before high currents can flow.
This might look like some heating equipment, as it does nothing else.
Melting cable doesn’t mean there was a short circuit, so fuses might not have anything to do.
To feel safer you replace this old one time fuses with more modern ones (automatic). Just remember that there are different fuses, with different characteristics.
You can just use devices you plug into the socket to make it more safe.
Don’t use cheap or broken laptop chargers! Fuses aren’t an excuse to not care about what you plug into an outlet…
It is not a cheap update you can do while someone is living in the apartment. Most probably there are no 3 wire cables installed in the wall. And these are required for FI.
Can I hijack this post to ask: Do apartments in Germany have fuses instead of breakers in the “breaker box”?
This concept is new to me (despite knowing it exists here beforehand).
I doubt you have the expertise to evaluate the installation. You shold worry more that your own devices are OK. If you want an RC you can pick one for 15 € and plug it in an outlet.
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