Pictures of electrical wiring

I have uploaded many pictures of electrical wiring to this blog. Now it has started to become difficult to find the pictures related to specific titles such as the wiring, etc. It will become worse as I send more post and pictures.

Picture 1 – Electrical DB wiring



Because of that, I will periodically send a post that will become an “anchor” for a specific title.

This title on wiring is one such example. Instead of being a normal post, it will generally function as the index page for posts and pictures of electrical wiring that I have sent to this blog.

So when you are looking for pictures of electrical wiring works, you can either look at the post list (i.e. BLOG ARCHIVE) at the right column of this blog page, or you can come to this post directly and scroll down to see if there is anything that interest you.

Of course, there is another way, which is by clicking the relevant “label” titles at the bottom of each page.

However, using the “label” will open all posts that have been tagged with that label in a single page. Readers with slow connections may not like the waiting when the pages are heavily loaded with graphics such is this blog.

Moreover, if multiple “labels” are opened simultaneously, readers with small RAMs may cause their computers to crawl, or even hang.

The best way is to come to an anchor post like this, which provides a short summary to posts related to a specific broad title. The graphic loading is also much less heavy because only one or two pics are added for each related post.

I have already send anchor post for other titles:

Temporary electrical installation pictures
Temporary electrical earthing pictures
Temporary lighting installation pictures
Electrical installation pictures


I will add more if there are more that three or four posts related to a specific title.

Now let’s get back to the DB wiring pictures.

Picture 1 show a house electrical DB with the cover removed.

Taken from this slightly lower angle, you can see the LIVE busbar of the DB.

Picture 2 below shows the wiring from the higher position. Here the outgoing wiring of the MCB’s (miniature circuit breakers) can be seen more clearly.

Picture 2 – Distribution Board Picture



I will not talk in detail about this wiring here. You can read a more detail description of the wiring at another post, 1-Phase ELCB Connection Pictures.

There are more pictures of this electrical DB there also.

Diagram 3 – Lighting layout and wiring details



Prior to installation of the electrical wiring conduit and trunking, the position of all fittings including the light switches, the socket outlets and lighting points must be determined.

Diagram 3 above shows examples where the light switches should be located.

I have sent a post with some pictures on the installation of lighting switches for office buildings here, Light switch installation pictures.

If you are looking for house electrical pictures, I have a post here, Home wiring pictures.

This article is not very good. It was actually a draft that I did at the time I started this blog. Suddenly something else demanded my urgent attention. That was why I did not have now post sent to this blog for a few months.

I posted the draft article anyway. I will come back to it some time soon with the final version and some pictures that may be useful for the readers.

Picture 4 – Internal wiring of an office DB showing the installation and wiring work in progress



Picture 4 shows the internal wiring of a DB for lighting and small power.

This DB was installed at a multi-storey office building. The internal wiring that has been done as shown was actually done at the factory.

That is why you cannot see any outgoing wiring from the MCB’s at the upper part of the panel.

You can see more pictures of this DB and other switchboards at this post, Switchboard earthing pictures.

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Most Basic Principles of House Electricity

This post will try to make you understand the most basic principles of house electricity. Since this blog is intended for beginners in electrical works, and for readers who seek to understand electrical system enough so they can do their own work, I think it should start with materials that can help readers understand whatever materials I post here as smoothly as possible.

It is actually quite easy to understand electrical and the simple diagrams below will show that.

Diagram 1 – The most basic principle of electricity
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What does this diagram say?

It says that there is a battery, a length of wiring cable connecting the positive terminal of the battery to one of the incandescent lamp terminal.

Then there is another length of cable connecting the other terminal of the lamp back to the battery at the negative terminal.

You may have played with toys that work with this very basic electric circuit when you were young.

You take one AA-size battery, a pair of whatever metal wires you can lay your hands on and a small bulb. Any bulb you can dig out of battery-powered electric toys will do.

Connect the battery and the bulb with the metal wires as in shown the diagram.

The electricity will flow and the bulb will light up.

There you have it, a working electric circuit.

Electrons flow from the positive terminal of the battery through the upper metal wire (shown by the red-colored arrow) to the top terminal of the bulb (i.e. load).

They flow through the bulb and come out of the lower terminal to the lower metal wire to go back to the battery but at the negative terminal.

Then they flow out through the battery positive terminal again, and the same process repeats.

These electrons flow round and round in the “loop” continuously.

The flow of electrons carries energy just like the water flow carry energy at the hydroelectric power station.

The filament inside the incandescent lamp converts the energy contained in the continuous electron flow into heat and light.

Such a long story, but where is the principle, right?

The principle is that there must be a complete circuit path or a loop for the electrons to circle around in a continuous stream between the source of electricity (i.e. the battery) and the electric load (i.e. the incandescent lamp).

If you break the loop at any point along this path, then the electrons will stop flowing. Therefore, the lamp will stop glowing.

Just like I said, it is easy. The only problem is that you cannot see the electrons flowing in an electric circuit like you see race cars racing (flowing continuously in a loop) in a Formula 1 race circuit. But it is very similar. No flow, no show.

Now let go to the second principle shown by the following diagram. Don’t worry. This is the last one.

Diagram 2 – The most basic principle of electrical power wiring



This one is the most basic principle of a house wiring installation.

Picture 3 below shows a typical house electric meter.

Picture 3 – House electric meter


If you look closely at the picture of the electric meter, you will notice that there is actually a pair of electric cables connecting to the meter panel. These electric cables come from the electric poles in front of the house (See Picture 4 below).

Picture 4 – Electric poles


So this satisfies the first principle above – the electrons need a complete loop path.

Now your source of electricity in Diagram 2 is the electric supply company who gives you the two terminal connections, just like the battery gives you two terminal connections.

With these two connections to the power source, you can make electricity work for you, right?

Well, not so right. Because this time the source of electricity is so strong, it can burn a house and kill the house occupants, literally.

It can kill without even causing the fire first.

Therefore, to make this strong power source work for you, you need to be able to control it any time you like.

You also need to be able to kill it before it causes danger or damages.

You need also the ability to shut off the flow of this dangerous energy into your house if your house wiring is not prepared enough to receive it safely, or to handle it.

That is the second principle, as shown by the diagram:

1. The switch gives you the ability to control. You can turn the lamp on and off with the switch.

2. While the fuse will automatically shut off the dangerous energy flow into the house when the energy flow behavior exceeds certain limits that you have set into the fuse.

These two make up the principles of a house wiring system. If you understand this, then you can understand any house electrical wiring.

However, the above is not yet enough to keep users from getting electric shock.

So, there is a third principle which I will continue here in a few days. But you can read the long version of at this post, 1-Phase ELCB Connection Pictures. If the materials there are too technical for you, there are a number of ELCB pictures there that you can see.

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Electric Meters

Who would be interested in the pictures of electric meters? I do not know either. However, electric meters are an important component in electrical installations. That is how the energy consumed by an installation is measured and recorded. With this record, the owner of a factory, as an example, can be charged for what he uses.

Picture 1 – Single phase house electric meter


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I set up this blog about three months ago. After one or two posts, I started having difficulties in allocating the time needed to accelerate its development progress into speed.

Only now I can start looking this blog again. So I will start rebuilding it with materials that I already have in my collections. I have lots of pictures. However, I do not want to dump them all here.

There should be a story to it, like a script so that the pictures will have more useful meanings to the readers who look at them.

Again, as I already said before, this blog is for beginners. Beginners do not necessarily mean young people or students.

Building managers who need to know a little bit about a few electrical things in order to solve a few management issues, or an accountant who desperately need to know how some electrical components look like because one of her client’s accounts shows a huge price tag for those components.

This blog is for these types of readers. How I arrange and present the materials here will have this type of audience as the main objective.

Now and then, the materials presented may get “heavy” or highly technical. Many times this cannot be avoided. Components like distance protection relays cannot be explained with descriptions anywhere resembling those for simple components such as 13A switched socket outlets, or the electric meters as in the title of this post.

However, for those readers who “desperately” need to know something but cannot find it here and do not know how to dig it out from the internet “jungle”, you can just leave a short comment on this blog.

You can get my assurance that I will answer your questions as soon as I can. That means two days the fastest, and one week at the worst case.

Now let us get back to the electric meter topic.

I am not going to talk too much on this component today because it is the first day I am back to this blog. I will update this post with additional information soon.

This electric meter is from a 3-bedroom medium-cost terrace house unit. This type of houses almost always uses a single phase supply. So this meter is a single phase meter.

You can see that the meter is mounted on a wooden panel. This is very conventional. The oldest meter panels that I have ever seen already uses this type of meter panels and they are still used even today.

However, nowadays a few other types of meter panels are in the market that are acceptable to the supply authorities. You will be able to see the other variations here in future.

The meter panel in the picture may look simple to some readers, but since we are on the topic, I would not want any reader leave this post without a basic understanding of how those things on the panel work.

I have explained a little bit about the meter itself.

However there are two more major components on the board: one you can see and the other you cannot see in this picture.

The Cut-out Fuse

The one you can see is a cutout fuse, which is the black component beside the meter. The cutout fuse is just a fuse. When the electric current flowing through the fuse exceed the rating of the fuse, then the fusing element inside the black casing will blow, cutting off the supply to the meter.

So the meter does not run when the house is without power.

Picture 2 below show a closer view of the meter and the cutout fuse.

Picture 2 – Closer view of cutout fuse



There are two parts of the cutout fuse, which you may see by closer observation of the picture. One is a top part, which is inserted into a lower part. The other is the fuse holder that forms the base that is screwed firmly onto the wooden panel. One of the incoming supply cables is connected to the cutout fuse and it is terminated at the lower part, the fuse holder.

The fusing element, which is a thin conductor wire that melts and breaks the path of electricity to the meter (and therefore to the house electric distribution panel), is actually installed inside the top part of the cutout fuse assembly, the “fuse carrier” as it is often called.

If the house occupant do not pay the electricity bill within the time as required by the electricity supply company, then the company may cut off the electric supply to the house.

This is where they cut off the supply, the cutout fuse. That is why it have been called that way, “ CUT OUT”. The supply company just pulls out the fuse carrier from the fuse holder and takes it back to their office.

The Neutral Link

The second component that is mounted on the meter beside the meter unit is called the neutral link. I am sorry you cannot see it here in this picture. I will upload another picture of a meter panel that will show this neutral link.

As you can see, there is a pair of incoming black cables to the meter panel. One of the black cables is connected to the cutout fuse as already described above.

The other cable is connected to the neutral link. This is the neutral cable, or also called “return cable”, or “return wire”. While the one connected to the cutout fuse is the “live wire”, or the “phase conductor”.

The neutral link is a connection method similar to the fuse, but its connection is without the fuse. It is done with a solid connection bar. Therefore, this side of the electric circuit cannot automatically break the circuit.

Then why is it provided there? This is for the purpose of maintenance and repair work. Sometimes, for safety reasons, a repair work necessitates that the house wiring is fully isolated from the supply company’s incoming circuit. In that case, both the cutout fuse and the neutral like is taken out, disconnecting the house wiring from both sides of the incoming supply cables.

The meter panel cabling

There are four cable connections to the meter panel.

1. The incoming phase conductor (one of the two incoming supply cables) connects to the cutout fuse terminal.

2. The second incoming cable is connected to the neutral link.

3. Phase cable from the meter unit outgoing phase terminal to the house distribution panel.

4. Neutral cable from the meter unit neutral outgoing terminal to the house distribution panel.

Within the meter panel itself, also four cable connections are needed with two other cables involved.

These are to link both the second terminals of cutout fuse and neutral link to the incoming meter panel terminals.

The cabling work that is visible from the front of the meter panel is basically incoming cables.

Other cables are hidden below the wooden panels as much as possible. That is why the panel is constructed with some hollow space underneath to contain the cabling work so it is hidden from view.

The mounting location

The height of the meter panel mounting is also decided so it is above the reach of access by hand. This arrangement is necessary for safety reasons. Anyone who wants to work on the panel needs a ladder of some kind.

This is necessary because most of the time the meter is located at the front of the house to facilitate the billing by the electric company. But this location can present a real shock hazard if the panel is not effectively placed out of reach.

Mounting height is only one method. Other means of placing it out of reach such as locking inside a small cabinet with glass window is also an acceptable by the supply authority.


That’s all the spare time I have today. I think I have covered most of the issues on the electric meter panels. If there is anything left, I will pick it up again in the next post. There are one or two more pictures on the electric meters that I need to upload also.

See you.


Jimmy Lee Wan Seng


Copyright http://electricalinstallationwiringpicture.blogspot.com/ Electric Meters

Home wiring pictures

This post provides some brief description of home wiring with the help of a few pictures. This time it will be just a basic description, a skeleton that can provide a structure for my future posts on this topic. Future post will explain in more details.

Picture 1 - Incoming electricity supply cables on concrete poles

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The electrical current that goes into our home comes from the electricity supply company's distribution network, usually in the form of overhead cables running on concrete poles (Picture 1 above) or using cables buried one meter below the ground.

When the cables reach a residential house, they usually enter the house through the front entrance and connect to a meter panel (See Picture 2). Together with the meter on the panel is also a cut-out fuse. The meter and the fuse usually belong to the supply company.

From the meter panel the electrical cables are routed to the home electrical panel. On the panel is usually an isolation switch, a leakage protection circuit breaker and a few outgoing fuses or outgoing circuit breakers (See Picture 3).

From the outgoing fuses or circuit breakers the wiring cables run above the ceiling, inside or on the surface of the wall, or concealed inside the concrete floor to go the lamps, ceiling fans, socket outlets and other equipment like the toilet exhaust fans in our homes.

When a home user connects an electrical appliance to a socket outlet, the connection is usually made by the use of an electrical cord. One end of the cord has a plug unit (sometimes the plug unit contains a fuse) that is inserted to the power socket (i.e. wall plug). The other end will be plugged to another socket already built-in on the appliance.

Now and then the location of the electrical appliance needs to be quite a few meters away from the wall socket outlet. The electrical cord provided with the appliance is usually between one to one and a half meters long. In these cases home users usually purchase an extension cord to connect between the wall socket and the appliance's electrical cord (Picture 4 shows an example of electrical extension cords).

From the viewpoint of the electrical current flow, the supply uses only two wires. That is why in some countries or regions we can see only two big wires coming down from the electric pole to a house. One of them is called the live wire, "hot" wire or phase wire. It is this wire that is "dangerous".

The second wire is called the neutral wire or the "return" wire. The electric current flow into the house will come out again (i.e. return) in the same magnitude and goes back into the supply company's transformer or generator. This electrical path forms a complete "loop", like a circle. The continuous and circulating flow of this electrical current is what makes the filament inside the house incandescent lamp burns and produce light that brightens our house.

This behavior of the home electrical system brightens and enriches our lives. When used and handled properly, electricity is very useful and friendly. It is however very powerful and dangerous, and therefore must be treated with respect.

With the two wires described above, we can have electricity in our home that can keep our food fresh in the refrigerator and replace the candles to light up the house during the night.

However with just these two wires, it is like driving a car at high speed without the brake. Driving the car without a brake is extremely dangerous even on an empty freeway that has no traffic light for hundreds of kilometers at three in the morning. As in driving, we need to step on the brake now and then to slow down, or during an emergency.

In a home electrical wiring system, this braking is accomplished through a third wire, the earth wire. Many electrical terms are commonly used for this wire such as earthing wire, ground wire, chassis wire or protective wire.
In a house, this earth wire is almost always colored green or green with yellow stripes. The wire connects the metal casing of the electrical appliance in our homes to the "earth body". (Really, it is actually connected to the huge mass of the earth.)

When the "hot" or live wire somehow come into contact with the outer metal casing of your washing machine, for example, then the fuse at the distribution board will immediately blow, stopping the current flow to the metal casing of the washing machine so we do not get the shock, a fatal shock actually. Where the distribution board uses a circuit breaker instead, the circuit breaker immediately trips, cutting off the supply just like the fuse does.

If the green wire is broken, or it does not connect properly along its path to the earth body, then the electrical power has no brake. The person touching the washing machine's metal casing can get electrocuted.

So do treat the electrical wiring and electrical appliances in your home with respect. Safety comes first. In future articles I will explain more on the "earth wire" and I will also give more tips and techniques on how to make sure your home electrical system is safe for you and your family.

Picture 1 - Incoming electricity supply cables on concrete poles

Picture 2 - Supply authority's meter panel at house entrance or main door

As you can see in Picture 1, the cable coming from the concrete pole is a twisted two-core cable. Two-core means there are actually two lengths of cables in the cable set and they are twisted around each other. The twisting construction of the cable is primarily to make it better to handle, more flexible to bend around and also make it to install on to of the electric poles.

Observe that the cable run along the terrace houses just below the ceiling at the external front wall of the houses. That's why you see in Picture 1 that the cable drops from the concrete pole to only the first house unit in that row.

The energy meter is located approximately near and above the main door, just outside the house. The utility company's meter readers can read the meter every month without disturbing the house tenants. The meter you see in the picture is one of the conventional types. The meter reader needs to get close enough to be able to visually read the meter reading.

However nowadays a much more hi-tech type of meter is getting more popular. I will provide you with a picture of this type soon. The new type is more like a remote control kind of thing. The meter reader does not need to read the energy meter visually. He carries with him a handheld unit the size of a walkie-talkie.
In front of the house main gate he just points the device towards the meter unit and presses the "read" button. The data of the meter is transmitted automatically to the handheld unit, and the latest energy bill is immediately issued to the home customer. He does not have to open the house main gate to get close enough to the meter on the wall to read it.

Back to the meter panel. The supply is tapped off from the horizontal cables, and run down to black components near the meter. One is the service fuse and the other is the "Neutral" link. The meter is separated from the incoming supply by these two components.
So when you do not pay the electricity bill, the company takes off the service fuse and takes it back to their office. So the electrical circuit is broken on the "Live" side, cutting off the supply. The good news is your electric meter will not go up any more.

From the meter unit, two wires will connect the meter to the consumer electrical panel inside the house, which is also called the consumer unit or distribution board (DB). You cannot see the connection between the two because connection to and from the meter is done inside the wooden panel that is used to mount the meter, fuse and the neutral link.
From behind the wooden panel the cables run concealed inside the wall to the electrical panel. The cables can actually be run on the wall or ceiling surface, but in the example inside the pictures, they are run concealed inside the walls.

Picture 3 - Home electrical panel

Picture 4 - Electrical extension cords

Picture 5 - Electrical appliances connected to wall socket

Picture 6 - The green "earth wire"

I know a few more pictures will help some readers understand the house wiring better. I will upload a few more suitable pics as soon as I can. There will also be more comments to the pictures similar to what I have done to Picture 2 above. But I have to rush off now.

Will see you again after a few days.

Note: You can also see more pictures of electrical wiring by visiting this post, Pictures of electrical wiring.

Copyright Electrical Installation Wiring Pictures - Home wiring pictures