Went to Hornbach and a basic plastic box to put in the wall is 20 francs. A three prong socket 23 francs if I bulk buy 10 of them. All material online seems to be produced by a monopoly called feller and I bet they mass produce it all in China and screw the Swiss customer over.
Long story short, am updating all the sockets and switches in the house I just bought as well as adding a few sockets here and there. If I go to Hornbach I'll have to sell a kidney to afford the new electrical installation for my house. I already went to France to buy the electrical cables and the RJ45 sockets, but the Swiss specific stuff is an issue - electrical wall boxes are too small in France for Swiss sockets. Light switches I'll buy in France as those are fine and I don't intend on installing new light switches, just more sockets everywhere.
Any online shop that does the trick? I think only Rwanda and El salvador has those similar three pronged triple sockets and i don't think they have many online shops available there
Or hint and tips on how to shop around Europe to get that install cheaper.
Thank you!
Did you try conrad.ch ? it is a german shop (only online now) trying to sell the same cheap stuff they sell in Germany, with the Swiss overprice bonus (bonus for them). But it may be cheaper.
They are reliable, but they sell both crap and good stuff.
Shop around (online)
Quite a lot of places have regular discounts on Feller products from time to time.
You didn't state which specific wall socket (part numbers and web links are good) you looked at in Hornbach so it would be difficult to tell you where you can get a cheaper alternative and Feller make loads of alternatives.
Feller are expensive but good quality and are made in Horgen near Zurich.
A good reason to buy them is there is a lot of interchangeabilty in the sockets and ten or twenty years down the line you can buy a new one or you can buy a different one.
For example those seem to do the trick:
Prise Kallysto.line.UP 3xT13 parallèle blanche
https://www.hornbach.ch/shop/Prise-K...6/article.html
I would need about 15 of those
I need some dimmer switches about 4 for the moment, but as said will likely buy in France although if I want to get my electrical passed so that might be an issue. So need to figure this out, otherwise this is what I'd like
Variateur rotatif de découpage de phase 40-600W Edizio Due encastré blanc
https://www.hornbach.ch/shop/Variate...5/article.html
Then multiple on and off switches and I need to drill a wall in concrete to put a plug and then it's dry wall boxes. About 3-4 boxes, but here I can cough up and buy Hornbach.
Thank you! I'll also check thst German website
Would you need to have said work certified by a qualified electrician? If so, that will cost you too.
No. Anything past the fuses does not need to be certified.
Tom
To be honest, the Hornbach price is pretty good. You would be doing well if you found them cheaper.
Make sure you get the right sort of dimmer. There are many varieties and they don't all work with LED lamps.
One of ours broke recently and a new equivalent was about 270 CHF so instead, I fitted a normal Feller push-button switch but set it as non-latching and stuck a zigbee dimmer module which I had spare behind it.
Now it is push on, push off, and press and hold for dimming and brightening and as an added bonus with the smart home capability.
it goes off automatically on a school day after the kids have left for school as they were always leaving the lights on.
It can be controlled with Alexa.
Unfortunately, we've not found cheaper than Hornbach or Conrad for Swiss-specific stuff. The prices are shocking, sometimes more than 5X more expensive than the British equivalent. My father-in-law is a British-certified electrician, we have him buy whatever doesn't need to be Switzerland specific, and then cough up Swiss prices for the rest. We've not found a better solution.
Really? At our 2 previous electrical inspections (Kanton Aargau) the inspector went into all the rooms, especially the bathrooms. There was a problem with a wall socket to close to the shower and one too close to the toilet. Both had to be corrected to pass the inspection
Good thing we haven't had an inspection in Ticino as if they inspect all the bathrooms, the wall plug situation in some cases is similar to what we had before.
You sure about this ?
You may not need a certified electrician to do the work, but it certainly needs to be inspected and passed by a certified electrician for the EBIR regulations in force.
Thank you all for the replies, really helpful. Mentally knowing I can't really get cheaper makes it somewhat more digestible to pay those prices. I'll stick with Hornbach, their delivery times are quite impressive and I will just get my set of 15 and close my eyes. Everything else, France...
I only fitted a new socket so far in the laundry room and after paying 50 francs for an external plug with boxing I sat back in disbelief telling my wife I'll hold off before doing rest of the house. Funny thing, the old washing machine in the house was connected to a three phase cable, only ever saw that in industrial buildings in the UK, apparently a colleague of mine told me it's a thing in switzerland I was feeling nervous operating on that...
The fuse box has giant ceramic switches - I am waiting for a quote to replace that antique board by a sparky here. I was told to get ready for a shock price wise, if it's outrageously expensive will bring my business partner in the UK (an electrician) to do the job and then pay someone to try and get it certified here.
I think only Geneva has single phase service, we certainly have 2 3P 16A circuits, and 3 1P 10A circuits. One of the 3P I have split into 3x 1P (16A).
Tom
Yes.
When we had our first and only RASI inspection, two years ago, the only stuff that was a problem was the stuff that I had never touched.
Tom
While there's not just Hornbach and not just Feller, in the end the prices are more or less the same so yes...
When I replaced some old switches in my current apartment I got back some money by selling the old parts on Ricardo. Old power sockets without recesses can not be used in new installations, but there is a market for them as "used replacement parts".
We have a house built by a German builder and all the tradespeople were from Germany except the electrician. The builder uses local electricians because they know the rules in Switzerland and in the end it might cost more to get the work done cheaper and try to get it certified.
With an old house old electrics are often the case. All updates including material and labour can be deducted from your taxes.
It took a while to find him but we have a very good electrician and like most electricians he gets a trade discount on materials. I notice the price we pay for materials is fair. Of course, some items are terribly expensive, like outdoor sockets. We need a new one for our rain water pump system. But to try and do electrics cheaply without the proper expertise could be potentially dangerous and if not up to code will cost to fix it.
You need to do them correctly, you do not need to have your work certified.
Ticino is no problem, when they did the RASI two years ago, only some stuff that I had never touched was a problem (a couple sockets with swapped P-N, a heater connection to the shower)
Tom
We also had problems only with the things that were done by Swiss electricians. The quality of their work in our new build was shockingly bad*, when my father-in-law visited shortly after we moved in he had to correct a few things as they were serious safety hazards. All in all we have been underwhelmed with any work we've seen done my Swiss electricians, and not only in our place, but friends' places as well. I trust my partner and father-in-law much more than any local to do a good job that complies with general safety standards. I don't doubt that there are good Swiss electricians out there, but we've not managed to find one.
*My favourite was when my husband stopped by our place during the construction phase to check up on how things were going, and he found an electrician's apprentice who clearly didn't know how to read building plans installing a light switch in what was eventually going to be the inside of the shower cubicle. You would not believe how hard it was to convince the guy he was doing something wrong. He then wanted to simply knock a hole in the wall and install the light switch on the opposite side of the wall so he wouldn't have to re-route the wiring. This would have meant the light switch to the bathroom would have been in the middle of the wall in the entrance corridor, about 1.5m away from where it was supposed to be. It took some serious arguing to get him to relent and install it next to the door to the bathroom, which is what was clearly written on the plan in the first place.
I'm going to have to agree with you - on all points.
The only thing worse than an electrician doing it wrong in the the first place is when they refuse to admit anything is wrong and they only sort it out when you fault-find it and physically show them where they have screwed up.
It's not as if they are charging mates-rates here, is it!
After the RASI inspection, there was a list of things to fix. I did half of them, and the local guy ended up charging me 1/2 of the estimate, CHF 280 vs. 560 estimate, and just signed off on my work.
Same here. I didn't even bother trying to get him to fix it. Easier to do it myself after he left.