Herbert Graf wrote:

> On Mon, 2011-04-04 at 21:22 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
>> Olin Lathrop wrote:
>>=20
>>> Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
>>>> Recently there have been some comments about my "neck of the
>>>> woods". There seems to be a confusion about what this is. Not that
>>>> it matters much, in general, what people think what it is, but
>>>> here I'd like to know what country you're talking about :)
>>>=20
>>> I thought you were in Argentina, no?
>>=20
>> No. Brazil it is, but I've received some pretty ugly stuff (offlist)
>> that seemed to imply still something else.=20
>>=20
>> Still I don't know what Herbert was writing about :)
>=20
> For some reason I had in my mind you were in mainland Europe, I must
> have confused you with someone else.=20
>=20
> Sorry about that.

No problem at all. Differently to what some seem to think, it is
possible to consider several countries "one's country" :)

> How is electrical stuff done in Brazil? Is it more like NA or more
> like Europe (or something entirely different?))

Brazil has a mixture of own techniques with influences mainly from
Europe and the USA. I think the European influences are the older ones
and are mainly because of immigration, whereas the US influences seem to
be more recent and mainly because of commerce and business
relationships.=20

Construction is mainly brick, so burying conduits in brick walls (like
you were talking about) is similar to Europe. The switches that go into
the wall are more similar to the US in style, but recently they forced a
standardization on their own type of outlets. (But the boxes that go
into the wall still are and will remain to be 2"x4" and 4"x4".) Voltages
are regionally different and all over the place (here it's 127V phase to
center, 220V phase to phase), and supply is usually (European-style)
3-phase, with smaller houses only getting one or two of them. Adherence
to code is quite poor, and there's almost no enforcement. It now starts
to be common in new houses to have ground in most or even all outlets,
but that's a very recent development. You still get appliances like
fridges and microwaves with a two-prong plug and a separate ground wire
(which usually isn't connected to anything -- most people don't even
notice it :). Like in NA, electrical supply is taken to the houses
through wires on poles.

Gerhard
--=20
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