The final steps to getting my electricity connected sounded easy: get a certificate from the builders to confirm that the wiring and circuit breakers conformed to local regulations, and set up an account with a (retail) supplier of electricity. Drop the certificate at the (wholesale) suppliers of electricity, make an appointment to have them install the meter, and watch the watts roll in.

This is Belgium, though. Hopes are dashed while you wait, 1 hour service. At first, the person I spoke to at the electricity company could not find the certificate I sent them by mail. After a search lasting about ten minutes, he found it, only to say: “It’s not correct.” Of course it isn’t, being correct would have been too easy.

“What’s wrong with it?” I ask.

“It’s three times 230 volt,” he says.

I had thought he understood that I was a clueless consumer of electricity, not an actual electrician, so I had to prompt him. “What should it be?” 230 volts sounded quite good to me, my needs are humble. A few volts to recharge some batteries for my camera and my new doorbell, perhaps a few more to power a router and a computer. “It should either be two times 230 volt or 440 volt,” he responds. He’s lost me, and he knows he’s won.

“And has the digging been done?” he wants to know. Trenches have been dug, yes. Cables have been put in them, and covered over with dirt. I’ll be buggered If I can say whether any specific works have been carried out, so I just confirm that the digging has indeed been done. I hope.

So I need to get a new certificate from the builders, yes? Yes. And then I take that to the electrical company, and they’ll install my meter, and I’ll have electricity, yes? No. I also need to give them the yellow book.

“What yellow book?” I ask. “The one left on top of the box,” he responds. Which box? There’s a box for the circuit breakers, but I haven’t seen any yellow book. “I’ll have a look,” I say. I looked. There was no yellow book.

So now it’s back to square something-or-other, getting another certificate from the builders (a different certificate which will no doubt bring difficulties of its own) and finding the mysterious yellow book (a treasure I expect to be the product of an unlikely, expensive and time-consuming chain of events).

Life was so much easier when electricity was simply something that fell out of tiny holes in the wall.

Categories: Construction
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