"Plug ugly"

[bellinghman]

When it comes to mains plugs, the British Type G is probably the gold standard. Three pin so you can't insert it the wrong way, with socket shutters so kiddies can't poke into the live socket hole, part insulated shafts so you can't get a shock from the pins, fused so a short in the wire can't start a fire, it's been built with a safety-first attitude. It says "Yes, this electricity stuff is powerful and dangerous, and we need tiger bars to keep it contained".

You can also swing one on a cable as an effective anti-burglar weapon.

And that's its problem: it's bloody massive. On our recent trip, we had a bunch of universal plug adaptors with us, and for one item we took the Euro mains lead, because it was lighter than the UK plug lead and we'd be able to use it anyway.

So it was with some interest that we encountered the Australian socket for the first time. For our adaptors, using a .au socket meant bringing out the US two blade section, and gently twisting the blades so they were angled apart. And into the socket and hey - unlike the US case itself, where the weight of the adaptor would pull the whole thing down, these stayed where put.

The downside was that on a double socket, we couldn't get two in - the sockets are set much closer together. Happily, there were enough sockets around we could always make use of three adaptors.

(As for HK - they use the Type G - so we used the adaptors for that Euro lead).

Comments

[khrister.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, overengineer the plug instead of having reasonable mains wiring. :)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

'instead'? What's with this 'instead'?

(And as yet another level of defence, these days house wiring must only be done by a qualified electrician.)

[hobnobs.livejournal.com]

Not strictly true. Like-for-like replacement is still able to be done, so I was able to replace the light fittings and do some socket work in my place without having to go through the rigamarole of Building Notifications and the like, and mains wiring can be done by unqualified electricians if they are Part P certified as a competent person. (So DIY/home improvement people can still work on their homes as long as they pay someone who is able to give them a certificate to say they are competent...)

Where more than one utility is in the same room such as kitchens/bathrooms/boiler room/etc is where it starts to get complicated. At this point a new set of rules kick in, and certification/qualification is mandatory. (And probably inspection and testing too.)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

OK, 'certified' rather than 'qualified', and with loopholes. But it's certainly tighter than it used to be only a few years back. I believe bellinghwoman has in the past worked on a mains distribution board, which is almost certainly forbidden her these days. And I've done work on lighting circuits with no actual clue what I was doing when I started (Electrical Engineering being the least liked part of my degree course).

[hobnobs.livejournal.com]

*nod* Certified is certainly a better word. :)

Hmmm, it occurs to me that I'm not sure how MDB work fits in with Part P for things like just changing a dead MCB. (or a fuse, if it's really old school.)
As much as I can't stand the work, I was "lucky" enough (Part P wise) to do an Electrician Apprenticeship when I left school so Part P certification doesn't apply to me for the most part. I know enough to understand exactly what it is I'm doing, more than enough to know I can't stand doing it, and so avoid it if I can possibly help it. :)

[nojay.livejournal.com]

That's about the size of it, in fact. After WWII Britain was effectively broke. We had given the US all our money to buy weapons, fuel, food etc. to fight the Germans and because of that we couldn't afford to buy enough copper to wire houses properly for electricity supply. The ring mains system we adopted was designed to use less copper wire for the same current capacity but that meant fusing each device separately rather than running a single length of three-core wire between the fusebox and each socket. If you want to blame anyone, blame Mean Mr. Moustache, it's his fault.

Since a lot of devices already in use didn't have fuses fitted it was decided to put a fuse in the plug -- that allowed for low-current devices like lamps to have a low-rated 1A or 2A fuse and things like 3kW heaters to have a max-rated fuse of 13A; the fuse rating matched the device rather than having a 30A fuse (nowadays a GFCI aka RCD) at the fusebox as the only safety backstop.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

"rather than running a single length of three-core wire between the fusebox and each socket"

The upside is that it ends up being a lot easier to add extra sockets or light fittings with a bus format.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see the difference.