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But you savor the meal more if you take your time!

Hutch mentioned keeping the fork in the left hand all the time (assuming a right-handed person), but the other quirky habit that even as a Brit I can never understand is trying to pile food on a fork that's upside down!

Many Brits will hold the fork (in their left hand) with the convex surface uppermost. They stab a piece of meat on the end of the fork, and then still keeping it upside down use the knife to pile potato, bits of vegetable, and anything else from the plate on top. There then comes a kind of balancing act to transfer this volcano-shaped load from plate to mouth without spilling any!

Talk about making things difficult for yourself!

Some places, namely more urban utilities, rented electric water heaters that are genuine flat rate (my grandmother's was).

In the town my brother lives in there are a number of single family houses with two meters, one for normal electical useage, the other specifically for heating (I don't think water, just radiant).

PS: Rumour has it that our utility (Hydro One in Ontario, Canada), is going to switch to dual rate meters.

[This message has been edited by classicsat (edited 08-25-2004).]

We have a similar system in Britain which has gone under the name of "Economy 7" for many years.

The way it's done these days is to use a meter with dual-dials and a separate control connection (all electronic on the modern digital meters, but on older mechanical dials it actually operates a tiny solenoid to change the linkage).

There's then either a PoCo-owned timeswitch or a remote-controlled (telemetry) switch which changes the meter to the lower rate at night, generally midnight to 7 a.m. in winter, 1 a.m. to 8 a.m. in summer (i.e. 7 hours of cheap-rate, hence the Economy 7 name).

A contactor is also energized during the 7-hour period to apply power to a separate distribution panel which feeds storage heaters. The heaters are thus charged automatically at night, but the whole house benefits from the lower rate as well.

Night rate is typically around half of the normal day rate. At the moment I'm paying 6.75 pence per kW/h day and 2.87p. per unit night (plus tax).

An older variant of this system did actually use two separate meters, and was commonly known as "White meter" for the color of the cheap-rate meter. This had the same timeswitch/contactor arrangement to charge storage heaters at night, but the main distribution panel remained on the normal tariff all the time.

Trumpy,
I was a little confused when i saw the date on this thread, however, it became clear when I saw your reply which was made with the benifit of hindsight. Quite apart from remonstrating with yourself about making assumptions, it is clear that you have a passion for the trade and an associated thirst for more information. It is something that I share and by the looks of it, it is endemic in this forum. Unfortunately, it seems to be the preserve of only a minority of those involved in the electro-technical sector. Perhaps most people are sparks just for the job rather than for some vocational reason.