In your country,
Are there any laws regarding the Electrical Safety of Second-hand Electrical Appliances, when sold through, say a Second-hand dealer or even a private sale?
If the appliance is only to be used for a collectors collection and it is faulty, how is it marked to say that the equipment has a fault?.

not that i know of..

This could start something!

As with all shops, places selling second-hand goods (Op-Shops, Junk shops, Thrift Stores, call them what you will) come under the auspices of the Trading Standards Authority.

Here's their guidance leaflet about electrical items:
http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/cgi-bin/bglitem.cgi?file=BADV018-1111.txt

I'll give you a chance to read the leaflet before I climb up onto my soapbox.

No such law in the USA, as far as I know. That's a good thing.

Otherwise, I'd have no radio collection to speak of!! :-)

Make sure to inspect the appliance for basic electrical integrity (intact plug, cord, cabinet) before buying, is all.

If the cord's chewed up, replace it when you get home -- had to do that with a clock radio I bought some time back. The flex was totally worn bare at the point where it enters the plastic housing. These things are usually easy to do.

I just skimmed through the laws. Doesn't seem AS bad as most people (including me) make it out to be. I don't see anything in here that would prevent a store from selling a used (in good shape) clock radio or table lamp for a few quid.

Yeah....it's a GOOD thing that the electric fire you buy has a grill in front and that it come with a plug.

Although what happens when you want to buy a damaged appliance to cannibalize for parts to repair yours? I do that all the time. What do you do in that case?

And who in blazes (sorry) would want to buy a USED electric blanket? YUCKKK

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 09-12-2003).]

Paul,
Thanks for that link.
I had to laugh when I read this:
Since when has the actual colour of the wires, made a difference to the safety level of an appliance?.
Sven,
I hear you there about using a second-hand Electric blanket, I can't imagine anything worse!.

I know -- It's absolutely laughable. How could having the old color code make anything unsafe?

They can't even argue that somebody might not understand the old colors and wire the plug incorrectly, because they also specify that you must fit a plug! Besides, even though red/black/green for flexes went out over 30 years ago, most people here still understand it perfectly due the continued use of red and black in fixed house cables.

The part about fitting a new-style BS1363 plug with shielded pins I feel is going too far as well. Sure these plugs offer greater protection, but there's nothing wrong with the old plugs.

Some of these things seem to be left wide open to interpretation by the various Trading Standards offices from across the country. How much of this could actually be legally enforced if someone queried it, I'm not sure. Some districts have already had cases in other areas where it's clear that local inspectors have way overstepped the mark by trying to impose restrictions when they have no authority to do so.

Most junk shops get around a lot of these problems by labeling older equipment as "Collector's item only" or "Not for use" to cover themselves (sgain, what the legal position is, I'm not absolutely certain).

Unfortunately, they sometimes resort to cutting off the cord and throwing it away to make sure the device can't be used without repair. I find this particularly annoying.

Sven mentioned old radios. There are many people who want to restore an old set to as near to its original condition as possible. Disposing of a perfectly serviceable cord means another item to replace, and some types are getting quite hard to find.

I'm not suggesting anyone should continue to use a frayed old cord which is obviously in bad shape (e.g. cotton and rubber 1930s cord with brittle insulation), but there are PVC-insulated cords from the early 1950s which are perfectly all right. Some of those were made with matching gold or brown outer sheaths, and can be very hard to get hold off these days. Deliberately chopping off and disposing of such a cord is, in my not-so-humble-opinion, an act of vandalism!

{OK, rant over for now... }

Paul,
You mentioned that cotton-insulated rubber flex.
We've got miles of it upstairs at work, in the Electrical store (read:Museum).
I'd agree that replacing a perfectly good plug for one with shielded pins is ludicrious and for what, especially if you haven't got kids.
This is off-topic, but, red and black makes sense, it's just like a battery, red is your positive, black is your negative.
I remember when I first saw a piece of flex with the new colours and thought why?.

Just what we're used to I guess. C-H and Tex grew up with red=ground, so I imagine our old code seems as strange to them as blue for neutral seemed to us at first.

By the way, on the positive/negative colors, in the days of d.c. mains in this country half the houses in a street would have been black=positive, red=negative!

The 3-wire 200/400 to 250/500V distribution came down to 2-wire services to each house, half of the homes being tapped from the positive "outer" and the other half on the negative.

The internal wiring always used black as the neutral hence houses run from the negative side of the network had their live, red wires at minus 200/250V with respect to earth.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 09-12-2003).]

Trumpy,

Do you have any old Aussie bakelite plugs with the open fronts to go with that cotton insulated flex?

Fabric-covered flex (not UL Listed by the way) is making a comeback.

The new stuff is covered in a rayon "jacket". Think the conductors are insulated with either rubber or thermoplastic. Expensive stuff (80 cents a foot in a couple of stores I go to)....and seems very chintzy to me...

I will stick with convenvional (UL Listed) thermoplastic zip cord and double-jacketed heavy duty flex for my appliances, thank you.

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 09-12-2003).]

Sven,
Yeah mate!, it's ALL upstairs.
There's thing up there that are so scary, I don't even want to touch them!.
There's a old Refrigeration panel up there that looks like it's from the 50's.
Ever want some flex or anything to match an old radio(all 600V/1000V insulated), just give us a bell, no charge!, just trying to get rid of it.

Here in Austria junk stores, flea markets,... sell whatever junk they want. The buyer has to know whether it's safe. Some time ago I bought a slide projector with a rubber cord which had the bare copper sticking out. The flea market guy plugged it in right in front of my eyes! And he's a policeman!
An ugly thing are old UK appliances without plugs getting to Austria. When I was about 9 or so I found an old reel-to-reel tape recorder at a dumpster. It had a 3x0.5mm2 (or probably the British equivalent, anyway, it was scarily thin) flex without a plug. Back then (prior to ECN) neither me or my dad knew anything about foreign color codes, so we had to guess. Our first guess was according to our good old system: Black is phase. Red is ground. So green should be neutral...
Electric irons have always had cloth cords except for some very cheap 80ies models, and the classic black7white zigzag pattern cord is still available at every hardware store in 2.5m pieces. Individual conductor insulation is rubber. Price used to be 80 Schilling for that piece, which would come to 2,30 Euro/m.

Cotton-covered flex is still widely available here as well. Below the woven-cotton is a rubber outer sheath, with rubber-insulated conductors:



The outer covering comes in a variety of color schemes: Black with yellow threads or zig-zags, black with white, white with black threads, white and gray, etc.

It's only common application these days is for irons, although it used to be quite common for hot plates, curling tongs, and other similar appliances in the past.

Unfortunately for vintage iron collectors (there are some!) you can no longer get it to the old color code.

Twisted twin flex used to be common on some items, but fell out of use with new regulations in the 1970s. There was a heat-resistant version of it, which you can still sometimes see hanging on ceiling lamps in some older houses which had each conductor of the twsited pair individually covered with cotton over the rubber or PVC insulation.

Some weird UK shop still sells twisted cord, I think it's 20 pounds/m!
I have a real old twisted extension cord I suspect it is from the UK as the conductors are black and red inside the brown cotton covering. Still in pristine condition, so I use it to power my old soldering iron and other small items like cell phone charger, radio,...
That type of cord used to be real common before and shortly after WWII here. It was also very common for surface-mount fixed wiring on porcelaine or glass insulators, and there are some houses where such wiring is still in use with 230V, for example a real old farm (oldest parts around 1500, latest extension 1905, along with the first electrical wiring) where some relatives of mine live. The wiring is real beautiful, after I get the film developed I'll post some pics of K&T wiring and porcelaine rotary switches.
Concerning flea markets and other second-hand sales there'S an unwritten law here: if you buy faulty equipment it's _your_ fault, not the seller's, _you_ should have noticed. It's usually a good idea to first visually inspect and the plug in everything before buying. The sellers usually tell you everything works, even if you can clearly see all tubes in the radio are missing for example. Or they say they plugged it in and everything worked fine, even if you can see a dead arcing short in the cord. It's the eastern mentality. Some people say the balcans start in Vienna.

Sadly, there are those in this country (and elsewhere) who would seek to regulate such sales out of existence.

I don't see a problem with the principle of caveat emptor in these situations. If someone at a flea market is selling an item "As seen, no warranties" and the buyer accepts that, then that's his choice. It's then his responsibility to see that the item works as intended and is safe.

More power to Vienna and the Balkans!

There are some specialist supply companies who carry replica vintage wires and cords, along with all sorts of other useful bits and pieces for those of us who restore old equipment.

Antique Electronic Supply (Tempe, AZ) is one such:
www.tubesandmore.com

The only old radios i've come across over here in ireland had non-polarised cords i.e. twisted cable pairs.

My grandmother's old radio which still works to this day was originally connected to a 2-pin plug designed to be engaged in a schuko outlet. A bright spark relative cut it off and fitted a modern BS1363 plug. The cable came loose and fell out tripping the RCD because it somehow contacted earth!... All caused by the cord grip failing to "grab" the twisted pair.

I put on the old plug again and it's happily using an appropriately fused schuko adaptor, as it had been for years! (and to a Schuko socket before that)

Seemed completely stupid to cut it off, it worked just fine!

However, I've seen vintage radios and lamps with similar twisted pair cords connected to BS546 plugs. HUGE black round ones from the 1940s It looks kinda STRANGE

Requiring modern cables and plugs is a bit like asking vintage car collectors to fit bumpers, crush zones, air bags, modern seat belts etc

I did find an ancient 1930s dial telephone here with an RJ11 crimped on cord ... looked VERY wrong!

The correct way to do it: RJ 11 to Ancient 1930s phone socket/junction box to phone Looks a lot more authentic.

Although i guess the fact that when you pick it up you get an modern digital Alcatel exchange dial tone, ring tone and announcements isn't too authentic either

Actually on that point: Does anyone here know if there were different standards for pulse/loop disconnect dialling?

We have an old japanese (we think)phone (60s/70s), rather cool sony thing.. works fine on the direct phone line (Alcatel E10 switch) but won't work at all with our internal system even though it's supposed to understand pulse dialing. The pulses seem to be VERY fast in comparision to anything i've ever heard before. it's almost as fast as tone dialling.


[This message has been edited by djk (edited 09-14-2003).]

Three years ago I was in Cali (Colombia) and staying at my cousin's house.

I noticed his wife's 40-50 year old flat iron (made in Colombia by General Electric) had a cloth cord where the outer jacket was so chewed up she had actually made a sleeve for it (she's pretty talented with the sewing machine).

The rubber strain relief boot was also chewed up (must have been a dog or something that got hold of it).

The replacement snap-together dead-front rubber plug someone had fitted ages ago was also crumbling. It was so bad that you didn't even need to pry out the front with a screwdriver anymore - it all just puled apart with one good yank and lots of sticky black flecks get stuck all over your palms.

So one day I took the heel plate of the iron off, detached the cord and boot and went downtown to an electrical supplier. I showed him the cord and asked if he had more of the same.

"No, we don't sell that stuff anymore."

He then produced a hank of 18/2 HPN (heater parallel neoprene) with crimped ring terminals at one end and a molded plug on the other plus a new strain relief boot.

Iron's back in business.

Why don't the European appliance manufacturers use the neoprene jacketed cords for their irons and hotplates and stuff? That cloth stuff seems sort of archaic to me.

Then again I was never a big fan of it to begin with.

I have an Australian Astor radio. Small table-top plastic transistorized set from the 1970s or something. It's got like 9 or 10 feet of cord covered EARTHED flex in the old black/red/green colour code.

Picture the flex on the back of your computer, now instead of a black or tan jacket, picture it wrapped in grey fabric. That's what it is.

The conductors are insulated in thermoplastic so they're still sound. However, the cloth jacket has unraveled in a few places. I will most likely replace it with a hank of American cord when I get around to tinkering with the innards and cleaning it up... it's three-conductor from a vacuum cleaner and matches the color of the radio....so it won't look that out of place.

Why did Ozzie radio manufacturers have to make the cords that LOOOOONNG? Was it so you could plug the radio into the lightbulb socket hanging from the ceiling?

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 09-14-2003).]

Most heating appliences used to have those cords.

I remember "electric fires" with them.

Most irons still have them, actually are they required to have them?

They are very poor at withstanding mechanical ware and tend to fray where the cord rubs over the ironing board after a number of years.

Ours goes a step further 5 core + steam

Live, Neutral + Earth, two smaller signaling cables to control the steam and a tube carrying steam to the iron from the steam generator base unit

A twisted twin cord wired to a 15A BS546 plug does indeed look rather strange. A favorite trick for getting a proper grip on these cords with BS1363/BS546 15A plugs was to wrap several turns of insulation tape around the cord to increase its diameter.

THe smaller 5A BS546 plugs looked a little better with such cords, and often grip fine without this treatment.



Neoprene cords have taken over to some extent here, and you'll see them on plenty of heating appliances, including some newer irons.

I guess we're just attached to our cotton-covered cords. By the way, the fancy way to keep the trimmed cotton ends of these cords neat and tidy for termination is to apply heatshrink, but the average person just uses the tape trick again.

I can't think why they would attach 9 or 10 ft. cords to transistorized radios.

Some long cords on 1940s/early 1950s vintage radios actually contain an asbestos-insulated dropper resistor as a third conductor in the cord. These sets typically used a series-filament chain on the tubes, with the voltage adding up to 120V or thereabouts. When the same designs were released in Britain, a very long cord was needed to drop the 240V supplies down to the correct voltage for the filaments.

Apparently some people didn't realize the necessity for the long cords and shortened them, so over-running the tube filaments.


I think you'll find that some later foreign telephones would operate at 20 pps instead of 10. Step-by-step switches couldn't keep up at that speed, but crossbar and electronic exchanges could use the faster pulsing.

There are also differences in the specified make/break ratio in different countries, generally 60/40 vs. 67/33, although most switches would keep pace with either unless they were way over on the opposite end of their tolerance.

For sounds of the old telephone networks, I can thoroughly recommend the Phone Trips website. It's mostly American, but there are a couple of audio files of the British supervisory signals circa 1971 as well. Many of these were still in service from the 1940s or earlier.

Paul,

Never actually heard a step by step switch but there were quite a few crossbar systems in operation here until the early 90s as local switches.

Our local ericsson ARF made some weird noises when connecting a call. You tone dialled the number it made a beep, you'd hear a string of very fast MF tones then tick tick tick tick tick tick (sounded like a clock) clunk.. and ringing/busy or else an announcement which was obviously from its digital AXE or E10 parent as it had words "stitched together"

The ARF's own announcements sounded very authentic! tick tick tick tick tick CLUNK and "The number you have dialled is a spare number" on a very worn out tape complete with crackles and background noise usually spoken by someone with a very strong regional accent. The modern ones are obviously studio recorded phrases stitched together as necessary.

Strowger step-by-step switches were the mainstay of the British GPO network for decades.

Here's a short WAV file of GPO Strowger switches stepping. (This is the actual mechanical noise in the switch room, not what you would hear when dialing.)

The first chain of clunks is the selector stepping vertically at about 10 pps under control of the dial. The second, much faster almost rasping noise, is the sound of the switch rotating horizontally to find a free circuit to the next selector.

The remaining two series of clunks are the sound of the last two digits of a dialed number stepping the final selector (called a connector in the U.S.) first vertically and then horizontally to select the called line.

If you listen carefully, you can hear that the three digits dialed in this recording were 958.

I don't actually think the "tick tick tick" noise on those ARF crossbar lines had anything to do with switching. As far as I know it was applied as a "progress tone" in the same way that the E10 digital switches apply http://www.eircomlab.com/audio/cpt.wav when there is any delay before a ring tone.

I would guess that the original reason for that tone's exsistance was to prevent phreaking of the system using MF tones in the days of in-band signaling.

When you were calling "digital - digital" the number usually just rang out immediately but when calling digital to ARF / ARK crossbar or to a mobile or abroad (e.g. to the UK to an old switch) the bebebebe tone was played down the line rather than letting you hear the actual signaling.

The switches still present that tone if there's any sort of delay in connecting the call which is almost exclusively when calling mobile phones while the network is hunting for the phone or occasionally if you're calling abroad, particularly to less developed countries.

Although, it can crop up if there's a major network problem or something weird like our local radio station gave out its reception number rather than it's competition line number and 40,000 callers all called a single local number.. lots of bebebebe tones

In other countries if a switch is swamped it just won't give a dial tone at all. Here the switch will take the call, let you dial and then make you wait until it's ready to process the call.

As we're getting a little off the original subject of this thread, I've started a new Telephone Talk thread to continue the phone-based discussion.

Back to old appliances.....

Let's hear from some more of you about the selling of secondhand electrical equipment. Do you think there should be regulation of such sales?


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 09-15-2003).]

Still widely used here to get zip cord or NISPT into a Schuko plug, sometimes the cord grips don't even grip 3x1mm2 round flex properly. I just had to do that trick on a trailing sockets a few months ago.
Actually there's an even more sophisticated (and much older) way to do that. (quote from my famous 1958 DIY book, covering everything, from painting, glazing, carpentry to plumbing, electrical and cleaning your gas boiler). I'll try to scan the picture that came along with it until tomorrow.
The new cloth flex matches the old one perfectly except for the color code. Well, the old one was usually pretty yellowed, but the black/white zigzag pattern looks perfectly the same. About 2 years ago I replaced the cord of my mom's infrared lamp, and you can't tell the difference, apart from the half dozen or so tape wraps being gone.
I'd really like to get hold of some of the old twisted cord for a reasonable price to build a small example knob&tube wiring. I already got a matching switch and light fixture (a huge wet rated porcelaine socket and a round white glass shade, I took it down when we rewired our basement).

Ragnar,

Was it by any chance an "InfraPhil"?



Text from owner's website:


Years ago, when I was 12-going on 13, we were forced out of our apartment (house being torn down) and were moving into a one-room makeshift apartment (basically a cinderblock shack) behind a house next to a co-owned scrap-yard.

Before we moved in, my mom and I went to the place to clean it up and disinfect it - scrape clean the greasy kitchen floor and make it semi-livable.

There were two lamps (floor standing version) like that with red floodlights; infrared probably now that I think of it.

I thought they were kind of cool looking and wanted to keep them. But mom declared them a fire hazard and garbage -- they were sort of rusted and greasy -- so I tossed them out into the piles of scrap.

No, it isn't. It is a rectangular blue and grey box with alid that flips open and reveals infrared and UV tubes. My mom uses it every time we kids have problems with our ears, and there it works wonders, without jerking the electricity bill up into the sky.
Infrared heat dishes are a cool thing. I found one in a dumpster and it's still in pristine condition, even the cord. I used it a few days ago when it suddenly got cold and I was too lazy to go to the bathroom and fire up the gas central heating boiler (and the heat dish heats up faster than the radiators do, yeah, and starting the fancy all-electronic boiler after the summer break can be a bit tricky too, I liked the old ones better where you just light the pilot flame with a match).

Radiant heat such as from these lamps does give a nice cozy feeling.

I've always found a fan heater to be a useful device as well, especially for when you come back to a cold house and want to warm up a room quickly. The circulation helps to get all of the room warm quickly, especially with the 3kW models thats are common here.

Another nice thing when you've come in from a very cold winter's day is that you can just pull off your shoes and stick your feet in the air stream to thaw out!

Paul,
How do you present your test results after having repaired an appliance(say a TV set or a VCR)?.

You mean as in a certificate?

I don't write up any sort of report or test certificate on appliance repairs, unless somebody specifically asks for one.

I stumbled upon this link while browsing.

This is how the local Trading Standards dept. of one particular British city explains the rules:
http://www.warrington.gov.uk/shopping/trading_standards/guidance_SPAS.htm

Paul,
Over here if an appliance is repaired by a qualified technician, that technician, must affix an Electrical Safety Certificate to the appliance.
I can't find an example of one of these on the Net and I also can't use my Dcam to take a photo of one, that I have in front of me.
This is a self-adhesive label, about 50x 40mm and it requires the technician to give thier contact details and thier registration no., in case someting goes wrong with the appliance.

On the point about cable colours. The main reason that the use of the old colour system is dangerous is all to do with the European Common Market.

There is no reason why I can't sell an old irish electrical applience or PaulUK can't sell an old british one in France. However, to keep things simple and safe it would be advisable to use the correct colours!

What appliances does that cover? Or is it a requirement for any mains-powered equipment?

On the colors again, after our previous discussions about this I've actually quizzed a few people about what they'd think if they came across other systems.

Just about all non-technical people seem to try to associate any color with its matching British designation first, and then assume that the remaining color(s) must be for whatever's left over.

Asked about an American appliance with black, white, and green, the response was almost invariably along these lines: "Green must be earth. Black has got to be neutral, so I suppose they use white for live."

How about an old German appliance with red, black, and gray? "Red and black have to be live and neutral, so do they use gray for earth?" The assumption of red being live could be disastrous, of course.

I guess this assumption process works everywhere: Recall Texas_Ranger's story of the old British tape-recorder where he assumed red was earth.... (Sorry, Ragnar, I'm not picking on you, it just stuck in my mind! And certainly back when I was a teenager I was totally unaware of the Germanic use of red for ground.

That said, I still don't believe that there is any need for Trading Standards to tell second-hand dealers not to sell electrical equipment with the old color codes. They already have the rule that goods must be sold fitted with a plug, and if someone from another country happens to buy that item and take it home, then it's his responsibility to rewire it correctly to his own national plug, just as it would be up to me to check the colors if I bought some unfamiliar appliance overseas.

Another point is that the new colors came into use here around 1970, so anything wired with the old standard is now well over 30 years old. It's really only likely to be sold to collectors and specialists, rather than being the typical flea-market stuff where Joe Schmoe just wants a cheap second-hand and not-too-old iron, TV, kettle, etc.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 10-03-2003).]

Would it be acceptable to sell the applience with a trailing socket with a modern BS1363 plug etc and the old gear at the other end? along with a note that it was NOT TO BE DIRECTLY CONNECTED .

That's a good question. I don't know the exact wording of the law, but I suspect the answer would be "No, not acceptable."

I'm still not quite sure of the actual legalities surrounding selling as "Collector's item, not for use." If that is permissible by law, then a trader need only apply that description to everthing he sells.

From stories I've heard, the problem is that different trading standards officers around the country seem to apply their own interpretations.

What has been deemed acceptable for new appliances, however, is the use of permanently affixed adpaters to convert a two-pin Euro-plug to a BS1363 plug.