There's an interesting quote about halfway down this thread relating to how safe the U.K. wiring system is is relation to other countries:
http://www.iee.org/Forums/messageview.cfm?catid=5&threadid=3987

This is touching upon rings, fused vs. unfused plugs, and to what extent DIY wiring is permitted.

Comments?

Paul,
From the site:
Where did they get that information?.
It's people that work under pseudonyms that can say whatever they like about places they've never been to and feel good about it and mislead others in the process!.
As far as I am aware, we don't have to buy plugs down here, our appliances come with them pre-fitted.
And here is one for C-H, Perth in Western Australia and WA in general, uses a 440/250V system and they like it!!
Other side of the coin, why don't people from the Northern Hemisphere just ask us down here, instead of making rash generalisations.

Whilst visiting Perth, WA some years ago I went into the local DIY-hardware store (BBC I think it was) and all the wire and fittings were there for purchase by anyone. There was just a large printed sticker on everything to remind you that electrical work could only be undertaken by a licensed electrician. On that same visit I bought two mains plugs from Radio Shack/Tandy? for the cell phone charger and laptop – hate adapters. There was nothing on these to say that I couldn’t fit them myself and I did. They are still in my glory-box

Just a little question,
Are appliances still manufactured in the UK?.
Or is there a nasty Customs officer that cuts all the plugs off of the appliances as they come into the country.
The concept of buying an appliance without a plug on it, is a bit foreign here.
And would give rise to words like, er discount being used at the counter.

Some are still made here, but many are imported. A few years ago a new law was passed requiring all new appliances to be sold with a BS1363 plug ready fitted, either a molded on type, or a rewireable one. (Exception for high-power units which would be hardwired.)

Molded plugs had started to become used more often here before that time, but certainly into the 1980s it was quite normal for most appliances to be supplied with no plug. The old excuse was that as several different plug/socket standards were in use around the country, nobody knew which type should be fitted. By the 1980s, older BS546 outlets were becoming much rarer though.

No, they're too busy looking for tourists bringing back cheap wine from France and seizing their vehicles.

(Which, incidentally, is in complete violation of EU rules, to which our govt. agreed and which they're usually more than enthusiastic to enforce. Customs here effectively make up their own rules as they go along and to h*** with anyone who questions them. Sorry, off-topic rant over.)



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 12-14-2004).]

The liability is on the retailer over here. Any applience on sale must have the correct plug or a permanently fitted adaptor plug which can only be removed with the use of a tool.

That being said, you still get plenty of appliences on sale here with schuko plugs. As Ireland's a part of the European single currency (Euro) It doesn't make a lot of sense to buy things from UK suppliers / shipped via the UK as currency convertions would be necessary. So, the majority of appliences sold here come directly from elsewhere in Europe.

Most manufacturers don't have a huge issue with simply adding a different cable for the UK or Ireland (or italy, switzerland or denmark).

Don't forget that electrical appliences may have to deal with other minor technical variations. E.g. televisions, VCRs etc... not to mention the language variations which mean that control panels have to be different depending on which market they're going to.

Perhaps the simplest sollution would be to create a standard set of semi-fixed applience connectors with a keyed fitting corresponding to the expected load, to avoid undersized cable being used.

Such a connector, could be pushed into the back of an applience and locked into position with a screw.

It could be fairly small and neat, perhaps along the lines of the current IEC applience connectors we all have at the back of our PCs and on our kettles.

The corresponding cords could have any national plug moulded onto the other end.


-------

On the issue of tight regulations.

Perhaps the countries with very tight regulations and high accident rates introduced those regulations as a reaction to high accident rates. This could mean that a lot of older installations are of a low standard.

Also, I wonder if the more "sue happy" / ligtegous countries like the United States, UK, Ireland etc could survive with looser regulation as the contractor must bare serious financial consequences if something isn't done to code and goes wrong.

Maybe in a context where people don't sue quite so readily, tight regulation is more necessary.



[This message has been edited by djk (edited 12-14-2004).]

The Swedish figures for 2003 just came in. (Yes, 2003, not 2004.)

The tables are in Swedish, but I've given a few hints below:

Tables

The first table is for the number of people who had to go to hospital for treatment. (The "Sjukdagar" is how many days the accident kept them from work.) "Dödsfall" is the number of deaths (by electrocution). As you can see, this figure has been between two and nine since 1996. With a population of 9 million, the number of deaths is 0.2 - 1 per million people.

The second table list the causes of serious accidents. (Cables, cords, machinery, switchgear etc.)

The third and last table is the number of deaths per year on average for the periods. The columns titles are: Electricians and similar, Ordinary people at work, Ordinary people at home

{Edited for typo which placed the blame for the accidents on the tables...}

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 12-16-2004).]

Hiya everyone
Just been looking over your site, great site for electricians. I am an English sparky now working in Australia having worked in Asia and Hong Kong.
The first thing I noticed in Australia was the power points and light switches in bathrooms. My apartment has a double socket situated 30cm from the bathroom sink!The apartment was only built in 1995.No bonding whatsover after the main bond. The aussies use twin and earth in many situations where in England we would have to run conduit.

Hi English, welcome to the net, mm sockets and switches in bathrooms, presume that these are all backed by RCD protection, if so I personally dont see a problem, I can forsee a time when we might come round to allowing it. Any one else got any thoughts.

Hi English, and welcome to ECN.

Well, regulars here know my views on sockets in bathrooms already! I really think that the British IEE has been stubbornly overprotective on this point for many years. Practically everywhere else in the world allows bathroom sockets, in some cases not only allows them but requires one.

I think it comes to (a) locating the socket in a sensible place, and (b) trusting that people will apply a little common sense in the way it is used.

On the bonding issue, the specifics on this do seem to vary considerably from code to code in various countries. That's not to mention being subject to change fairly frequently even within a country,

I remember in France we had normal full earthed 16Amp sockets on the mirrors!

I honestly don't see anything wrong with the IEE attitude. You shouldn't really be drying your hair in the bathroom it's just not a good idea.

And you can use the shaver sockets for radios no problem at all should you need music

All you need is a radio with a euro plug on the end.

djk, dont realy agree with you on that point its OK to have a radio perched on a shelf fed from an adapted socket but not OK to dry your hair with a hair dryer with a moulded socket! Whats that all about then?

Sorry Dave, but I don't see why not. People expect to be able to do this elsewhere in the world. Even in England I know of homes where the solution to having no socket in the bathroom is to run an extension cord from a socket in the hallway.

Wouldn't it be better to have a proper outlet in the bathroom itself?

I have a simple unearthed outlet above the medicine cabinet in my old 1940s apartment. I use it for a night light.

More modern bathrooms are required to have GCFI/RCD outlets.

I just keep electricity away from me and water.

In the words of our "governator"

"Good, you'll live longer."

Aland,

the point is that the socket the radio's plugged into is fed via an isolating transformer and can only supply enough current to opperate an electric shaver or a tooth brush.

It's not just a normal outlet with a 2 pin plug.

In the case of a radio, i'm suggesting a normal moulded euro-plug.

Specs:
This design incorporates a double
wound isolating transformer rated
20VA at 230 or 115 volts it meets
BS.3535: 1996 making it safe for
use in bathrooms. Insertion of a
shaver plug automatically switches
on by energising the primary side
of the isolating transformer -
removal automatically switches off.
The transformer is protected
against overload by an automatic
solid state overload device with
automatic resetting.




I'd be loathed to see BS1363 plugs and sockets in bathrooms for the following reasons:

1) Many UK homes still don't have RCD protection and use 32A ring circuits.
2) Most UK hairdryers have a rewirable plug, this includes many new appliences as the UK plug is an odd-ball many manufacturers seem to fit rewirable versions. It seems they may even be manufactured with schuko / euro plugs fitted and then snipped off for UK localisation due to the smaller relative size of the market. The rewirable plug is not very well protected against the ingress of water.
3) BS1363's design puts your fingers very close to the pins when the plug is being inserted. This is not true of Schuko or French plugs being inserted into a recessed 16A socket. Wet fingers and a BS1363 plug could potentially be a bad combination.



[This message has been edited by djk (edited 02-07-2005).]

You seem to have a lot of faith in RCDs, more than I do. Also I believe 30mA is enough to kill you. Never mind that you might manage to complete the mains circuit without leaking to earth, e.g. plastic bath.

Similarly, powering radios from shaver sockets is dodgy as although the power from the socket is limited, it's still enough to kill. Lets not forget wet bodies have low resistance.

And allowing sockets in bathrooms because someone might bring in an extension anyway is like letting the stupid die of stupidity. :-)

Well, that's my 2p worth.

Gideonr.

I really can't see the big deal with the radio

People still plug in shavers and directly rub them on their faces connected to that same shaver socket.

We've 9KW electric showers actually in the shower cublical!

These units can be rated up to around 30VA. That's still 125mA -- More than enough to kill. It's really the secondary isolation that provides the increased safety rather than the limited current.

True, but any revision of BS7671 could allow bathroom outlets only if RCD protected (just as it specifies RCD protection for sockets which may reasonably be expected to power outdoor equipment now).

As Gideon said though, 30mA is still enough current to be lethal. Maybe we should be looking more along the lines of American 6mA GFI protection? How about specifying a dedicated radial branch with its own RCBO? You can already get 10mA RCBOs.

Does it need to be? I'm not advocating that somebody should sit in the tub and try to plug in the hairdryer while soaking wet! It comes down to common sense use of the appliance.

Very close? Your fingers can be just as close to the pins on a Europlug when inserting it into a shaver outlet.

They might indeed, but I guess that's the whole point I'm trying to make about common sense. Some people will do stupid things no matter what. If we tried to cater for every last idiotic thing that somebody might do with electricity, we'd go back to using candles!

Yep, and you can have 240V with no RCD protection required in that flimsy plastic box right under the shower head. So what's the big deal with havong a socket placed at a suitable location outside the tub/cubicle zone?

Electric shavers (and toothbrushes) tend to keep the mains wiring close together so if it were dropped in the bath the current would not loop far out into the water, but other items not specifically intended to be used in bathrooms are wired any old way.

As a more general point on this topic, we seem to have very strict rules for swimming pools, yet similar enviromental conditions occur in bathrooms while the rules there aren't so strict? We could also add kitchens to the list, as people are being electrocuted in them too, and virtually no restrictions there at all.

I feel the strategy to try limit the opportunities people have to electrocute themselves is good, and providing ready sockets in bathrooms is a step backwards. Better to disswade them from using hairdryers/mains radios in bathrooms. The presence of water does greatly increase the chances and effects of an accident. Reliance on technology to protect you can backfire, e.g. we know that MCBs occasionally do not trip when they should.

Last friday my dads workshop burnt down. Forty year collection of tools, materials etc incinerated, never mind all the personal items. He virtually lived in it, only coming into the house for meals, tv, and sleep. We don't think the electrics started it, but something wasn't right. Luckily no-one was hurt, but it does give you more respect for safety practices.

I was in my local hardware store where they sell travel adaptor kits.

They still sell the old 2-pin BS546-5A plugs
as a "shaver-adaptor for some parts of the UK."

I guess some UK bathrooms still have those?

(just felt strange for asking that when I mentioned my bathroom has an old socket)

[This message has been edited by GeneSF (edited 02-13-2005).]

[This message has been edited by GeneSF (edited 02-13-2005).]

QUOTE: I feel the strategy to try limit the opportunities people have to electrocute themselves is good,

Gideonr hits the nail on the head here. Socket outlets in bathrooms have always been a talking point. Forums like this one on ECN are the best way of solving the problem.

Does anyone have a 100% safe way of supplying a hairdryer and water heater in a bathroom. BTW I reserve the right to steal any ideas posted hereafter and manufacture them as my own, to get rich ! !

Oh dear. I can only try to imagine his feelings. I have all sorts of workshop items which I've built up ever since I was a kid, plus many other tools and pieces of test equipment which I inherited from my father and which have much sentimental value as well as being of practical use.

Many bathrooms have the 2-pin shaver outlet fed via an isolation transformer, either as a separate item like the one in Dave's post above, or combined with a strip light over the mirror, for example:



Some older models would accept only the British standard plug, but these days almost all are designed to take the BS plug and the Continental round-pin plug. Many will also accept Australian and American flat-blade plugs as well, and also provide 120V power from a tap on the secondary, either switch selected or by provision of two separate receptacles.

(We really cater for overseas visitors with their electric shavers, but the ladies are out of luck with their hair-dryers! )

You can also obtain the strip-lights with a shaver outlet but without the isolation transformer, intended for installation in bedroom vanity units and such like.

Just cut us in for a percentage!

I've seen a wall-mounted fan heater which has a short hose and nozzle to enable it to be used as a hair-dryer as well. I'm not sure whether there are separate heating elements for that portion or whether it just redirects the air flow, but it's one ingenious way which I assume has arisen purely due to the British "no sockets in the bathroom" rule.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 02-14-2005).]

Regarding the radio:

It seems fine provided it's not perched on the side of the bathtub, while you're in it having a soak!

it's on a shelf, at the side of the bathroom way way outside anywhere that water could splash or anything that it could fall into.

Regarding the sockets in the bathroom:

1) toothbrushes and shavers are, almost without exception, operated by rechargable batteries thesedays. You very rarely have any reason to plug a shaver in while shaving and it's actually not possible to do so with any electric toothbrush manufactured in the last 20 years.

2) Dry your hair at the dressing table and if necessary install lights all around the mirror theatre dressing room style

Btw, I've seen french households with socket outlets in the bathroom and kitchen with flip top covers designed to prevent splashes.

That's an interesting lamp fixture, Paul. I see I would have to pay attention to the voltage switch setting before proceeding. Nice design to allow for those BS shaver adaptors.

The travel kit also has a BS1363 adaptor with a plastic "ground pin."

Ah well, a travel can of shaving cream and a disposable razor works best for me anyway

"Bed, Bath, and Beyond" sells battery operated water proof shower radios. The only kind I'll use in the bathroom.

On the subject of "safe design", keeping the fingers away from the pins either with a hood design on the plug, sheath on the pins, or a recessed socket plus safety training since grade school, will go very far no matter what country.

[This message has been edited by GeneSF (edited 02-14-2005).]

I'll go with Gene: Protection from water and abuse is important. Another thing, somewhat related, is that all things that are safe when they come out of the box today won't be safe ten or twenty years down the road. Some are just too fragile, IMHO.

Two RCD's in series could maximise safety:

- 10 mA in socket outlet, American style.

- 30 mA in panel, Euro style. (RCD/RCBO)

I'll have to agree with Dave: Mains only shavers went out of use years ago and I see no point in a shaver socket. (Have you noticed the huge improvement in the performance of rechargeables?)

{Edited for terrible spelling}

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 02-15-2005).]

I don't see a problem with that either. If it were propped on the corner of the tub, it would be a different matter. As I said befire, it comes down to people using a little common sense.


Agree entirely C-H. We have a heap of extra standards and regulations these days covering all aspects of electrical safety, yet the basic quality of construction of most items is pretty poor compared with, say, 30 years ago.
You'll find plastic pins on some of the "wall wart" type power units these days as well. The pin is needed to open the shutters, but unfortunately these plastic pins can snap fairly easily if somebody is a little heavy handed.

I'm still old-fashioned I guess. I tried electric shaving some years ago, but never really felt that comfortable with it. I still use a stick of shaving soap, a brush, and a razor.

In our house, the MK sockets will happily accept a 2 pin BS1363 with the plastic pin snapped off

Interestingly MK introduced the shuttered socket outlet in 1928 !

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 02-15-2005).]

Getting back on-topic...

Part of me wants to say that the USA, "land of the free," is over-run in rules, regulations, and codes as no other place is!

A counter position is suggested whenever there is a disaster....be it fire, earthquake, typhoon, whatever....outside the USA, with a casualty toll in the thousands- where similar events here have but a handful. Could all these codes be actually accomplishing something?

The best "code" seems to be education. The "Darwin Awards" document a Mexican (immigrant) using pruning shears to remove himself from an auto that had a fallen power line on it.....something every American seven year old knows not to do!

Ah, it's that type of shutter mechanism! We all needed to adopt a completely different technique of using meter probes when they came out.

Good point. Remember the San Francisco earthquake back about 17 years or so ago? As terrible as that was, we know from experience that earthquakes of a similar magnitude in less-developed countries generally result in a death toll many times greater.

I remember reading that Darwin story.

I'm very much in favor of education rather than increased regulation. I believe we should have a bare minimum of official rules, solely to insure that somebody's actions do not threaten to harm anybody else. It should then be left to the individual to add extra layers of safety if he wishes.

People always moan about "excessive" codes and standardisation and laugh at US Federal and European agencies. However, they do make life a lot easier and safer. The UK tabloid press does a lot of unnecessary damage to the EU by highlighting obscure regulations and taking them out of context.

Take a look at this "EuroMyths" website.
see: http://www.cec.org.uk/press/myths/


Quite funny

Haha! I found at least three electric items on the list (look for voltage, DIY, plug).

It's funny really: The Swedish population is more EU-sceptical than the British but the press is rather positive. The Brits, while more positive, has a press that is extremely critical.

Sometimes. The problem is that they also come up with things which nobody wants and which are a solution looking for a problem.

Take the Federally imposed seatbelt interlock fiasco of the 1970s, for example. The Feds mandated that all new cars be fitted with an interlock to prevent the engine from being started until the driver's belt was buckled. The whole concept was so ridiculous and unpopular that the law lasted only a few months and the govt. was forced to repeal it and allow dealers to disable those cars already fitted with it (although by all accounts most had already been bypassed by their owners).

Is that possible?

I think my views on the EU as a whole are well-known, and I don't want to stray into politics, but quite a lot of the entries on that Euromyths site don't give the full story (e.g. metrication). Some pieces of legislation were averted at the last minute, but the threat was very real at one time.

There are also several items listed as "myths" which the site actually confirms are true, such as the infamous Fire exit signs law.

I'll concede that there is also a lot of nonsense spouted by the media, such as the "everybody will have to rewire their house" garbage, but don't you think that is at least part-fueled by the very real regulations which are overly restrictive?



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 02-17-2005).]

Not really, have a look at UK domesticly produced regulations and they'd make anything the EU has ever produced look like it was produced by a bunch of hippies!

For example, the "metric marters" ... the British Government decided to implement that approach to going metric. The EU never required anything remotely as harsh as that.

There are a few harmonisation measures that were always going to be tedious to introduce. e.g. the current change of 3-phase cable colour but, they're necessary.

By the way, on the 3-phase cable colour issue. This change should have happened decades ago, but I guess it had to happen sometime!
The colours used, from a safety point of view do kind of make sense too. Especially considering that 3-phase is found in a lot of European homes. At least with brown, grey and black consumers can quickly identify dark coloured cables as likely to be phase.

The other approach is the German way: "The machine is subject to the following German regulations:

EN...
EN...
ISO...
ANSI...."

It's not the official German stance in any way, it's just the little guys writing the manuals who feels that if it is a standard, it must be German.

I just have to tell you something funny: One of our customers have outsourced _management_ to a foreign company. The plant and workers are still employees, it just the managers who have been replaced with Italians. They now place orders in Italian! Yes really!

Quite a lot of EN standards get directly turned into IS (Irish Standard) numbers to make them compulsary here. All they do is prefix the EN number with IS

So EN 2222:1978 would become ISEN 2222:1978

You also get ISO 9000 issued by the NSAI as IS 9000

To give you an example (from the ETCI [eletrotechnical council of ireland]'s website)

Q: Are there special plugs and sockets for outdoor installations and if so why?
A: Yes. We like most mainland Europe countries do not consider indoor plugs to be suitable for outdoor installations subject to weather and rough handling and so ordinary 13A sockets to I.S. 401 are not suitable for outdoor use. Like all socket outlets up to 32A, they should be protected by an RCD. The Rules require that outdoor sockets and industrial sockets comply with *IS/EN60309* standard. In this system both the plug and socket are hard wearing and are deemed to be suitable for outdoor use. The single phase plug is coloured blue and the socket is inclined towards the ground to prevent the ingress of moisture. They may be more cumbersome than the flat pin plug system but they are safer.


[This message has been edited by djk (edited 02-18-2005).]

LOL! I wonder what they think the "A" in ANSI stands for?

Such as part P?

Sure, the Whitehall bureaucrats come up with plenty of their own nonsensical legislation too. I'll also concede that in plenty of cases they've also misinterpreted EU directives or gone completely overboard in transposing them into British law. There was one case a few years ago (I forget the topic) where it was discovered that a 2-page EU directive written in very broad and vague terms had finally come out of the Whitehall machine as over 80 pages of densely packed regulations adding all sorts of extra restrictions which were never specified in the original.

I still don't see why this change was necessary. Does it matter if a British building uses a different color code to one in Greece or Finland? I certainly don't see how this can be classed as a safety issue (and in fact I have already heard of one incident in which somebody mixed up blue and black and put a phase on the neutral bus, so if anything it is causing problems).

I wouldn't be so sure about all the phase colors being dark either. I've seen new cable in which the gray is fairly light and the blue is rather dark (whatever happened to that earlier specification that neutral should be light blue?).

If there is a genuine need to change something for safety, then fine, but it seems that a lot of changes now are done purely for the sake of "harmonization."

Take the fire exit signs. Do you really think our places of work are any safer for having the new pictogram versions?

The argument that with cross-border workers it's necessary for "Health & Safety" doesn't make much sense. Anybody who can manage to speak enough English to be able to work in the U.K. surely isn't going to have too much trouble learning that "EXIT" means sortie, Ausgang, salida, or whatever it happens to be in their native language.

It wouldn't have been quite so bad had the requirement been just for new signs to include the symbol. To dictate that every office, factory, hotel, restaurant, etc. in the country must rip out their existing, perfectly good "FIRE EXIT" signs and replace them with the new ones at a cost of millions was just crazy.

On the fire exit thing. Yes absolutely!

There are many incidences where people in a work place or a hotel don't understand the local language.

If you saw a non-standard greek fire exit sign in Greek on say a blue background you wouldn't have a clue what it meant! Or try Hungarian!

You can still have EXIT, SORTIE, Ausgang or whatever you want on the sign provided it still has the green background and the pictogram.

As for the neutral colour it's poor quality control!

I can't see that as a major problem!

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 02-18-2005).]