Earth and cheap sockets

[ARWadsworth]

It would be more fun if he was still doing it and you get get free copies for me!

[Steve Walker]

It was better than that at the time. When I bought a house that needed a re-wire, I actually got free sockets, switches, etc., even some of the cable. With a quick phonecall to a competitor company's rep on the same committee a free Crabtree Starbreaker with an RCD and a full set of MCBs as a "free sample!" Total cost to re-wire a three-bed semi, thirty-five quid, excluding plaster!

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

It's always annoyed me that manufacturer's provide their employees' time to sit on the committees writing the standards and then everyone is charged for the result.

I run a small company (just me!) and it's okay if I take on a contract for a company and provide myself to them as a worker, but if I want to bid to do the work as an outside company, there is no way that I could afford copies of the standards I have to work to. One recent document I changed referenced around thirty different standards!

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

That's fine, but some poor sod that doesn't know to look, could easily think that he can freshen up the look of his house by changing the sockets as a straight swap and never realise the consequences if there wasn't already a tail to the box.

I did know, hence the posting, as I've never seen any sockets without this in the past and wanted to warn others.

SteveW

[ARWadsworth]

I am so glad that they included a full set of MCBs as

through my mind.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Sometimes it's best not to DIY electrics if you're not sure about things.

As I said, not a good idea to rely on fixing screws to earth the box. All sorts can happen over time.

[Tony Bryer]

Worse here. BSI sell standards to members at around half price (still serious money, I know). If you're a one-person business membership is around £100 so a no-brainer if you're buying much. But if you're not in the UK you have to have Band 3 (IIRC) membership at around £600. It might have been understandable when everything was posted, but not now. But from BSI's pov, if I join they win, if I don't they win - since for me not buying Eurocode docs is not an option.

[Owain]

"For all Members outside of the EU, minimum Band 6 applies to all categories." (=A3655 + VAT if applicable)

If stuff isn't posted, how do they know you're not in the UK?

I'm sure you still have friends in the UK who would allow mailing address; a .uk domain name and a VoIP phone 'line' completes the virtual UK presence. Just remember the time difference when answering the VoIP or you'll sound like a Fosters advert.

Owain

[ARWadsworth]

Is that fraud? Not that I give a f*ck if it is.

[John Rumm]

Is this a good time to mention that many libraries allow free access to online copies of most of the BS docs? All you need is a valid library card number (does not seem to matter how old it is either - the one I took out at Chelmsford library 20 odd years ago when I was at uni worked fine!)

e.g.

[Andy Burns]

Manchester libraries allow anyone (with a UK postal address for the card to be delivered to) to become a member.

[ARWadsworth]

[alexander.keys1]

You can get MK sockets cheap enough at B&Q, I got some singles for =A32 each recently.

[Terry Casey]

option is greyed out.

I played around with various ways of extracting the text - nothing special, just random software tools/pdf readers I've downloaded at various times - and, although I can retrieve the text, it is interspersed with random additional spaces, with the loss of some of the original ones. Plus the it also merges the two columns, so editing to get it back as it should be would be a nightmare!

[John Rumm]

May

+0100

I had not tried - although I did expect that to be the case.

OCRing from screen seems to be about the only easy way without cracking the password.

[Robin]

[Nick Leverton]

Or use a PDF viewer that can be configured whether to obey the restriction

- kpdf (KDE3) and okular (KDE4) have it as a user option, for instance.

Nick

[The Other Mike]

[Mike Clarke]

May

Or evince, which is available in both Windows and *nix variants and allows you to copy the text without any config changes.

[Andy Burns]

+1, my PDF viewer of choice on both platforms.