Ye olde wiring reg's

[NT]

luxury, sockets in bedrooms.

[Tim Watts]

HeHe - I've got 8-10 socket outlets in each bedroom (arranged as doubles) and they are all full - I have 2 multiways for computers and Internet/Wifi/printer.

[Jules Richardson]

Yes, I can just see you wiring a house so that it had no electricity, somehow.

[Dave Liquorice]

Some of the more remote places around here are still "off grid". This place probably got power around 1975 and mains water maybe 10 years later.

[<me9]

My parent's house cost £95 new, and the optional extra for £5 was a flush toilet in the outside privy instead of the thunderbox.

[John]

As an apprentice electrician I remember wiring a few houses with no electricity and gas lighting. Even some (mostly farms) where they only had paraffin lamps. We had a neighbour to our last house who finally got electricity in

1992 (farm again.)

Of course, during the war, power sockets were illegal (at least in London) so anything like an electic iron had to be plugged into the lights. Explains why wiring was so primitive.

rusty.

[ARWadsworth]

The rewire had to wait until I had replaced the coal fired boiler. It took 4 of us to lift it outside and I thought the pikeys were going to get a hernia taking it up the garden steps.

[Graham.]

Have you got a refrence for that, it raises a number of questions.

I did find this

't had time to read through it,but I noticed this bit:

"The saving of the rarer metals may become more important than the risk of breakdown, than the risk of shock and fire, and than the heavy costs of recurring maintenance. There is already an increasing tendency in this direction, and the day may come when conditions will force the adoption of installations of bare iron conductors, air insulation and a protective covering of some plaster-like material"

Strange grammer with the three than's, but the meaning is clear enough.

[Rick Hughes]

I still have a couple of extensions leads with these (complete with black levers) - useful plugs at the time.

Only time it stumped me was when the stage sockets consisted of a round hole with 2 horizontal slots alongside ... like a mix of 15A and 13A

[Andrew Gabriel]

My parents bought their house in 1955 (or thereabouts), whilst it was still being built. Fortunately, it was PVC wiring, a ring circuit, and lighting circuit with CPC, MK accessories, and it's all still fine. Only the Wylex CU has had to be replaced, although when we last redid the kitchen 12 years ago, I put all new circuits into that, and of course, more sockets have been added elsewhere over time.

However, as originally designed, it was only one socket per room except the kitchen and living room had two. Parents had to pay for any optional extras, and bought an extra one in the living room, probably being rather strapped for cash at the time. All singles, of course.

In the 1960's, the Parker Morris standard for homes was created, and this specified things like minimum numbers of sockets, and it was quickly adopted, initially in council housing (eventually became mandatory anyway), but the public sector effectively had to follow too.

[H. Neary]

Did this rely on "night soil" collection?

If so a thunderbox seems a rational alternative to European cess pit inspections.

HN

[Graham.]

Do you mean in a line like: -o- That's the Wylex socket discussed at the beginning of this thread.