13 Amp socket tolerances

I can cite cases where a radial has been faulty for decades, so what is your point?

Faulty circuits of any type are undesirable, it has nothing to do with type.

That is, of course, true

but the monkeys climbing the trees always have one in their pocket

Has dennis got a banana in his pocket?

Whereas you are just making up your own rules.

Amazingly, other types of circuits have faults as well.

I do, but I am not suggesting that it should be included in the highway code. Do you see the difference?

True, I don't see the point in trying to look up 12 year old documentation. What would it prove - that the firm who installed the sysytem were incompeatnt? What could I do about it - nothing?

The part 'missing' was a length of conduit joing ten two spurs - which went in different directions. Had the conduit been present, doubtless some wires migh have been drawn through it.

Old ones did not have lots of mobile phone cherges that needed plugging in.

Heck. One of the reasons the ring was developed was to save copper and money.

And purchace. 4mm is about 1.75 times the cost of 2.5mm. Very few circuits would be cheaper installed in 4mm radials than 2.5mm rings.

Can I have a guess? Is it a radial?

What else would you expect from dennise?

Or fiction stories.

So you want to start at the beginning where its easy to show that just having two 13A fuses doesn't protect against overload.

In the pre-war regs (11th ed, prior to its amendment) the number of sockets per circuit was strictly limited - e.g. to a maximum of three 15 A sockets per circuit. See section 3.1.2 in David Latimer's article on the history of the 13 A plug and the ring circuit.

In message , John Rumm writes

Can't think what else it might be

In message , ARWadsworth writes

That's called engineering, that is

or just emigrating to Afghanistan

Perhaps he is pleased to see you? ;-)

So what? How often do you think it should be tested to ensure it doesn't develop a fault?

Yes, but at least a £2.99 plug tester will find it and you need another fault before anything will happen.

I didn't say i disagreed with them i just asked how you intend to make sure its not faulty. As I said its not much use putting in redundancy if you can't find a fault and fix it. You need an awful lot more than duplication to give reliability over decades unless you have a mechanism to find and fix. You have to consider that it is a lot easier for a user to go around with a £2.99 fault finder than it is to get an electrician in to disconnect the ring, test it and reconnect it without breaking it doing the tests. I bet even someone with your limited knowledge could test a radial.

Yes good point, I do have a vague recollection of the rule... (long before my time though!). Not sure I would count the same topology but a bit shorter, as significantly different though.

Of course it does. You need skill, knowledge and test gear to test a ring. You need a £2.99 tester to test a radial. How often do you think anyone is going to test a ring well enough to find disconnections, etc. 50 years?

Most faults in a ring are undetectable by the user. Most faults on a radial are detectable by the user. That's a hell of a difference.

Who mentioned fuses? You might have a direct connection to the appliance.

With an appropriate fixed appliance you will find cases where you end up with no overload protection at all.

(Its obviously still vital to check the cable has adequate fault protection).

A 32A breaker would probably provide adequate fault protection for 1.5 mm2 cable so I guess you would think that was OK too.

He's lucky there isn't.

You can assume what you like, however you are wrong again.

So what, that's why i wouldn't do it.

Are you thick or something? You weren't allowed to put multiple 13A sockets on radials that predated rings.

What just me that doesn't penny pinch and do stuff to the *minimum* standard? I don't have to worry about how much extra beer i can buy by doing it as cheaply as possible. I leave that to the professionals who obviously need to maximise profits.

Why are you repeating what I said?