Aldi

Me thinks MrHall does sneakingly pops into Aldi when no ones looking.

ps M&S do organic clothes. I kid thee not. lol

It will only measure the power consumption of the device plugged into it, nothing else.

It's ok for M&S to diversify

Hand picked in The Cotswolds no doubt

Well M&S is primarily a clothes shop. Groceries are a sideline.

Their inorganic cheese scones are lovely - I'm off now to buy a few

:-)

Apparently not. The hapless "Restauranteurs" tried their local Waitrose and it had very little local veg.

How can it measure something not plugged into it? That's why it has a socket, doh! It's like trying to measure a window by holding the ruler up to the door.

You need a different method to measure the current in the ring, e.g. a clamp meter, and the knowledge of how to use it.

MBQ

Well, that's not true any more. M&S sold about £3.5bn of clothes and £3.9bn of food in the financial year 2006/7.

That kinda makes them a food retailer which also happens to be the uk's biggest clothing retailer...

Wholewheat Dungarees?

Nah,probably rice paper underpants.

In message , " snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com" writes

so that's what clamp meters are for :) - I've never bought one as I could never work out why I might need one

A useful DIY adjunct to a clamp meter is a shortish plug and socket extension cord. One can then clamp between the plug and the socket (which obviously feeds the device under test) and see whether current is flowing. fr'instance switch the heaters ON and see whether the washing machine's heaters are working. It can save hours/minutes of testing. [Dribble will probably swear that real men use a hacksaw and gauge the size of the arc.] [[ Dyed-in-the-wool sparkies will insist that one takes the top off a plug and insert the leads of their trusty war-surplus AVO in series with the LIVE conductor where the fuse 'lives; if the range selectors are wrong they'll just tape down the reset button, ]]

Ours does.

Mary

Might be worth mentioning that ones special extension lead needs a length of outer insulation stripped from it so that you can clamp round the individual wires rather than the whole cable. (otherwise you end up measuring the sum of the current flowing in and out of the appliance (hopefully nil!)

Another handy trick is to make a small coil of say ten turns in one of the wires. Clamp round that and you will read ten times the actual load

- hence adding a decimal place of resolution to your meter.

Nope, not a chance....

No, the best you will get without something plugged into it, is you will be able to measure the voltage.

There is a secondary issue here as well, if the description is to be believed then this one does not seem to take account of the power factor of the connected appliance either. Hence on reactive loads (computer kit, fridges, freezers, and the posher power tools) you will get answers that are somewhat out.

Maplin do one that while not perfect is better specified: (currently on special)

(For a circuit measurement you can clip it round the wire leaving the MCB in the CU, and for the whole house clamp round a meter tail).

John, do you mean clamp around the whole coil or through the centre of it?

Round one side of it - so the clamp joins up through the centre. The idea being you want the current flow to pass through the clamp ten (or however many times) in the same direction. If you clamp right round the coil you are back to measuring the sum of current flow in two directions (so it would cancel out and you are back to nil again).

They do chafe the groin.

Aldi still had these on offer this week in Kendal. It claimed on the pack that it displayed power factor so I bought one to "play" with. It certainly does more than they say in the brief advert but I'm not so sure how accurate it is for small loads. FWIW here's my opinions after giving it a bit of use.

It displays the power factor and the power (both instantaneous watts and cumulative KWh), plus voltage, current and frequency. For those who don't want to do simple arithmetic it can be programmed with the price per KWH and displays the total cost along with elapsed time "on load". A neat little extra is that you can set up 2 different prices for different periods of the day which may be of use for those on economy 7 tariff.

It also indicates maximum current and power, which AFAICS can only be reset by removing the batteries (2 off AG-13 button cells).

There's a facility to set an arbitrary "overload" power level which causes a red LED to light up if it's exceeded, I can't see any real use for this but I suppose it might appeal to some. Nor can I see the point of displaying the frequency, I expect the mains frequency is regulated to much closer tolerances than the accuracy of this meter.

The claimed accuracy leaves something to be desired. Voltage and current are

Would I recommend one? As a serious measurement tool - no, but as a cheap and cheerful indicator it's probably OK. It's main use for me was to assess the overall consumption of things with a variable duty cycle like the freezer, or the washing machine and dishwasher where it's hard to estimate just how long the heater is no for each cycle. For most other devices just looking at the rating plate or counting the revolutions or flashes on the 'leccy board meter is probably the best approach.