DIY question?

Don't they have shutters on the live/neutral which are opened by insertion of both those pins - or all 3 pins - and /not/ by the earth pin alone?

Sadly most multiway extension leads are like this and have been so for a number of years. Apparently there's a loophole in the standards that permits it and penny pinching manufacturers have taken the opportunity to shave a few pence of their costs.

Don't know about the Ikea ones but none of the ones I've come across do

Maybe the shutters are there you just can't see them.

I;ve one on my desk and from the same angle I can;t see the shutters unless I stand above the block, then I can see the red shutters. This block has been passed by our PAT tester.

But do they open when you put a plug in upside down?

On 02/07/2019 16:20, dennis@home wrote: <snip>

All of mine do. But then I'm a dare-devil sort of guy.

Cheers

Yes, you have to force them a bit. I didnlt think that being able to release the shutters by sticking something in the Earth socket wasa PAT test fail.

Many do not, as i just pushed one of those American round pin plugs into one bought from a high street store by using a screwdriver into the earth hole, then removing it when the plug was in. Brian

To be honest, you can only protect people from stupidity up to a point. Where that point is is debatable I think. I'm sure we have all experienced wiring in foreign parts. Brian

Its not according to the lads that did our talking newspaper studio. However some of the iec cables were rejected due to the poor strain reliefs and a couple for having unshrouded plugs on them. Brian

I don't think they are made any more, possibly because idiots discovered it was possible to plug 2.5A Europlugs into them.

Worst of all are extension with sockets so close together that bulkier plugs won't fit.

CPC also sell a range of multiways where a rotated plug fully inserted only into the earth pin opens the L&N shutters

iirc they carry an approval number

It's a glaring loophole *if* the standard permits this.

TBH you can count the number of people killed by this by counting the fingers on a lepers hand.

The standard doesn't directly permit it, but it doesn't specifically prohibit it either. It was written to cover wall mounted sockets where this is not a problem and multiway extension leads were probably never considered in the early days. Even so, until fairly recently, multi-ways were wide enough to prevent this. It is only since the far East has been doing their own design work that this problem has occurred.

SteveW

Nope, have several old, as in 1980's vintage, 4 way socket strips where the plug will fully seat when inverted.

Also played with a variety of other sockets, wall and cable mounted. On some the shutter on L & N is fully open with only the extra length of the earth pin inserted.

Fair enough.

The couple of older ones that I still have are too wide for that and it is only since the cheap versions from China and the like that I began seeing the slimline ones, but they obviously must have been around a lot longer.

Mine (a variety of makes) will open partly, but not fully.

SteveW

You seem to be absolutely correct. Methinks the OP is getting his knickers in a twist over nothing.

I'd love to show you a photo I took in a Brazilian back-packers 'hotel', where there was an instant electric shower head, with integral heater, over the toilet, at a height where a typical south american could use it without touching but not a typical european.

Andrew