+1. Be lucky we have probably the best domestic electrical layout in the world
Its a great compromise between cost, power and safety.
Typically if you want more than 3kW you go three phase. And I can see that happening in the future with new builds in the 'executive homes' class.
I assume because of the same reason every one voted for Brexit - so the need to be different and make our own minds up, or really cut corners and penny pinch.
So rather than multiple radial circuits with individual fuses or circuit breakers we have the dreadful ring main which was designed to save copper. This meant you needed to have fuses in the plugs, and to ensure you didn't use the existing plugs, they had to come up with a new plug, hence the uk 13amp plug which I assume contains less copper than the
15amp version.
Could executives really be trusted with three phases in one house?
DBAW (Dont be a wanker)
Oh dear. A remoaner can find anything to moan about and link it to Brexit.
WE had 13A rings from the 1950s, Long before the EU
Well farmers are...
The ring main system which uses fused plugs was designed to save on wiring costs. Copper was in short supply & becoming expensive.
Indeed, when we bought our house in 1964 (iT had been wired in 1945) there were 4 power points. One in each bedroom and one in the kitchen,
Like all brexiteers you read what you want to read, I said we have rings for the same reason we had brexit, not that rings were due to brexit...
Dave
Unlike today when... Ah!
Oh - I an sorry, So basically we have rings and we have brexit because there are a lot of people with intelligence and common sense., Of course
I believe that rings are inherently dangerous. If there is a break in the ring you lose the redundancy. If the break is close to one end of the ring, you end up with a long radial circuit which is easily overloaded. You cannot test for breaks without disconnecting something.
Dave
I am sure you also believe that politicians in Brussels are benigng helpful and never ever take bribes
Yes, but the point is that 15A fused plugs and 15A shuttered sockets
*are* available and could easily have been made standard instead of going for 13A plugs with rectangular pins - and would have been far superior. I accept that would have needed to be same way of preventing 'old' and 'new' 15A plugs and sockets of being interchangeable - but that could easily have been achieved by a change to the pin size or spacing - or by making the earth pin rectangular.
Some friends of ours regularly charge in the car park at Stourhead (a national trust property near Salisbury) when travelling between London and Exeter. Last week they couldn't because all the copper had been nicked. Apparently the extra-fast charging points, with their lovely thick cables, are particularly attractive to pikeys.
Plus (unlike all the cable on the railways) there's no dangerous voltage maintained on the fat charging leads ...
Are standard plugs really the weak point for high/13A current? I'd have thought/IME it's the wiring and insufficiently tightened terminals that cause problems.
Happens at my local Lidl. They've recently replaced the cables and added some very meaty armour. We'll see. But for now the armoured cables are very heavy and seemed to put quite a strain on my car's socket.
There were a few contenders for the ring main plugs (I know of 2 others),
How large is the (real world) contact surface area on 15 amp round pin plug/sockets? Is is better or worse than that for a 13 amp plug/socket?
Any strain on the driver? Would a prototypical little old lady have problems wrestling the armoured cable?
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