France mains sockets

David "PlugSafe" Peacock died in 2018

In our Village Hall. I had to replace some sockets because they had been distorted by the "safety covers" used by the Playgroup. The pins on the covers were too big so the sockets now longer made a proper contact with real plugs.

If it's moulded, tough, all you can do is check and clean the pins. With a rewireable plug, undo the wires, noting whether the screws seemed to be tight enough. Check the strands for breakage. Remove the fuse and squeeze the holder ends tighter, re-fit the fuse if it looks OK. If the ends are partly sooty in appearance, throw it away and fit a new one. Reinstall wires, tightening as you would normally do. If the plug is old, the pins are probably a bit oxidised, Get them shiny again with emery paper.

This should make most hot-running plugs run cool again. Sometimes you find a loose contact between the live pin and its fuseholder end, there probably isn't much to do about that unless it's a rivet you can hammer a bit tighter.

If there's a sign of the cable around the clamp overheating, the clamp was probably too tight and has broken strands in the live or neutral wire or both. Cut the plug off and re-fit it. A plug should handle a full 13 Amps while getting at most a bit warm. Even if all is OK, the fuse will run hot at its nominal blowing current, but not hot enough to damage anything.

Why would you need socket covers for UK sockets?

But was the entire cable in the hole and tightly screwed down, or were some of the strands missing? I seem to remember this being the problem.

Because british kids have suffered from 7 decades of descending average IQ since WW2 ?

It's probably a woman thing.

IME none of this works. The actual bad contact is from years of plugging and unplugging the plug/socket and the brass simply wears down. New plug AND socket face plate is the answer.

Justreplace everything, done proper.

To stop the electricity leaking out and increasing your bill.

Because there are people in society who like to have reassurance and the word 'safety' appeals to their psyche.

Have their fingers got pointier?

People who are perhaps immune to common sense, then? Who ignore you when you tell them that the socket has a shutter, opened by the plug, and that although little Freddy *could* insert two knitting needles in the socket he'd have to work jolly hard to do so?

The best type of plug in my experience was the old MK one where you wrapped the wire round a terminal and then screwed down a nut with a captive washer onto it; also featuring the plastic springy cable relief.

I've got 2.5 mm^2 cable neatly into one of those too!

nib

you wouldn't becasue they normally have shutters, but the safety elf isn't that clever.

"No price is too much to pay for the safety of my child"

I liked them too. You needed to twist the strands first though to prevent one or two sticking their heads out.

But socket covers make UK sockets LESS safe - they can be gripped by children and pulled out. Then they can be turned upside-down and the "earth" pin pushed in, opening the shutters enough that metal objects can be inserted into the live.

Yet the number of fires caused by electrics in Western Europe is considerably lower than the UK.

You see? It was the EU.