Why do circuit breakers go up for on and down for off?

But everyone else has a separate word for green and blue, so its more than a tad unlikely that the Japs didn't too.

If we don't assume that an American life is somehow more valuable than an African or Asian one, we can save lives for a few dollars each.

We can fund a cataract surgery in Africa for about $20, or a fistula repair for about $400. I've funded over 100 fistula fixes so far.

If the breakers are sized for the wiring, there is no fire hazard there. Romex doesn't get hot at rated current. Fires are started by appliances like space heaters, which wouldn't be affected by the voltage. Or overloaded extension cords, arguably a lesser hazard at higher voltage.

Very old houses had knob-and-tube wiring with twisted junctions, in walls and exposed in attics, and people tended to screw in bigger glass fuses than the wire could handle. That was, sometimes still is, a big fire hazard.

In SW Louisiana the local language was Cajun French, not very intelligible to Parisians. In WWII draftees were forced to speak English, which contributed to the decline of French in Louisiana.

With RCBOs, you don't need an all house RCD at all.

You certainly don't have to upgrade your system, unless you are doing major work on it. However, where you have no RCD, it is worth looking at adding one for your own safety. Where you have an RCD, it is worth considering RCBOs, giving you the safety and the reduced chances of a false trip, plus not tripping all circuits for a single fault.

As RCBOs have come down to below 20 GBP each, I took the opportunity to remove the RCD and replace all the RCD protected MCBs with RCBOs. I have since replaced unprotected (lighting) MCBs with RCBOs.

And would have remained perfectly acceptable (assuming no serious deterioration), over the coming years.

Yes, it's worth it for peace of mind.

In my house, or rather my parent's house, fuses were just a strand of wire wrapped around two metal screws or some metal something. When a fuse blows, you just put another wire. It it blows again, they put two strands. Next, they put three... you see the problem.

Of course you can use sealed fuses, or calibrated fuse wire (they sold that in the UK). But it is just safer to use calibrated breakers which "blow" and you just throw them back. Of course they can be intentionally "sabotaged".

Specially the ones like english which have hijacked useful words from any language of a country they have f***ed over or had anything to do with.

Can't think of any examples of that.

Presumably because they prefer more subtle variations of those words.

Same with languages which dont have a simple 'you' and have different words used for those you know well and those you don't.

Most of the time you really need something below you. If can be really bad when there isn't.

Many years ago, we used to have 4-digit office extensions; 1nnn

From the rest of the UK, they could dial direct to an extension on 061

In the 061 area, just dialling 902 1nnn worked.

One guy left, but his desk phone regularly rang. The company had a policy of someone answering any phone within 3 rings, but we just ignored that phone.

One day a manager was passing as I ignored the phone and questioned me about not answering. I said it's for the NatWest bank. The manager looked at me oddly, picked up the phone and yes, it was a call for a branch of the NatWest Bank in Birmingham. He then looked at me even more oddly.

People all over the 061 area dialled a 9 for an outside line, when they didn't need to, then 021 for Birmingham and then nnn nnnn, effectively dialing the local number 902 1xxx, plus some extra, ignored digits

Even worse were some of the mobile phones with buttons. With mine, pressing * and # together locked the keypad to prevent accidental (butt) dialling in your pocket - except that some bright spark had decided that to make emergency calls easier, pressing and holding the 9 key would call the emergency number, even when locked ... which of course was even more likely to happen than if you left the keypad unlocked and randomly dialled numbers!

At one time I was at the top of a ladder, when I could hear a faint voice from somewhere. Yes, my phone had connected to the emergency services!

But the blades can be designed for rotating in the opposite direction and only a normal thread would then be required for the securing nut.

English uses "you" for both plural and singular. "Thou" is not used.

The verb "to be" in Spanish is two different verbs with obviously different meanings (to us Spanish), but English speakers confuse them all the time.

Turnwise and Widdershins? Yes the latter is a genuine word.

Fred and Rose West said exactly the same thing.

Some use the word yous for the plural. I used to say 'you too' when asking the parents what they planned to do when together and for some reason my stupid step mother didnt like that phrase.

I didn't mean that. I meant when two different words are used in some languages like german for people who are familiar to the speaker or not.

How did you find english ? It can be a bizarrely complicated language for some like a mate of mine who while being turkish/kurdish, spent his entire school time in australian schools. They did speak their own language at home and his mother has almost no english at all. His dad isnt too bad at all.

I do almost all their govt forms because they don't know what words like spouse mean.

Initially, difficult. Then, easy. It is an easy grammar. Spelling is just memory, I never learned any rules. I either know the word or not. Pronunciation was more difficult: there are many vowel sounds that are hard to get (we simply can not hear the difference: for example, "oil"). I can hardly guess right how to pronounce a new word.

That is interesting.

AFAIK the double pole switching need not be at the CU but can be installed at the charger end.

You may have a requirement to have RCD protection for the cable to the charger inside the CU (say the cable cable from the CU to the charger is buried less than 50mm behind the surface) but you have to be careful what type of RCD you use for this. Usually a type A RCD will be OK.

Yeah, I have always maintained that the poms particularly pronounce some stuff wierdly, so they can instantly work out who are unspeakable foreign devils. Particularly words like Cholmondeley, pronounced chummly.

Exactly. I wonder whether one manufacturer designed his fan blades for rotation in a certain direction (let's say clockwise) and then all other manufacturers followed suit, rather than some deciding to buck the trend and designing blades for rotating anti-clockwise.

Is it like Dutch windmills were all designed to rotate (I think) anti-clockwise, and this means that most modern wind turbines rotate that way?

And Latin has no word for "child" or "children" (of unspecified gender): you have to say explicitly "boy" or "girl", or "boys and girls".