Also best for staying in sockets but not getting stuck
Comment on British plugs
Devial@discuss.online 18 hours ago
Best plug+receptor design in the world for electrical safety.
Worst plug design in the world for bottom of foot safety.
thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Sounds like the problem is people leaving plugs lying on the ground? Otherwise known as user error.
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
Or what they called it: Skill Issue.
toynbee@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
You sound like ElectroBOOM.
Horsecook@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
That’s debatable. The plug safety features only exist because of the UK’s uniquely substandard wiring.
Devial@discuss.online 15 hours ago
No it isn’t. It’s debatable if the safety features are still necessary with modern wiring, but it is objectively safer than any other plug design there is.
And the design of these features wasn’t because of “substandard” wiring. It is because the UK used to use ring circuits in old houses, which are unsuitable to be protected by central fuses/breakers, necessitating fuses in the plugs. That doesn’t make the system any less safe. As long as a fuse is present, and the circuits are adequately sized, where precisely on the circuit a fuse is located is irrelevant.
Also, the fuse inside the plug provides an utterly unique advantage that no other country has: The fuse can be used to protect the external wire from over current. Centralised fuses are exclusively designed to prevent over current on the main, internal circuit, they don’t give a crap what happens on the other side of an outlet. A central fuse will do nothing to stop you from pulling 15Amps thought a 3 amp cable. A fuse inside the plug, appropriately sized for those 3 Amps, will in fact protect the cable itself.
devedeset@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
The USA approach to this is to mandate a comical number of outlets everywhere (to prevent extension cord usage), mandate a large number of individual circuits (especially for things that draw a large amount of power), and more recently some combo of AFCI/GFCI/CAFCI breakers (to provide some level of sensing things going wrong and shutting off power).
The stats are not great for the USA in terms of number of fires. I haven’t done deep research. From personal experience, most homes built after modern US electrical code was fleshed out are generally fine. Modern homes (or ones upgraded to modern code) seem very safe - the “smart” breakers tend to actually work.
My anecdote here is that my relatively small hometown area (15,000 people, largely built up between 1860-1940) still has frequent fires relating to electrical and heating systems and the current city I live in (95,000 people mostly built up starting in ~1960) has very few fires ever. I spend 2 weeks a year around Christmas back in my hometown. 3 of the last 7 years had a structure loss fire while I was there. In the same period of time there have been 2 structure loss fires in my current city total.
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
So you’re not saying it’s because the wiring is substandard, but because it’s ring circuits, which are not up to the same standard as if they used a breaker panel.
Isn’t that the same thing?
Devial@discuss.online 13 hours ago
No, because the rest of the world isn’t America.
Those ring circuits WERE up to UK standard, and perfectly safe when they were constructed, and nowadays are either still covered by the standard, or grandfathered in.
The reason other counties don’t use ring circuits isn’t because they’re less safe. It’s because they’re less convenient. It’s easier and more convenient to make and use, and easier in terms of individual steps, to make seperate fused circuits instead of a ring circuit.
The reason the UK used ring circuits was because they use much less copper conduit, and given the ~copper~ everything shortage during and after WWII, the convenience of modern circuits simply wasn’t worth it.
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 13 hours ago
And Europe doesn’t have old houses with the same difficulty in wiring?
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
Care to elaborate on this? Imo it does sounds like a win if that’s the case.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 11 hours ago
Post-war reconstruction, they had a massive copper shortage. The wiring standards they adopted allowed for using as little copper as possible. That meant fewer, high-amperage circuits, rather than many low-amperage circuits. They used “ring circuit” topology instead of “branch circuits” to allow them to use undersized wiring.
Basically, all the shortcuts they took in their household wiring introduce considerably greater risks than exist elsewhere, including North America. Their household wiring is overloaded relative to most of the rest of the world. They mitigated the risks of their household wiring with stricter standards on their appliance wiring. Which is why they need a plug for their phone charger comparable to the plugs we use on a welder.
It’s a good plug A damn good plug. It’s just complete overkill for electric systems outside of the UK.
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 10 hours ago
That makes sense, but imo for those country that follow UK standard with 220v/240v power everywhere in the house, it better be overkill than not. But then i guess that’s why EU also have this two pin plug for low power application that come with partially insulated pin, and won’t hurt your feet when step on. Best of both world!
Image