In my kitchen, if I try and run the tumble dryer, microwave, washing machine and boil the kettle at the same time, the switch on the fuse box trips... so there is certainly a limit somewhere. But that doesn't affect the sockets in the lounge. I doubt that you would ever strike it with electrical equipment such as computers and TVs
Most buildings have 2 or more ring curits, small buildings often have the kitchin on a differants ring to the rest of the house
I find this thread curious as my kettle is rated at 2850 watts, and coming out of the same socket I have the heater for my snake's tank.
Plus I have a computer plugged in at the other end of the room. Different socket but I'd imagine it's the same loop.
this is fine, will cause no problems but kettels use a lot of power
I work for the local council and over the winter we had a situation were the heating was not working for 3 days due to a problem with the gas main in the street. National Grid lent us about 30 or so 3KW small heaters to warm up the building, Of course as soon as many of them were plugged in. ( 4 were even plugged into 1 extention lead) the MCB would trip out. This actually happened during the three days of Christmas while I was off work and so didnt have to go out and sort it all out thankfully
As a rule of thumb anything that has an element (Kettles, Heaters, Irons, Dryers) should be plugged directly into the wall socket and never into an extention. I have seen this happen and overloaded sockets is actually the highest single cause of household fires in the uk. For most people its common sense but then some people are just stupid. I have seen serveral plugs that have actually melted to the socket due to the amount of power that is being drawn through them.
this is correct, its also advisable that you connect computers into wall sockets to prevent hardware damage. (thankfull due to safty feachers of PSU this is often advoided but is still patentual)
appologys for my bad grammer
extensions will normal have a guid on the power support of the extension
powering 4 hightpowered objects on a extension socket pack will cause the either the connections or wire to overheat
Edit : extension sockets have safty equiptment that will trip the RCD when is useing more then what the socket is rated for (its quite commen that people will have MCB and RCD tripping isues becouse of the safty features of exension sockets and not realise)
some older extensions have litle safty equiptment and will overload the MCB causing it to trip (if this was a fues then it would blow insted)
Edit 2: heaters and heating objects often have hight watt rating becouse the power of a item is messured by the heat it dispeciates (this is the effects of resistance against current hence why Watt = Amp x Volt)
Edit 3: also house voltages are acceptible at min of 216.2V and max of 253V