Reinventing the Great British Plug?

Nikumba said:
With it not being CE approved how would an insurance company look at it if it caused a fire or accident?
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Loads of house fires are a result of peoples negligence, insurance still pays out. Someone I know caused a fire when making nitrocellulose, insurance still covered it.
 
Evangelion said:
Why would you need one? We don't have fuses in Australian plugs, and we get along just fine.
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Errrr because you could burn your house down and kill your entire family :rolleyes:

The VAST majority of U.K plug outlets are installed on a 2.5mm ring final circuit (which is risky and fundamentally flawed imho, but I digress :-/ )

This 2.5mm ring final basically gives you a supply CSA of 5mm which allows the safe delivery of around 32A, a power lead will normally contain cables with CSA of 0.75mm-1.5mm this can safely carry currents of 6A-16A.

Without a fuse a faulty device connected to such a cable would physically be able to demand a current that the CSA of the cable could not safely carry, effectively turning the power-lead into a heating element
The cable would glow red hot and potentially start a fire.

The fuse's in our plugs are their to protect the cable and nothing else, in the same way that the MCB's in our CCU's are there to protect the Ring Finals and radials in our houses, making it physically impossible for them to demand a higher current then they can safely carry!

Fuse's in U.K plugs are VERY important safety devices and you could not remove them safely without re-designing and completely re-wiring your house and even then the only safe way to do that would be to wire LOADS of small CSA radial circuits!! i.e it wouldn't be practical or cost/time efficient!!
 
geuben said:
The main flaw I see with this design (which I really like otherwise) is one that will no doubt stop it from ever being in use. Health and Safety, the design appears to make it a million times easier for a small child to remove the plug and thus possibly expose the partially inserted contacts.
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Unlike other doggy foreign plugs ours are one of the safest if not the safest on the planet, what you describe is physically impossible provided the plug conforms to BS standards.
The Phase and neutral PINS on a U.K plug are 9mm insulated so by the time conductive part of the pin is exposed it is no longer making contact in the socket and is therefore no longer energised/live.

We really do have fantastic plugs which are extremely safe and it's something we all should be very proud of, I know I am :-)
Yes they are a little bulky but imo that's a small price to pay for very safe and very reliable plugs/sockets!
 
I see it being easy to just snap it off... don't know why people are so keen to change our plugs, of all things. They're among the best in the world.
 
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