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EU plug, UK socket

stevec67 said:
On this subject, what the bloody hell has happened to lightbulb standards in the last few years? You used to buy bayonet fittings in various power outputs, job done. You now have MR 11, 16, Christ knows what else, pushins, stepped pins that push and twist, screw fittings in 2 or more sizes, it goes on for bloody ever! I have boxloads of the things and I need 20 minutes with a notepad and a caliper to work out what fitting I need next.
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Agrred., Never used to have lightbulb moments; now they're almost stroboscopic !

dweezil said:
I usually poke a screwdriver in the earth hole to open the holes and plug in as normal.
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Not for some time, but that's exactly what I used to do; always fitted (after a fashion).
 
Thorn said:
i've just bought a wine fridge from a French company. It's arrived with an EU plug and an adaptor. Is there any reason why I shouldn't snip the plug off and fit a UK one?
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This may already have been said, but it may void the guarantee. I have bought power tools in Germany (cheaper and you get back the 19% German VAT), and they naturally come with German-type Schuko plugs, totally different from Swiss hexagon plugs. I often use adapters until the guarantee expires, then change plugs. Sometimes I don't bother doing that - the Schuko plugs on my Festool stuff fit into my Festool dust collector/vacuum so I've kept them.
 
richardg said:
Minor point....but not all our French apiances fit into plug sockets in our German warehouse. Hence I am not sure there is an EU plug?
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The French also use a Schuko plug, but their sockets have an earthing pin, which goes into a hole in the plug to an earthing connection within the plug. The German Schukos have earthing strips down the side, which mate with earting connections in the socket.
 
When I moved into a back-to-back in the 70s, it had three types of socket, square pin, round pin and little round pin. Fortunately there was a proper old-fashioned electrical shop in Headingley which stocked the older style plugs. I later bought the house from my landlord, but had him rewire it before I suggested he sold it to me.
Now we're uniform with our electrical stuff. Oh, hang on. Depending on which bulb blows, I need bayonet, large screw, small screw, GU5, GU10, something odd for the lobby, something differently odd for the outside lights, yet another differently odd fitting for the kitchen under-cupboard lighting and fluorescent strips in the garage.
By the way, I've decided to stick with the adaptor for the wine fridge.
 
I know. Since changing most (not all - yet) lights to LED types, I have found that I have even more miscellaneous types of bulb in the box in the utility. Now it is a case of 'that'll do for now' and then forget that I have to buy the proper one next time in town or remember in my Amazon shopping basket
 
tones said:
This may already have been said, but it may void the guarantee. I have bought power tools in Germany (cheaper and you get back the 19% German VAT), and they naturally come with German-type Schuko plugs,
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Don't really understand the VAT refund; got it on my microwave, a welcome bonus but i didn't think it should work that way.
 
dweezil said:
Don't really understand the VAT refund; got it on my microwave, a welcome bonus but i didn't think it should work that way.
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I live in non-EU Switzerland, so I have to pay Swiss VAT (7.7%) on entry, unless the cost is below CHF300, in which case I pay no VAT - but I still get a refund on the German VAT. This usually involves taking the papers (with German and Swiss customs stamps, showing that the goods have been exported) back to the shop and getting the VAT in cash.
 
eternumviti said:
We spend 60 years in the EU thingy and they can't even standardise plugs. I thought that was what the EU was for. Where's Jacques Delors when you need him?
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Why do you insist on the "they/them"? Until very recently it was "we/us", the correct expression is "We spend 60 years in the EU thingy and we couldn't even standardise plugs."

I wonder why the UK didn't adopt the European plug, too many dodgy electrical installations perhaps?
 
tuga said:
I wonder why the UK didn't adopt the European plug, too many dodgy electrical installations perhaps?
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Probably because European domestic plugs don't have an earth; it's one of the few examples of where a European standard is actually lower than a UK one.
 
tuga said:
Why do you insist on the "they/them"? Until very recently it was "we/us", the correct expression is "We spend 60 years in the EU thingy and we couldn't even standardise plugs."

I wonder why the UK didn't adopt the European plug, too many dodgy electrical installations perhaps?
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You touch on a point of some validity. The EU has always been 'them', even during all those years that it was, indeed, 'us'. The EU bureaucratic structure is anyway a very French-charactered thing, and was from the outset.

Now I know that the pfm remain massive will all now leap to their keyboards to be the first to post 'ENGLISH EXCEPTIONALISM!', but I think it has much more to do with our Atlanticist/Anglosphere world view.
 
BS1363 plugs have square pins so that they're deliberately incompatible with the previous UK plugs - the pre-1947 system was not safe, and BS1363 was a successful attempt to fix its many problems. The reason why the plug is mechanically incompatible is because the UK adopted a fuse-in-plug system - Continental plugs are fused at the distribution board, which means if a piece of equipment fitted with a continental plug were to short-circuit, it would only trip when it hit the ring-main's guard fuse limit, which is 32 Amps.

Actually, that's not quite true, as most electronic equipment had a fuse-in-device, rendering the UK socket fuse redundant (just as well: 13 Amps is a huge amount of current in Electronics; most equipment is fitted with 5 Amp fuses or lower)

( In one concession the L/N holes of a UK socket will accept a two-pin "Europlug" (a.k.a. "shaver plug") if you push the earth shutter with the end of a Bic biro - this was allowed because that kind of two-pole plug is used only for loads under 3 Amps.)

The UK system's insistence on earth provision is its best feature. However, earthing is not as much of a safety bonus these days, as the vast majority of domestic electrical equipment is double-insulated Class II (a classification that didn't exist in 1947), and thus has no connection on the earth pin.

Ireland uses the same plug type of the UK, largely because it was a good design, but also for pragmatic reasons: most trade was with the UK, and it allowed compatibility with Northern Ireland (the Island of Ireland has always been a single electrical grid). Our regulations don't permit ring mains, though: sockets are wired on single-ended spurs.

In one odd hangover of colonialism, Singapore, Malta, Cyprus and Hong Kong* also use these plugs, which was always handy for people doing a bit of consumer-electronics shopping on their way home from Australia. (Especially back in the days of analogue TV, as HK also used the same PAL-I colour system as the UK)
__
* but only Hong Kong: in mainland China, domestic installations use whatever was in the first box the electrician pulled from his van.
 
Seeker_UK said:
Probably because European domestic plugs don't have an earth; it's one of the few examples of where a European standard is actually lower than a UK one.
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The French have 'earths' for example

electric-appliances.jpg


Technically it's the CPC rather than the 'earth'. The earth is the connection provided by the 'board' at the meter
 
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