Electrical plugs (Split from National Postcodes to be introduced)

Sam Russell · 04-06-2014 9:17am

Tyres are measured in a mixture of metric and imperial - 195/70-16R are 195mm wide and a profile of 70% to fit a wheel of 16 inch diam.

TVs are measured in inches (diagonal).

The washing machine connection uses BSP fittings (British Standard Pipe) which are universal.

SpaceTime · 04-06-2014 9:58am

murphaph wrote: »

All this talk of plugs reminds me of a funny story. My mother gave my girlfriend an Irish bought electric toothbrush as a present. It was actually a German brand, Oral.B but anyway...the thing had a UK/IRL shaver socket plug fitted which to the untrained eye looks remarkably similar to a Europlug. The pins were slightly closer together on it though and my GF couldn't understand why that damn toothbrush wouldn't plug in to our sockets! I ended up cutting the plug off and fitting a Schuko plug to it.

Yeah that's a really pointless plug too as 'Europlug' fits UK style shaver sockets anyway.
I bought my electric toothbrush while in France specifically to avoid that plug as it's really annoying to have to use adaptors to charge your toothbrush when you're on the continent.

The normal Euro plug fits my Irish bathroom socket 100% perfectly so I'm not sure why the UK is specifying that plug with the slightly fatter pins other than to be bloody awkward.

It just ends up inconveniencing UK & Irish tourists and business people when they're abroad.

Also it wouldn't fit into bathroom shaver sockets in Italy which accepted US and Australia plugs as well as European ones. So it's a real oddball standard.

I imagine some Eurosceptic must sit on whatever board insists on maintaining the standard.

murphaph · 04-06-2014 11:21am

To be honest if a directive was passed that forced all new builds to use Schuko sockets (won't happen in my lifetime) then the use of adapters for old 3 pin plugs would be pretty safe. I use a couple of them still for things like SkyNow boxes (only sold in UK) that have the power supply moulded into the 3 pin plug. Using an adapter in a Schuko socket is actually really safe because of the recessed design. It's a really solid fit and the socket itself supports the adapter, not like using adapters on flush sockets like in North America etc. where the weight invariably sees the whole lot literally hanging out of the wall. Still won't see such a directive for a very long time, though it could be done. Comparisons with driving on the right aren't valid. Such changeovers are not at all easy in comparison in any modern country with one way motorway junctions and even traffic lights all facing the wrong way. I don't think you'll ever see a developed country in this day and age switching over as the amount of infrastructure that would need to be changed overnight is immense.

SpaceTime · 04-06-2014 11:32am

Actually, one simple thing would be for the standards bodies to design safe, fully approved adaptors that go between CEE 7 and Irish/UK, Danish, Italian and Swiss plugs.

One of the issues is that adaptors largely exist in a kind of limbo between sets of regulations.

Carawaystick · 04-06-2014 2:43pm

Impetus wrote: »

I have a car that recognises street signs (eg NO ENTRY, speed limit etc) using a video camera and if you attempt to do the wrong thing, it beeps etc. I suspect it might not work (sign reading) in Ireland. Even the speed signs are non-standard. Instead of a limit (eg 50) "km/h" is appended for some reason in Ireland. I suspect this reduces the OCR recognition accuracy - in the same way as using non-numeric postcodes before the name of the town makes it harder for a mechanised system to even find the postcode on a mailing address etc (as the British Post Office found out when re-inventing the postcode wheel 30 years ago).

If your car doesn't recognise street signs in Ireland, then it doesn't recognise streetsigns. Maybe the Driver could pay attention instead of letting a machine decide.
You may or may not be aware that on the 20th Jan 2005, speed limit signs changed from imperial to metric. The km/h is to show the limit is a metric limit.
I'm unsure what you mean by non-standard signs, there is a standard, all irish speed limit signs follow it.
Speed limit signs in other countries are different
Spanish
and French
have different designs.

There are far worse readibility issues with Irish road signage than appending km/h to the speed limit signs, the 3 digit signs should be larger to include the extra digit for one thing, and theres the italic font used on signs too.

Regarding changing any plug/socket system or any entrenched standard really, there would need to be a positive cost/benefit ratio.
In any system there will be early adopter benefits and drawbacks, such as the british mpeg2 tv and mp2 radio systems vs the mp4 rte use and the aac rte could use on digital radio.

murphaph · 04-06-2014 3:00pm

Danish speed limit signs also show km/h and German ones used to for many years (there are even some patched ones in Berlin where the km/h has been blanked out, leaving the numerals offset from centre)

SpaceTime · 04-06-2014 9:53pm

Apparently the reason we adopted the BS1363 British system is pretty much the same reason that they did.

Britain's old system called BS546, the round-pin sockets, was an unbelievably complicated mess.

You'd a whole family of 100% incompatible plugs of different sizes for different ratings.

3-pin plugs in : 15amp, 5amp and 2amp versions (also a 30amp one rarely used). Each of these were the same triangular arrangement of pins, but were completely incompatible. So you couldn't say plug your radio on a 5amp plug into your socket in the kitchen which might be 15amp.

Then there was a second series of 2-pin plugs, part of the same standard specification which were completely incompatible with the 3-pin socket and again, with each other.

So, basically in a typical house you could have had up to 6 different types of incompatible sockets and people were using all sorts of combinations of adaptors.

Whoever designed it never seemed to think that people would want to move from room to room with appliances, never mind have portable ones they might take with them!

Meanwhile, Ireland had used Schuko as Irish Standard IS180 but due to grey-market imports, had also used various combinations of BS546. So you could have a house with again 3 or 4 incompatible socket systems.

To make matters worse, Schuko 2-pin 16 amp plugs mate with BS546 5amp sockets without connecting the earth.

....

The British needed to basically make a system that would be deliberately incompatible with any of their old disaster of a system as it would force people to upgrade.

The result was rectangular pins and BS1363.

Ireland effectively inherited the same problem by allowing people to install British sockets over the years, so BS1363 made sense here too as it was completely incompatible with everything else.

The last thing they wanted was a mess where you'd have earthed plugs being plugged in without connecting the earth (quite possible with Schuko plugs + old UK sockets) in an era before RCDs and lots of metal bodied appliances.

That's pretty much how it happened apparently!

Sam Russell · 04-06-2014 10:43pm

Indeed.

My uncle, a farmer, with no qualifications of any sort, wired his local village for the rural electrification in the 1950s. He did his own house, and then his neighbour's and in the end he had done them all. He did a very good job, but that was luck. No standards - or no enforcement of standards - existed at the time. As demand grew, the 13A plug came in by the back door.

The great thing at the time was electric light, pumped water into the house, and the electric kettle. Washing machines came later. Also the mains radio - no wet or dry batteries anymore.

One old women when she saw the electric kettle boiling (it was sitting on the floor) said "Í never thoght I would see a kettle boil on a carpet!" It was magic.

Normally, a 15 amp plug in the kitchen was loaded with an adapter that took a 15 A and two 5 A plugs - kettle, radio, and a spare. A house would only have a few plugs, maybe 2 or 3.

Electricity was charged at different rates depending on its use. Lights were more expensive than power, but I'm not sure of the details.

Empire o de Sun · 20-06-2014 8:34pm

murphaph wrote: »

Germans use a mixture of metric and imperial measurements for plumbing fittings as well. That tap under the sink for the washing machine or the drain cock thread on a heating system is always 1/2" and is described as such (not in mm). Zoll means inch in German.

It may refer to 1/2", this is because the BS thread has been adapted as the standard for pipe thread in most places (except in North America). ISO 7 or EN 10226

20 mm pipe will have a 1/2" thread, often written as R 1/2 (external taper) or G 1/2 (external parallel)

Depending on the standard, 1/2" pipe isn't 1/2" (12.7 mm)
20 mm pipe has an outside diameter of 20 mm

Both 1/2" and 20 mm pipe are also referred to as DN15 (nominal diameter 15 mm)

Richard · 03-08-2014 9:00pm

murphaph wrote: »

Danish speed limit signs also show km/h and German ones used to for many years (there are even some patched ones in Berlin where the km/h has been blanked out, leaving the numerals offset from centre)

And as well all know, the km/h in Ireland was mainly to help distinguish from the previous signs in miles per hour.

Electrical plugs (Split from National Postcodes to be introduced)

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