When will Ireland be fully metric?

Not to turn it political, but I always found it a little strange that Ireland didn't wholeheartedly adopt the Metric System much earlier on given how anti-Imperial we were!

It's sort of one of those symbols of all things British.

Likewise, we adopted the British enormous plug - complete with its amazing foot-stabbling abilities!

We could have started driving on the right, just to be annoying etc etc. The plus side is that it would have saved us a lot of money in terms of access to a much wider market of cars.

At times you'd wonder how we didn't go out and pick systems that were 'the best of the best' instead of just using British systems and painting them green and calling them something in Irish.

Davarus Walrus wrote: »

The BS 1363 is a sign of true civilization. No other plug design comes close.

To its ability to stab you in the foot in the morning?
Well, to be fair I suppose the Aussi / Chinese one is slightly worse. Upturned blade pins! Ouch!

It's still absolutely enormous though.

The modern continental system is extremely safe (sheathed pins or recessed sockets for heavier plugs) - carries more power (16A) and most importantly allows for smaller plugs for smaller appliances.

I don't really see too many Germans being electrocuted or having their plugs burst in to flames. They tend to develop pretty robust tech standards.

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But, you'd think we'd have adopted the Metric system and metric money much earlier than we did.
It didn't really make a lot of sense to continue with that extremely awkward mess of units for as long as we did.

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Probably the best plugs/sockets ever used in this country were the old Bakelite round pin plugs, matched to the porcelain based round pin socket. Open one up if you find one and look at the quality of the internals, and the amount of metal used in the contact points. Try running a welder off a square pin plug and see how long they last before burning out the puny little spring contacts.

Continental 'schuko' sockets are actually arguably safer than our BS1363 things certainly in terms of high loads anyway. The main reason being they've a recessed socket which means that they can use the contact surface of almost the entire pin to make a connection. The socket's sunk back into a hole which means as you're inserting the plug, the face of the plug sits into that recess and you cannot get your fingers anywhere near the pins.

They only plastic sheath the pins on the little 2.5amp moulded on flat plugs that you get on small appliances, because they're also used in Italy, Denmark and with other obsolete non-recessed sockets.

BS1363 only connects at the tip of the pins giving them very little contact area. This is because the plug wasn't recessed and they wanted to avoid having live pins as you inserted it. So it's a huge compromise to the design of it in terms of how it will get hot under load.

Also, the fuse in the plug is quite a flimsy setup and if the contacts on that aren't very tight, it can heat up causing the live pin and fuse contacts to get red hot.

That's why you often see sockets with a burnt live pin receptacle or plugs with burnt sides where they've been used with heavy heaters / heavy cooking appliances etc. Either a very slightly loose spring on the socket or, a loose fuse in the plug resulting in a red hot pin.

Also, continental plugs are 16amp which gives you up to 3680W vs 2990 with ours. Makes a huge difference for things like welders.

In reality, for those kinds of appliances in the absence of continental plugs, you should probably be using the huge industrial 16 amp "CEEform" / commando plugs i.e. the big blue yokes.

We had a lot of issues with heavy stage lighting and BS1363 plugs deciding to melt.

...

Also the internal fuse in the BS1363 plugs isn't there for extra safety really. It's there because the UK commonly uses 'ring circuits' (less common in Ireland.

A ring circuit is basically a copper-saving setup that was invented after WWII. They allow you to run the wiring around in a ring that is connected at both ends to the fuse / breaker. So, power is being fed from both ends of the circuit.

Then, they allow you to 'up rate' the cable which would normally be allowed to carry 20A max to 32A because the power's in theory being fed from the two ends.

Because the plug's connected to a 32A circuit instead of a 16-20A circuit, it needs local protection to prevent fire should there be a short circuit. Appliance cords aren't designed to cope with 32A and would possibly catch fire during a fault otherwise.

Also, there's a bit of an issue with the theory behind rings.

1) It assumes that the load is balanced along the ring. However, you get plenty of circumstances where all the heavy appliances (like in a kitchen) are at one end of the ring. That can cause overloading and potentially a fire risk and it's why rings are now banned in Irish kitchens in the wiring regs.

2) If anyone accidentally breaks the ring (adding a socket or whatever), the sockets will continue to work but the current carrying capacity of the wiring has been halved. That can result in fire risks.

The BS1363 system isn't all it's cracked up to be in many respects. It's just bulky!
Safety shutters are also now common on continental sockets and required in many countries like France for example. They had been unique to BS1363 in the past.

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Can you tell me if it is true that all German households have a 3 phase feed connected, though not necessarily used?

Most continental countries tend to provide 3-phase to any installation that's beyond a small apartment in size where as we tend to provide larger single phase connections in Ireland and in the UK (And also France).

We tend to balance the load here by putting each house on a different phase. Where as many continental countries deliver full 3-phase power to every home once you go beyond a small load size.

Basically, you'd have 3-phase delivered to the distribution board (fuse box) but most circuits would only take 1 Phase + Neutral (i.e. 230V).

Some heavy appliances, especially cookers will often take full 3 phase power.
(you'll see a lot of newer cookers sold here are often configurable for 3 phase)

The other side of it tough is that they usually have very strict laws about banning DIY work on distribution boards.

You'd often have full 3-phase sockets though in the garage or workshop type setups without any fuss.
In modern installations the 3-phase sockets are also RCD protected, so they're relatively safe to work, even though you're getting 400V power.

From what I gather the logic is that they don't like individual circuits getting beyond 20 amps due to bulky wiring and fire risks so instead will tend to go for 3 phase.

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I just think you get a lot of British (and Irish) commentators passing judgement on "European" systems based on some clapped out wiring in a a French holiday home that was last updated in the 1940s-50s.

There is some utterly scary wiring in use in both Ireland and Britain too thanks to the culture of allowing DIY work.
The UK also had re-wirable mains fuses in use until relatively recently (still commonly found). You literally have to 'mend' the fuse by connecting fuse wire between two terminals. Really primitive stuff. I was pretty stunned when I had to change a fuse in London at how ancient the setup was!

Ireland normally used continental diazed fuses - the beer bottle style cartridges that you screw in.

RCDs are also only a very recent thing in the UK where as on the continent (and also here) they've been around for a long time now.

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Thanks for the info SpaceTime.
And I suppose therein lies the major difference in this country, and continental Europe. Forward planning and adherence to the rules and regs.

I remember the first time I was in France, and marvelling at the precast concrete electricity pylons, with "steps" precast, and large and highly visible "cut off" switches. Thinking "if that was in Ireland, you would have hoards of people climbing the poles trying to either connect to the system, or cutting off entire neighbour hoods.

Those switches don't cut off anything They only reset the breaker in the event of lightening storms taking out the power and they're only supposed to be accessed by authorised EDF officials.

They're largely replaced with automatic resetting stuff and remote monitored SCADA systems much like here. Ireland never had to deal with regular violent lightening storms in summer like rural France would have had to.

It's also normal that every household has to have lightening protection built into the circuit board.

Believe me, the French are every bit as (if not much more prone) to acts of vandalism than the 'scumbags' that roam around here are.

Things get covered in graffiti much more readily too! I've seen entire TGVs 100% covered in graffiti.

Handiest one though in France and elsewhere in Europe is that socket/switch wall boxes are round.

If you want to install a new socket, you get a standardised core drill bit on your drill. Drill a hole in the wall - slot in the back box and voila 2 mins later you've a socket installed vs having to hack out the plaster to get the British/Irish style square boxes in!

Tomsh307 wrote: »

Younger people still think in feet and inches so of course its harder to visualise centimetres.

Only when it comes to body height etc
None ever learnt to deal with feet and inches.

I wouldn't even think many under 30 even know how may inches are in a foot or what a yard is exactly.

Try it today : ask someone under 40 how many inches are in a yard and I can assure you very few can answer!

Or even how many lbs in a stone.

They use a couple of figures to describe their own height / weight etc and for anything practical they're actually metric.

I saw someone attempting to use Feet & CM in a DIY store recently for example!

He was looking for 8ft19 of wood!

Dads can't work with offspring on DIY without trying to prove you wrong and insist that you're holding that screwdriver the wrong way.

That's just the natural order of things and the origin of the word 'patronising'.

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

We also need to move to a metric and/or decimal time system(also known as French Revolutionary Time).



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time

The French gave up on that a long time ago.

Working in electrical engineering makes me above such debates. Voltage and current is the same everywhere. I would like to go to the US for a few years but refuse to accept fahrenheit. Ill use gallons, inches and miles but fahrenheit can go **** itself.

shruikan2553 wrote: »

Working in electrical engineering makes me above such debates. Voltage and current is the same everywhere. I would like to go to the US for a few years but refuse to accept fahrenheit. Ill use gallons, inches and miles but fahrenheit can go **** itself.

They're *AMERICAN* volts! Each time you see one you have to sing the star spangled banner.

Andrew_Doran wrote: »

Because half everything is in the metric equivalent. We build to imperial but measure in metric. If we stopped doing that overnight then everything new would look very wrong to the eye.

Yeah, central Paris looks awful and totally off to the eye. (to be read in sarcastic tone)

All the eye (brain) cares about is symmetry and the golden ratio. It has no concept of feet/inches or cm/mm.
Half the time it gets confused about scale anyway.

Deleted User wrote: »

US gallons aren't the same as UK gallons:Gallon
Niether are fluid ounces nor are pints(568 mL here vs 473 mL in the US)

I am going to weigh myself tonight to fix kilos in my head.

Simple way of thinking about it:

1 litre of water weighs 1kg.

So, a litre of milk = 1kg (tiny difference due to suspended fats and solids, but irrelevant really)

Most of us have a sense of that.

Deleted User wrote: »

Is there anything restricting a newly opened pub (for example) selling half liters rather than pints?
Assuming they were clear about the measures on sale and the price reflected the size and all that.

Oh there'd be chaos with horses eating horses and everything like that time we changed to km/h for speed limits.

Oh right, yeah .. nothing happened and we all got on grand.