When stuff did not come with a plug on the flex lead.

bullets

Nice little retro thought popped into me head today.

I had totally forgotten that once upon a time in Ireland when you bought
an electrical appliance it did not always come with a plug installed on the power lead. You actually had to go off and buy your own plug separately !!!
(A bit like nowadays where Printers dont always come with printer leads, or Tellys dont some with hdmi cables)

I remember while away on Camp with the FCA as a teenager in the early 90's
I bought a "Double Deck with CD player" that came without a Plug on it.
To my horror when I turned my back one of the guys in my units had stuck the
two wires directly into the wall socket without any plug and was playing
horrific rave music.

~B

gipi

bullets wrote: »

I bought a "Double Deck with CD player" that came without a Plug on it.
To my horror when I turned my back one of the guys in my units had stuck the two wires directly into the wall socket without any plug and was playing horrific rave music.

~B

And that's why the nannies in Europe decreed that we couldn't buy anything electrical unless it had a plug on it!

cml387

This is why they fixed plugs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYwmrBXHFO4

Mike 1972

pre fitted plugs were standard in most of Europe and the US for decades before they became mandatory here.

The number of incorrectly wired/incorrectly fused/round pin plugs forced into square pin sockets/bare wires pushed into sockets was :eek:. Its a wonder far more people didnt wind up like the guy in that video.

ADDS: RTE also had a version of that ad with an Irish guy on voiceover IIRC

Capt'n Midnight

cml387 wrote: »

This is why they fixed plugs:

He'd have been grand if he'd cut the earth wire or used a bit of the old insulation tape


the overloaded socket one is good too

CrowdedHouse

Ah shur it's grand - they're safety matches

Dartz

Still have to wire up a plug from time to time, usually when something we buy comes with one of them fecky two-prong EU plugs.

Remember. Fuse on the Live wire.

And nails are not fuses.

Capt'n Midnight

Dartz wrote: »

Still have to wire up a plug from time to time, usually when something we buy comes with one of them fecky two-prong EU plugs.

Remember. Fuse on the Live wire.

And nails are not fuses.

remember the old fuse wire ?

A single strand of multistrand is good for 5A

A chewing gum wrapper is good for 30A

And before you ask, our house didn't burn down. :rolleyes:

Well not recently anyways :pac:


For the euro plugs
It would be easier to buy a shaver adaptor, there is a place between whelans and the bleeding horse that does them for €1.20, or pay a visit to the pound shop




back before the EU safety laws came in Comet (UK) used to advertise that they would give you a screwdriver when you paid over the odds for a TV so you could change the plug

Run_to_da_hills

6mm gutter bolt sections make the best fuses.

They are the same diameter as a 13A fuse and they will never ever blow.

Solair

The reason appliances were sold without plugs in the UK and Ireland was because until the 1980s we still had a ridiculous variety of plugs and sockets in use.

The old British round pin system came with a different size plug for different rated sockets, all of which were totally incompatible with each other common varieties : 2amp (very small), 5amp (similar to modern plugs) and the absolutely gigantic 15amp round pin plug.

Then you had obsolete 2-pin sockets from that same British standards family in use at the same time.

The old BS546 system was possibly one of the most daft "systems" of plugs/sockets ever invented as you had umpteen different types of socket in a single house. This resulted in all sorts of dangerous adaptors being used.

And, then you also had BS1363, the modern 13amp fused plug in use in many buildings from the 1950s onwards.

To top it all off, in Ireland, ESB originally preferred the continental style "Schuko" 16amp plug with a scraping side earth. Some buildings in Ireland had these installed and they were quite common.

Because there was no single standard, they simply did not fit plugs to appliances as people had to fit the version that was appropriate to the sockets in their houses.

In Ireland, many appliances also shipped with European 16amp earthed 2-pin and non-earthed 2-pin plugs right up until the 1990s.

They should have mandated 13amp square-pin BS1363 plugs to be fitted on all appliances sold here from the 1970s onwards as that socket system had become standard by then.

It's amazing that it took EU regulations to force the UK and Ireland to do that!

On the fuse wire thing: I didn't realise they were used in Ireland. We normally have the beer-bottle shaped cartridge fuses, German style Diazed system. Fuse wire's still very common in buildings in the UK though, even today!

PaudyW

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

6mm gutter bolt sections make the best fuses.

They are the same diameter as a 13A fuse and they will never ever blow.

used to use 6mm bar for fuse on an old bike i had, think it s still running with it in, use to blow bulbs a lot,:)

Run_to_da_hills

PaudyW wrote: »

used to use 6mm bar for fuse on an old bike i had, think it s still running with it in, use to blow bulbs a lot,:)

Did the same on a BSA A65 until it shorted and burnt out the CDI unit and wiring loom.

Solair

Well, if you bypass a fuse by replacing it with a solid lump of metal, the next weakest part of the circuit, which is usually the bit you're trying to protect, is what will blow.

The only reason for fuses in Irish/British plugs is that we allow ring circuits, fused at 30-32Amps. The fuse in the plug prevents the flex of the appliance from catching fire in the event of a short circuit.

In most other countries, 15/16amp radial circuits are the norm, and fused plugs are unnecessary.

Thargor

In a similar vein does anyone remember those adapter things you could shove into a light socket and plug in an electrical appliance into them? A lot of old people round our way in the middle of nowhere used to sit in the dark watching tv or listening to the radio with it plugged into one of those.

Solair

I've heard of them, but I'm not that old

My granny's house still has German-style sockets though!

P. Breathnach

Thargor wrote: »

In a similar vein does anyone remember those adapter things you could shove into a light socket and plug in an electrical appliance into them? A lot of old people round our way in the middle of nowhere used to sit in the dark watching tv or listening to the radio with it plugged into one of those.

We had an adaptor version, so that you could have both light bulb and radio. Not very different from the things you can now buy for car lighter sockets.

Capt'n Midnight

Thargor wrote: »

In a similar vein does anyone remember those adapter things you could shove into a light socket and plug in an electrical appliance into them? A lot of old people round our way in the middle of nowhere used to sit in the dark watching tv or listening to the radio with it plugged into one of those.

amatuers, I've a Y splitter that you can put in a light socket so you can have a bulb as well as an appliance


Then again when you live in a damp countryyou tend to be a little more wary of electricity than someone from one of those bone dry continetnal ones.

Thomas828

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

amatuers, I've a Y splitter that you can put in a light socket so you can have a bulb as well as an appliance

Then again when you live in a damp countryyou tend to be a little more wary of electricity than someone from one of those bone dry continetnal ones.

You were taking your life in your hands using those things, especially if you were using an appliance that needed an earth wire. One winter my parents plugged an electric fire into one of those and put it up in the loft to keep the water tank from freezing. Mad and dangerous, I know, but our house had none of the insulation that modern houses have and the wiring was something like thirty years old!

spurious

The old two pin plugs were great fun, especially if you wired two or more 'devices' into them.

But what about the finger-sized telephone plugs? Chunky deluxe.

Mike 1972

The point about multiple standards for sockets is a valid one although by the mid 1970's the majority of Irish sockets were of the BS1363/13 amp standard

Thargor wrote: »

In a similar vein does anyone remember those adapter things you could shove into a light socket and plug in an electrical appliance into them? A lot of old people round our way in the middle of nowhere used to sit in the dark watching tv or listening to the radio with it plugged into one of those.

They could be quite handy and were safe enough if used properly (i.e. only two wire appliances under a couple of hundred watts)

Unfortunately the nanny state felt the need to protect the general public from their own stupidity.

In some countries (not sure about Ireland) they used to have this mad system wherby electricity for lighting was metered seperately and charged less which meant that people used these adaptors (probably illegally) to fiddle their electicity company out of a few quid. Also I visited some student bedsits onetime and saw a cable running from a hall light under the door of one of the flats.......:D

spurious wrote: »

But what about the finger-sized telephone plugs? Chunky deluxe.

"Quarter inch four pole Post office jack" was the technical name

L1011

Solair wrote: »

I've heard of them, but I'm not that old

My granny's house still has German-style sockets though!

How old is the wiring there :eek:

'back home' for me got the rural electrification in ~1957 and it was all round pin sockets by then. We had to get our house rewired in the mid 1990s after the ESB gave us a disconnection threat (managed to blow something outside of the house by having a kettle and the electric shower on at the same time...) and obviously it has modern UK sockets now.

Only lost the round Bakelite light switches at the same time.

I was able to wire a plug correctly from a young age - I remember we got a Nintendo console, the original NES, in 1992 and it had no plug attached. I also remember we got hold of a second hand fridge from somewhere around the same time, my dad decided to check the plug just in case. Lucky he did, as it was wired completely wrong!

I also changed the plug on my laptop as I bought it from Austria two years ago, so it came with a Euro plug.

Capt'n Midnight

I can remember a Nilfisk Vacuum Cleaner that came without a plug. It had two wires , black and blue :rolleyes:

Solair

MYOB wrote: »

How old is the wiring there :eek:

'back home' for me got the rural electrification in ~1957 and it was all round pin sockets by then. We had to get our house rewired in the mid 1990s after the ESB gave us a disconnection threat (managed to blow something outside of the house by having a kettle and the electric shower on at the same time...) and obviously it has modern UK sockets now.

Only lost the round Bakelite light switches at the same time.

Her house was wired in the early 1960s and it has "schuko" sockets. I think both the continental 16 Amp "schuko" side-earthed plugs and the British old round-pin plugs co-existed here at one stage. It seems to depend on the region / electricians preferences at the time.

L1011

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I can remember a Nilfisk Vacuum Cleaner that came without a plug. It had two wires , black and blue :rolleyes:

It'd probably have just blown rather than sucked if you'd wired it backwards though

Solair

MYOB wrote: »

It'd probably have just blown rather than sucked if you'd wired it backwards though

Actually, as it's A/C power it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference which way you wired it. Polarity's irrelevant, and is actually random with continental plugs i.e you can insert them either way. The only thing that is very important is that you do not confuse any connection with the earth! You can reverse live and neutral without any effect.

In fact, any "figure of 8" connector e.g. on the back of your satellite box, or anything with a continental plug + adapter used in Ireland or the UK, is not polarised at all.

The only issues with polarity are when something's switched off, if the switch happens to be on the neutral side, it can leave components inside live. This is why you should never stick a fork in a plugged-in toaster or service an appliance without unplugging it, particularly on the continent or even the US, where polarity is never entirely certain. Even in Ireland and the UK you can never be 100% sure as the wiring can be incorrect at the socket or in the plug, and you would never notice because it makes no difference to how appliances function.

So ALWAYS remove the plug and never rely on the switch if you're going to be in contact with internal components of any appliance.



Also, with plug-in lamps that had the edison-screw type bulbs, there was a risk that the screw part of the bulb could be live. That is overcome in Europe by using a big collar around the bulb which prevents your fingers from touching the screw. In the US, they polarised the plugs and in Ireland, Britain and France, we just used sensible light bulbs with bayonet connectors, although they're all mixed up with imports now.

All European appliances, including all sold here, are designed to operate safely in either polarity though, so there's absolutely no way you'll get a hoover to blow if you reverse the plug

Mike 1972

Solair wrote: »

Polarity's irrelevant, and is actually random with continental plugs

Usually irrelevant but not always.

And while its random with the type of plugs used in the links of Germany and the Netherlands the French/Polish version is polorised.

Even the US are moving towards polorised two pin sockets now (their three pin ones always were)

Solair

Mike 1972 wrote: »

Usually irrelevant but not always.

And while its random with the type of plugs used in the links of Germany and the Netherlands the French/Polish version is polorised.

Even the US are moving towards polorised two pin sockets now (their three pin ones always were)

I would never assume that the French ones are polarized as the sockets can be wired randomly either way.

There are absolutely no appliances sold in Europe that care which way the live and neutral are connected.

The only exceptions are ancient televisions and radios that had used the chassis as a neutral, and they're LONG gone other than as collectors' items.

Mike 1972

Solair wrote: »

I would never assume that the French ones are polarized as the sockets can be wired randomly either way.

Doesnt the spec say left pin live right pin neutral (opposite of BS1363)

You might never assume it anyway on the grounds that the person who wired it may have been an idiot but one could say that about any type of socket really.

kelle

MYOB wrote: »

'back home' for me got the rural electrification in ~1957 and it was all round pin sockets by then. We had to get our house rewired in the mid 1990s after the ESB gave us a disconnection threat (managed to blow something outside of the house by having a kettle and the electric shower on at the same time...) and obviously it has modern UK sockets now.

Your post just reminded me of the old shack house I lived in as a child. We couldn't have more than one appliance switched on otherwise we'd get a smell of burning, not even the TV and radio together!
Now it's amazing how many appliances I can have working at the same time in my modern house!

Solair

Mike 1972 wrote: »

Doesnt the spec say left pin live right pin neutral (opposite of BS1363)

You might never assume it anyway on the grounds that the person who wired it may have been an idiot but one could say that about any type of socket really.

The French layout is technically it's identical to BS1363 -

Earth - pin on socket should be at the top
Phase - right
Neutral - left

The problem is that it's rarely enforced and the majority of plugs and sockets sold have no identifying marks on the wiring terminals. So they're often wired randomly when it comes to phase and neutral.