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Tell the fuckwits that design wallwarts with the wire coming out from the earth[in side that they need to stop doing it like that !
seriously, what the hell is it with these people. We have always had plug and adapter wires coming from the 2 pin side of the (British) plug not the earth pin side. And no it aint artistic to look at a socket bar with wires going in opposite directions ! The last straw came when I tried to plug my phone power wupply into a 3way adapter, yes you guessed it, now the wire crashes into the socket face. I mean what are these people on ?
If you know a wallwart designer please tell him a thing or two on my behalf
/rant over
Sorry just had too, got other stuff on me plate too, it's not that I'm bored
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Any photos? I can't really understand it.
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the british plug is square, the pins in the back are in a triangle, the one on top is the earth, the wire always used to come out of the bottom, some idiots have the wire out of the top, simply put: the reverse of the norm
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A, ok. Got it!
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maybe allot of brittish homes have wall sockets very close to the floor?
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you cannot come lower than the skirting board and the smallest skirting board is 3 inchs (76mm) It just amazes me that something that has been a standard for over 50 years is being pulled to pieces and causes havoc
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A quick sort through my selection of power packs (mobile phone, mp3 player, camera, video camera etc.) shows a 50/50 spread of top to bottom outlets. I suppose it depends on installation but in reality a safe bet would be that there would be more room above the socket than below so top outlet would be a good idea in most cases but like all rules of thumb exceptions will catch you out. While the standard 3 pin plug does indeed always exit at the bottom, I have found in numerous cases (mainly office cubes with power trunking on the walls at desk height) that bottom exits cause too tight a bend on the cable because the sockets are not high enough above the desk, perhaps we should standardise on top outlets?
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you cannot come lower than the skirting board and the smallest skirting board is 3 inchs (76mm) It just amazes me that something that has been a standard for over 50 years is being pulled to pieces and causes havoc
I think the code of practice recommends that sockets are mounted at least 300mm above FFL (finished floor level) but older installations are often much lower than this. Indeed I have seem MANY sockets mounted on skirting boards, with little more than 25mm to FFL. -
well offices should not have sockets set up so, do we now want wires flying up and all over a desk ? if I was putting sockets over a desk I'd make sure there was room for the wires and possibly a slot behind the desk so that they can go out of the way
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The majority of mains adaptors in my home are lower than the appliance they power so cable out the top is not such a bad idea.
However at work on the bench down is better, to be honest I have never really it given much thought.. -
well offices should not have sockets set up so, do we now want wires flying up and all over a desk ? if I was putting sockets over a desk I'd make sure there was room for the wires and possibly a slot behind the desk so that they can go out of the way
In a perfect world I would agree, but until the revolution we need to live in the real world. Many office installations have service ducts in the floor with little trapdoors covering the sockets, the idea being that a desk is placed over the flap and cables ran down the back of the desk to the outlets. Cables are tidy and neat. The reality is that the outlet usually falls in the aisle between desks (sods law) and cables trail across the floor to the desk looking ugly and are a trip hazard. Enter the rubber cable tidy strip and the aisle suddenly turns into a traffic calming area with speed bumps every 2 yards
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Normally people interested in electronics are not very set upon aesthetics.
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its a eu thing again and access for disabled with hight of wall sockets
agree on wall warts very badly designed with the wire from the top
i dont know maybe some doggy focus group decided that it was better coming through the top ? -
imo its poorly designed to even have a top.
regular euro plugs are fully ambidextrous.
now thats a manly plug
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imo its poorly designed to even have a top.
I agree, having the lead on top is a good idea but that's the only good thing about European plugs which are otherwise inferior to UK plugs, no fuse, non-polarised and no safety shutter on the earth pin.
regular euro plugs are fully ambidextrous. -
oh please, i have never heard of anyone having a problem because there was no safety shutter.
such things are entirely redundant with a properly designed plug.
sounds rather redundant to me.
as for fuses, i dunno how it works where u live, but here we have our entire mains
heavily fused.
so we have fuses in the wall and in our devices, no need to have them in the plug.
though i will say some people use extension cords with filters on them to power computers
because of potential peaks and power outages etc.
something like that might be useful for people who run computers with a substandard PSU.
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the idea of the shutter is to stop things being poked into the socket and has nothing to do with the plug. The european plug does not have a live and neutral as it can be reversed. wall warts should be made like the plugs they replicate that have been in use of well over 1/2 a century. there is no advantage to disabled people in having a wire coming out of the other side. It's was just some dickhead designer that thought he would be different.
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Having a fuse in the plug is very good for safety because the circuit breaker in the house will be too large to provide adequate protection for the cable and equipment connected to the plug. The European plug design makes is hard, if not impossible to have a safety shutter in the socket because of the positioning of the pins
Being non-polarised is bad because the live wire could be connected to either conductor so class 3 equipment will need two fuses to protect it against short circuit and the switch will need to be two pole to isolate the appliance from the mains. -
meh, it still looks better
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The UK plug is far superior to the European schuko plug from an electical and mechanical point of view and I grew up with Schuko plugs and also these ones for Class 2 devices: http://www.cordsncables.co.uk/acatalog/4-189%20Col%20online%20cat.jpg
Now, what I find really scary is the American plugs: http://www.sjndreams.com/WebFiles/3_AMERICA/FLORIDA/FloridaPLUG.jpg
They also use half the voltage (110V AC) so the devices draw double the current for the same power (ignore power factors now..) yet the American plugs are much thinner than the European ones, not to mention the UK ones (both on 240V AC). I mean, I have seen Christmas lights with more beefy plugs... -
I also spent 14 years with shuko and european plugs: garbage......
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But they were good years, now with the UK plugs all the fun is gone, you know nothing can go wrong
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well put it this way: I no longer have to cut earth pins out of plugs on extensions i made for old ladies so that they will fit a 40 year old socket with no earth pin while telling them "I didn't do this".....
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Having a fuse in the plug is very good for safety because the circuit breaker in the house will be too large to provide adequate protection for the cable and equipment connected to the plug.
But that is only true in the UK because of post-war copper-saving, where pairs of 15A radial circuits were allowed to be joined together to form 30A rings. In most of Europe, sockets are wired on 16A circuits, which actually provides better protection against flex fires than a BS1363 plug with 13A fuse. (Because a 16A MCB breaks faster for small overloads than a 13A BS1362 fuse, and because the breaker is for the whole circuit, not just the faulty device.)
A BS1363 plug with a 3A fuse theoretically provides much better protection for the flex. But the user might not fit one. In any case, harmonized European regulations do not permit appliances to be sold with thin flexes that could not carry a 16A fault current for a short time.QuoteBeing non-polarised is bad because the live wire could be connected to either conductor so class 3 equipment will need two fuses to protect it against short circuit and the switch will need to be two pole to isolate the appliance from the mains.
Class III is SELV. All appliances, even if polarized, should treat the live and neutral as equally hazardous, since the neutral becomes live if it is accidentally severed upstream. Having two fuses would be pointless since you do not know which will blow first. Unless you are thinking of a fault to earth in a Class I device, in which case any fusing does not matter as long as the earth conductor is adequate.
The shutters on UK sockets are a nice feature, though arguably only necessary because of the huge pin sizes. But the system has bad points too. The risk of foot injury. The fact that if the plug is smashed or comes unscrewed then live parts are exposed and it is very difficult to remove safely. (Rewireable plugs with rear cable entry tend to screw together sideways instead.) The fact that chained extensions include multiple redundant fuses, which makes the system unusable in industries such as stage lighting.
Regarding UK wall-warts, what annoys me far more than cable routing is the crappy plastic earth pins that many of them have. I cannot understand why these are allowed. I have actually witnessed one snap off and stay in the socket when the plug was removed, thereby leaving the socket disabled and with its shutters open.
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All appliances, even if polarized, should treat the live and neutral as equally hazardous, since the neutral becomes live if it is accidentally severed upstream.
Sure, all safety measures can fail with effort. According to the regulations in EU and/or UK, is it legal for the manufacturer to use a single pole switch and place that in line with the live conductor, thus making an assumption as to which one will be the live conductor? What switch (single or dual pole) is legal for a Class 1 and Class 2 device?