Mark with a ZBritish plugs
Best plug+receptor design in the world for electrical safety.
Worst plug design in the world for bottom of foot safety.
Best plug+receptor design in the world for electrical safety.
That’s debatable. The plug safety features only exist because of the UK’s uniquely substandard wiring.
No it isn’t. It’s debatable if the safety features are still necessary with modern wiring, but it is objectively safer than any other plug design there is.
And the design of these features wasn’t because of “substandard” wiring. It is because the UK used to use ring circuits in old houses, which are unsuitable to be protected by central fuses/breakers, necessitating fuses in the plugs. That doesn’t make the system any less safe. As long as a fuse is present, and the circuits are adequately sized, where precisely on the circuit a fuse is located is irrelevant.
Also, the fuse inside the plug provides an utterly unique advantage that no other country has: The fuse can be used to protect the external wire from over current. Centralised fuses are exclusively designed to prevent over current on the main, internal circuit, they don’t give a crap what happens on the other side of an outlet. A central fuse will do nothing to stop you from pulling 15Amps thought a 3 amp cable. A fuse inside the plug, appropriately sized for those 3 Amps, will in fact protect the cable itself.
deegeeseSo you’re not saying it’s because the wiring is substandard, but because it’s ring circuits, which are not up to the same standard as if they used a breaker panel.
Isn’t that the same thing?
No, because the rest of the world isn’t America.
Those ring circuits WERE up to UK standard, and perfectly safe when they were constructed, and nowadays are either still covered by the standard, or grandfathered in.
The reason other counties don’t use ring circuits isn’t because they’re less safe. It’s because they’re less convenient. It’s easier and more convenient to make and use, and easier in terms of individual steps, to make seperate fused circuits instead of a ring circuit.
The reason the UK used ring circuits was because they use much less copper conduit, and given the ~copper~ everything shortage during and after WWII, the convenience of modern circuits simply wasn’t worth it.
The reason other counties don’t use ring circuits isn’t because they’re less safe or inherently worse in any way, which the term “substandard” clearly implies.
Yes. That is the reason.
If a ring circuit suffers a break in the live wire anywhere along its length, it fails dangerous. It will appear to be functioning properly right up until the wiring in the wall catches fire.
The only way that ring circuits could be considered somewhat safe is if they were clearly labeled and regularly tested for continuity.
And how exactly doe the same exact thing not ally to a branch Circuit suffering a break?
When the live wire in a branch circuit breaks, the only path for current is severed. Anything prior to the fault continues to function as designed, anything past the fault does not function at all.
In a ring circuit, there are two paths. When the live wire is severed, only one path is broken. The other path continues to function, but it is now able to draw current greater than what the wire is capable of carrying. Everything on both sides of the fault will continue to function, but not as designed.