Why does British culture treat electrical outlets as so incredibly dangerous? Is there some historical reason, or is it just part of the general European health and safety culture? (“health and safety” is sort of like the UK equivalent of “political correctness”)
On an old episode of QI (a British panel show) the host (and some of the panelists as well) seemed very nervous about bare ends of a speaker wire (which they’d been told and shown was connected to a speaker out jack). And in a youtube video, the host remarked that the shutters over the slot in a multi-socket outlet (for fitting a variety of plug types) were cheap because you could easily poke something stiff like a knitting needle through them, and how the standard British socket was so much safer because it’s shutters only unlocked after the ground prong was inserted. Standard Brit plugs have to be coated in a nonconductive material except for a portion at the tip so somebody can’t shock themselves on a plug that’s not fully inserted. Also, codes prohibit any electrical outlets in the bathroom (aside from a low-power thing for shavers).
Note: not saying it’s right or wrong, just why it’s so different. The question could as easily be why is America so casual about the dangers of electricity.
They don’t. Other European countries don’t have fused power cords or mandatory switched receptacles everywhere. The UK’s odd safety requirements are largely a product of the thoroughly demented ring mains system which is nearly unique to those isles.
Two interesting bits that might explain safety (in addition to the 240V thing):
(1) Up until 1992 appliances didn’t come with plugs attached and you were expected to wire your own plugs – if every Tom, Dick, and Harry is wiring a plug, the safety features need to be more conspicuous and fool proof. And if nothing else, it puts plug safety on the common man’s mind.
(2) The standard was set during a time of copper shortage so houses were wired with a single loop instead of separate circuits, with fuses in the plugs for safety.
I asked the same exact question a couple years ago, it became a long thread. Bottom line is that it’s not based on any rational thing (like practical safety concerns), mostly just Brit’s incredible slowness & resistance to change. Keeping to tradition, even when that tradition is no longer required due to tech (like GFCI receptacles etc), is part of their cultural identity.
I bought an electric teakettle in the UK in 1983 and didn’t notice (it was in a box) that it didn’t come with a plug–back then you had to add your own over there (as mentioned upthread). Many years later over here, a friend wired it and somehow attached it to the 240 plug that operated my electric stove. But it never quite worked. It never got hot enough to boil water.
Now electric teakettles are all over the US, not so when I made that trip.
This is not at all accurate. There are real concerns, for example up to a few years ago (maybe now as well) electrical faults were the cause of a high proportion of domestic house fires. The rest of Europe also uses 220v, but wiring is on a “star/hub” basis, allowing the use of trip fuses on circuits. Post-war UK had a real copper shortage, and the ring main was adopted to help. Maybe it’s correct that that needs to be superseded, but no more than the US using 110v with the need for even more conductor, high currents and slow electric kettles
And now all appliances come with a moulded-on plug.
Before people bash brits too much, as someone who travels a lot, I appreciate the design of the sturdy 3-pin plugs:
You almost never see a flash of electricity when plugging devices, and it holds securely in the socket even if there is some pull on the cable. The Chinese and US 3-pin are OK but I think are still not standard in either country IME.
ETA: plus it has a fuse
It’s 240, not 220. (I have no idea why this nonsense persists, even among professional electricians. It’s never been 220.)
And every residence in the US has 240v service. The North American standard uses a center-tapped neutral to provide 120v (not 110) to small appliance and lighting loads. Large appliances like electric ovens, water heaters, dryers, etc. use 240v. (NOT 220 :mad: )
Because UK houses then to be crammed tightly together in row after row of attached housing sharing walls I expect. Fires can be much more destructive than in nations with more spaced-out housing.
Which again comes from the most desired parts of the nation being incredibly tightly populated, and the housing being quite old.
I’ve generally found the Uk to be very slapdash in their attitude to health and safety.
Having grown up in a house with prewar wiring, where it was all too easy to blow a fuse by loading too much on to the limited number of sockets, and every blown fuse meant traipsing down to the cellar to identify which one had blown, and rewiring it with the right weight of fusewire (assuming someone had remembered to keep the stock up to date and in its proper place), ring mains and fused sockets and plugs were a godsend. And who’s going to pay for rewiring all the houses where they still work perfectly well?
@Steven G. - NEWSFLASH - the war ended 70 years ago!! To suggest that the UK can’t update electrical codes in 2019 due to copper shortages from the post war era is ridiculous.
At some point they could have said “for newly built homes, here a new modernized electrical code…”
If you read through the old thread, there are lots of very valid historical reasons (like yours) for why the UK has the standards they do, but no valid reasons at all about why they remain so in 2019.
This thread inspired me to see what the stats were.
This siteoffers a table [Fig 1] with deaths per million from electrical injuries in Europe.
The range for males runs from 0.2 in Netherlands right up to 25.2 in Uzbekistan [faaaark!]. The UK is 6th lowest at 1.0 per million. Couldn’t find a US figure that seemed comparable,
But don’t use a toaster in Uzbekistan, if you value your life.
It’s a common misconception that Ring Final Circuits were introduced to save copper:
The current recommendation is to wire groups of sockets as a spur from the Consumer Unit. The reasoning is that it makes testing and fault finding easier. A connection on a radial circuit will stay live, even if there is a break in the circuit.
It actually averages about 117 at point of usage. 120 is the ‘shooting for’ point at the site of delivery. It actually ranges from 114-126. Due to wire losses in the home, anywhere between 108 and 126 at the outlet is within spec. Technically speaking, regs will allow as low as 110 at delivery and 104 at the outlet, but those are supposed to be only in rare situations and if common should be considered a problem to be rectified.
So this means no more new ring mains? Those always did seem like a neat way to save copper since you get current able to flow down both halves of the main and you can have very high current draw from any given socket on the main. This in turn means that there’s no problem running a vacuum cleaner, use very high power and rapid kettles and induction hobs and so on.
