Did the fire brigade say this to me just to frighten me

C_Mababejive

Its only advice. You do as you please...

hazyjo

Dave_the_Ginger_Cat wrote: »

My MIL died in a house fire caused by a TV on standby, according to the coroner. Now that was a faulty TV rather than a socket overload, but the principles can be similar

If the fire officer raised concerns, there are probably obvious tirggers. My experience is that many houses have circuits that were designed before we had such a volume of appliances, and hence people could be overloading them.

Get a sparks out if it's giving you cause for concern

Shocking!

Lucky in that my electrics were done relatively recently and there are plenty of sockets so no overloads on anything.

SerialRenter wrote: »

That's what you shouldn't buy cheap chargers from china

As for the RCD sockets, note that an RCD will only trip on a ground fault. It wont trip in overload conditions or phase to neutral short circuits.

Hopefully everyone here already has RCD's in their consumer box, life saving devices

Also seen lots of scares/warnings on FB but, as you say, often down to foreign batteries/chargers.

Even after googling and reading your snippet above, I'm still a tad confused about RCDs! All I know is the electric trips if something blows/shorts or whatever. As you can see, not very techie these days! Even googled 'consumer box'. Yeah, that's the thing that the thingies are in that move when it 'trips' and you have to flick them back up/down (whichever). Hmmm.

Jx

hazyjo

As someone mentioned above... can someone let me know if it's possible to unplug the TV and SKY and still record stuff? If I unplug the TV but leave SKY plugged in, will that still record? Is there any point in that anyway cos if I leave one thing on, I might as well leave two on?

Blonde HJx

BornAtTheRightTime

You can unplug the TV but you'll need power to the Sky box to record anything. Standby power is fine for recording.

HTH.

hazyjo

Ta. They're both usually on standby. Might at least unplug the telly tonight!

Oh, sorry, just another thing... each socket has an on/off switch next to it too. If something is still plugged in but the switch is off, does that actually cut the electric any more than just having it plugged in (and turned off such as a hairdryer, or lamp with a switch on the actual lead)?

(Please remember no such thing as a stoopid question lol! We only know what we know!)

Jx

Yorkie1

SerialRenter wrote: »

The difference being that the triple plug has to take the weight of any weighty plugs attached to directly onto the prongs of its own plug. As such you'll often see them loosely in the socket at a bit of an angle.

This could lead to sparking or arcing, or simply a inferior connection, which due to the resistivity of a smaller conductor would cause heating and hence a fire hazard.

Extensions often have their own fuse's too for additional protection, where as a triple plug may not.

Never thought of that - thanks for the explanation.

chris_m

hazyjo wrote: »

Oh, sorry, just another thing... each socket has an on/off switch next to it too. If something is still plugged in but the switch is off, does that actually cut the electric any more than just having it plugged in (and turned off such as a hairdryer, or lamp with a switch on the actual lead)?

Generally, if the appliance/device switch is off that's the same as if the socket is switched off.
However, having the socket itself switched off ensures that it really is off should the appliance/device switch be faulty or the cable get snagged.

SerialRenter

hazyjo wrote: »

Even after googling and reading your snippet above, I'm still a tad confused about RCDs! All I know is the electric trips if something blows/shorts or whatever. As you can see, not very techie these days! Even googled 'consumer box'. Yeah, that's the thing that the thingies are in that move when it 'trips' and you have to flick them back up/down (whichever). Hmmm.

When you look in the thing with the thingies, the RCD's is one of the thingies with the flickers.

Hope that clears that up xD

Basically, electricity works by flowing through a complete loop, or a circuit as we call it. Your standard plug has three pins, one live, one called the neutral and the last is the ground connection.

for the electricity to complete its circuit, the power needs to flow out of the live pin through the device and back through the neutral pin (shush physicists, I know that's backwards).
The ground is there for safety and to provide a reference to earth if needed by a device, as you might guess, this pin is literally connected to earth by driving a copper stake into the ground.

the RCD works by utilising Kirchhoff's Current Law states "the sum of currents flowing into that node is equal to the sum of currents flowing out of that node".
With this, we can look at the current going through the live connection, and compare it to the current coming back through the neutral, if the values are different then we know we must be losing some power somewhere, we'd call this a branch.
Because we know every device sends its power back through the neutral, this branch must be undesirable, as so the RCD trips and cuts off the power, this is called a ground fault.

A ground fault can be any number of things, but the one we're interested in is the fault that occurs when a person gets an electric shock. In that instant, your body becomes a branch on the electrical network. This is the power flowing to the earth through your body and to the earth (which is connected to the ground pin). The RCD can detect this and shuts off the power within 30 milliseconds, preventing you from getting fried!

hazyjo

SerialRenter wrote: »

When you look in the thing with the thingies, the RCD's is one of the thingies with the flickers.

Hope that clears that up xD

Basically, electricity works by flowing through a complete loop, or a circuit as we call it. Your standard plug has three pins, one live, one called the neutral and the last is the ground connection.

for the electricity to complete its circuit, the power needs to flow out of the live pin through the device and back through the neutral pin (shush physicists, I know that's backwards).
The ground is there for safety and to provide a reference to earth if needed by a device, as you might guess, this pin is literally connected to earth by driving a copper stake into the ground.

the RCD works by utilising Kirchhoff's Current Law states "the sum of currents flowing into that node is equal to the sum of currents flowing out of that node".
With this, we can look at the current going through the live connection, and compare it to the current coming back through the neutral, if the values are different then we know we must be losing some power somewhere, we'd call this a branch.
Because we know every device sends its power back through the neutral, this branch must be undesirable, as so the RCD trips and cuts off the power, this is called a ground fault.

A ground fault can be any number of things, but the one we're interested in is the fault that occurs when a person gets an electric shock. In that instant, your body becomes a branch on the electrical network. This is the power flowing to the earth through your body and to the earth (which is connected to the ground pin). The RCD can detect this and shuts off the power within 30 milliseconds, preventing you from getting fried!

I lost you somewhere after 'copper stake' but thanks for trying

I can wire a plug and change a lightbulb lol.

Jx

silvercar

hazyjo wrote: »

Oh, sorry, just another thing... each socket has an on/off switch next to it too. If something is still plugged in but the switch is off, does that actually cut the electric any more than just having it plugged in (and turned off such as a hairdryer, or lamp with a switch on the actual lead)?

(Please remember no such thing as a stoopid question lol! We only know what we know!)

Jx

We had quite old sockets in some rooms. Like this: http://www.flameport.com/electric_museum/sockets_13A_BS1363/mk_single_socket_switched_on.jpg

Twice we had situations where turning the socket switch off left the device powered on!

We have now employed an electrician to change them all for more modern sockets.

So I guess your answer is that it should be fine but there is always a risk that the switch component will fail.