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

thegirlintheattic

I think you have to be cautious but practical. In our house we unplug anything that heats up - iron, straightener, kettle etc. everything else remains plugged in but on standby.

sonastin

As SerialRenter explained, you need a completely connected loop to make a circuit for electricity to flow. Switches are all breaks in that loop. The more times you break the loop (appliance switch, socket switch, RCD breaker, etc) the less chance that there is that a fault somewhere along the route could bridge the break and re-connect your loop. The problem with switches is that you can't quickly tell by looking at it whether or not there is a problem that could bridge the circuit. By pulling the plug from the wall, you can physically see that there is an air gap breaking the circuit so that appliance isn't going to have an electrical fault.

Beyond that, it is a matter of probability, risk and related events. Having your sky box plugged in isn't going to cause an electrical fire in your TV, but leaving your TV plugged in could. So just because you've got your sky box plugged in isn't enough logic to justify leaving your TV plugged in. Equally, unplugging your TV won't protect you from a fire caused by the sky box so you'd have to weigh up the inconvenience of not recording while you are away from your sky box against the risk of an electrical fire. To me, fire is a low probability so I'll leave the sky box plugged in. And the TV most of the time that I'm home... but maybe not when I go on holiday - not really an inconvenience to have it unplugged in that time so no point taking risk unnecessarily.

The other thing to remember is that if your appliance (hairdryer, toaster, etc) sets on fire when you've got it plugged in to use it, you're probably there to react to the fire immediately. You could get away with nothing worse than writing off the item, or perhaps scorching the surrounding area. But if you're not there when it starts, the fire can take hold and destroy the house before you know anything about it.

Electrical fires can be deadly but unplugging everything all the time is a P.I.T.A. Hopefully this thread is helping people to make an informed decision over how cautious they want to be about it.

gazter

MobileSaver wrote: »

I have every respect for the fire brigade but since when did they become qualified electricians?

When they went on strike under the last Government, they got totally and utterly outsmarted by John Prescott. They took him on, and he won. This was part of his victory.

Being a firman was always a cushy number, in return for putting your life in danger by being prepared to run into a burning building you got a pretty easy life, shift patterns, downtime, over time and pensions totally out of scale to similar level jobs in other public and private sector.

Prescott punished them and killed the downtime, now they have to waste huge amounts of their energies with all this community outreach stuff, safety checks etc.

poppysarah

gazter wrote: »

they have to waste huge amounts of their energies with all this community outreach stuff, safety checks etc.

I am sure they'd rather come out and tell you not to overload your sockets than pull your crispy corpse from the burnt shell of your house.


The fire prevention work they do is really important!