The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

zagubov

Pyxis wrote: »

Nope, never iron.

Quite right! Straight lines belong in mathematics and nowhere else! :beer:

michaels

vivatifosi wrote: »

There's an interesting article in this month's Good Housekeeping about diminishing skills. Changing a plug is definitely on the list, but doesn't score as poorly as darning and repairing. So much so that my tablet doesn't even recognise the word darning. I certainly can't remember the last time I typed it, but did darn a pair of socks last time i was travelling.

Is there any reason to change a plug? With rcds in the fusebox it is now very unlikely for a plug fuse to blow even.

(although I have had to joint a few cables ir I let dw lose with the hedge trimmer or grass cutter)

antrobus

Pyxis wrote: »

Nope, never iron.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Never ironed anything in my entire life.:)

zagubov

I used to have to teach (trainee) hairdressers how to wire plugs. And when I went to uni forty years ago, lots of university houses still had round-pin plugs and we had to visit local electrical shops to buy the old sockets and adaptors.

Most of the rest of the world used a simpler two-pin system. Not totally sure why we should still be building things requiring three wires, seeing as we absolutely need to sell the same stuff to countries that just use two.

antrobus

zagubov wrote: »

...
Most of the rest of the world used a simpler two-pin system. Not totally sure why we should still be building things requiring three wires, seeing as we absolutely need to sell the same stuff to countries that just use two.

What do you mean "absolutely need to sell the same stuff to countries that just use two"? Are you suggesting that the UK still manufactures electrical appliances? Is there anybody left?

LydiaJ

michaels wrote: »

Is there any reason to change a plug? With rcds in the fusebox it is now very unlikely for a plug fuse to blow even.

(although I have had to joint a few cables ir I let dw lose with the hedge trimmer or grass cutter)

We discuss this in class when we teach it. The three reasons we give are:
1) Your appliance may get a damaged cable, so you may need to shorten the cable to remove the damaged bit and put a plug on the new end. For example, I did this to my vacuum cleaner when I discovered the cable had got chewed a few years ago. Alternatively, your plug may get damaged and need replacing.
2) You may wish to have a cable going from an appliance through a small hole to a plug elsewhere. For example, I have a 4-way extension in my loft. The cable for it goes down through the airing cupboard to a socket on the landing. The hole in the airing cupboard ceiling originally had a small water pipe going through it that was removed when the hot water was converted to a modern high pressure system without the need for a cold tank in the roof space. The cable easily passes through the hole, but the plug wouldn't have been able to. Likewise, when LNE and I moved into the house from which he worked from home for a while, there was a fitted desk in the study, and being able to remove plugs, pass cables through the small gap at the back corner and replace the plugs made it possible to have the computer, printer etc on the desk without having trailing cables coming over the front edge.
3) You may acquire an appliance in another part of the world where the mains voltage happens to be the same as here or very similar, but the plugs are a different shape. Alternatively you may acquire an appliance here and then move somewhere ditto. Unless you are happy to have an adaptor on every such appliance all the time, replacing the plugs with ones for the relevant country makes sense. Since many of our boarding students come from other countries, this makes sense to them.

zagubov wrote: »

Most of the rest of the world used a simpler two-pin system. Not totally sure why we should still be building things requiring three wires, seeing as we absolutely need to sell the same stuff to countries that just use two.

Our appliances only use 2 wires when everything is going all right. If they are wired with 2 pin plugs, they will work just fine. They just won't be as safe if there's a fault.

In any case, many countries that appear to have only two wires because there are only two visible pins do actually have three wires. The earth connection may be a pin that comes out of the socket and into the plug when the two normal pins go into the holes, or it may be a connector on the outside edges of the plug that makes contact with the inside of the hole into which the plug goes, or similar.

silvercar

You may wish to have a cable going from an appliance through a small hole to a plug elsewhere.

We have a few places where this happens. We also have a plug shaped hole where the previous owner clearly didn't have the necessary skill!

Pyxis

silvercar wrote: »

We have a few places where this happens. We also have a plug shaped hole where the previous owner clearly didn't have the necessary skill!

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

That is sooooo Mr. Bean! :rotfl:

chris_m

Pyxis wrote: »

Nope, never iron.

There is actually one thing that I do iron - the brushed cotton shirts that I like (basically, lumberjack shirts) tend to crease up something awful when washed, even on a supposedly non-crease setting, and come out as if they are about two sizes smaller than they are.
Therefore I do iron those - otherwise they feel uncomfortable and make me look more lardy then I really am :rotfl:

chris_m

LydiaJ wrote: »

1) Your appliance may get a damaged cable, so you may need to shorten the cable to remove the damaged bit and put a plug on the new end. For example, I did this to my vacuum cleaner when I discovered the cable had got chewed a few years ago. Alternatively, your plug may get damaged and need replacing.

The best for catching people out were the old, rubber topped plugs where you had to feed the cable through a hole in the plug top BEFORE fixing the wires to the pins on the base. Many's the time I've secured the wires and then found that I forgot to feed the cable into the plug top first.

Dad (an electrical & electronic engineer by trade) had quite a few with a little slot cut out of the sheath on the plug top where he'd also been caught out but couldn't be bothered to undo the wires and start again