No power sockets in bathroom - does it annoy anyone else?

benjus

Looks like I'm in the minority then. I think it's pretty pathetic that the rest of the world can manage it without constantly electrocuting themselves while for some reason we have to be treated like children...

martinsurrey

benjus wrote: »

Or is it really quite safe as long as sensible precautions are taken (i.e. the circuit is protected by an RCD)?

I can understand that this was a good idea when the only thing protecting the circuits was a fuse, but things have moved on since then.

I know you can now have power sockets 3m or more from the bath/shower, but even this seems too restrictive. How many bathrooms are big enough to accommodate this?

Anyway, I'm just having a moan. Does this annoy anyone else?

RCD wont protect you, as mentioned above, if you are connected through live and neutral (ie, not through earth)

rob7475 wrote: »

I can have an electric pump running the whirlpool in my bath but I'm not allowed a socket - the rules do seem a bit outdated.

That pump has been designed and intended to be used near water, it'll be double insulated.

The problem inst the plug, plugs are pretty safe by themselves its all of the junk you would plug into it that would cause the trouble, get a normal hairdryer wet (even through condensation from a long hot shower) and you could find yourself part of a very painful short circuit.

DominicH

It's always a balance between safety and convenience. I don't think it's as simple as "if it saves one life, it's worth it." I think's it fair to say that UK regulations err on the side of "safe but inconvenient."

UK electrics are a bit of an outlier in general. There's the curious prevalence of ring circuits, for example, whose justification is pretty dubious. Almost nowhere else uses them.

Soot2006

It does bother me a little bit. Electric toothbrush, shavers, etc, all have to be charged somewhere else. I think, unfortunately, that our bathrooms are often very small compared to bathrooms around the world, so generally there is less bathroom furniture. The house I grew up in had a very large bathroom with bath, separate shower, two sinks, the cupboards with the linen, the washing machine, etc. It was a large well-ventilated room. It had lovely windows and an extractor fan and never felt damp. It did have many plugs. It was not in this country. No one died.

martinsurrey

Soot2006 wrote: »

No one died.

they did

keith969

Soot2006 wrote: »

It does bother me a little bit. Electric toothbrush, shavers, etc, all have to be charged somewhere else.

No, they can be plugged into a shaver point.

A shaver socket has an insulated transformer to completely isolate its output from mains live. It's safe by design, unlike an ordinary socket.

DominicH

martinsurrey wrote: »

they did

Yeah, but similar accidents occur in the UK, in which people drag dodgy extension leads into their bathrooms because they're not allowed to have a socket, which if properly installed would probably be safer than a £5 extension lead from Argos.
People will use electrical appliances in bathrooms, whether we like it or not. The question is how best to make it safe. The UK approach seems to be to attempt to prohibit it, apart from shavers and toothbrushes. I'm not sure that that is the best approach.

datostar

We have a high wall-mounted infra-red heater in our bathroom which we very rarely need. It is wired into a fused outlet via no more than 2 inches of cable to allow for up and down swivel movement with no socket or plug involved and a cord pull switch. You'd be hard put to electrocute yourself with that. Possibly still legal for that sort of semi-permanent fixture. It was there when we moved in 22 years ago so probably definitely legal then.

martinsurrey

DominicH wrote: »

Yeah, but similar accidents occur in the UK, in which people drag dodgy extension leads into their bathrooms because they're not allowed to have a socket, which if properly installed would probably be safer than a £5 extension lead from Argos.
People will use electrical appliances in bathrooms, whether we like it or not. The question is how best to make it safe. The UK approach seems to be to attempt to prohibit it, apart from shavers and toothbrushes. I'm not sure that that is the best approach.

So you have to go out of your way to be dangerous, seems sensible to me.

There is NO way to make it safe, RCD's make it safer, but not safe.

There is no invention that can tell the difference between a correctly wired hairdryer, and a wet person connected across neutral and live of that same hairdryer (with no ground).

benjus

martinsurrey wrote: »

So you have to go out of your way to be dangerous, seems sensible to me.

There is NO way to make it safe, RCD's make it safer, but not safe.

There is no invention that can tell the difference between a correctly wired hairdryer, and a wet person connected across neutral and live of that same hairdryer (with no ground).

How do you define "safe"?

Electricity is inherently dangerous, there's no way to reduce the likelihood of accidents to zero. Yet most countries in the world except us define power sockets in the bathroom as being "safe enough".

I'm not trying to force anyone to have a power socket in their bathroom... but I'd like the freedom to have one installed.