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

martinsurrey

benjus wrote: »

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.

You can, as long as you don't tell anyone, you can do it tomorrow, if its as safe as you think it is you can manage the liability aspects (guests and insurance if your house burns down or someone gets killed), just remove it before you sell for a simple life.

Some countries allow you to go to walk down the street with an AK47 on show, doesn't make it safe, sensible, or something to aspire to.

and in a lot of countries the sockets are only allowed in certain zones, France for example is 3m from the bath, for a normal socket, so your room needs to be 3.8m wide at least.

[Deleted User]

DominicH wrote: »

There's the curious prevalence of ring circuits, for example, whose justification is pretty dubious.

The justification is perfectly reasonable, it gives an increase in capacity disproportionate to the extra copper used.

benjus

martinsurrey wrote: »

Some countries allow you to go to walk down the street with an AK47 on show, doesn't make it safe, sensible, or something to aspire to.

Straw man.

PasturesNew

benjus wrote: »

... the rest of the world can manage it without constantly electrocuting themselves while for some reason we have to be treated like children...

They have an entirely different electrical system - that's why Americans don't use kettles, because they can't. They wouldn't get enough power/heat to do the job with their system.

I'd rather have the use of a kettle .... than have a socket in a bathroom.

I believe Americans also don't have electric showers, for the same reason they can't have kettles: their electrical system doesn't pull enough "power" to be able to heat the water up.

martinsurrey

benjus wrote: »

Straw man.

Not quite, a major part of the point is that if its allowed somewhere else, why cant we allow it here, I was demonstrating that being allowed in other countries doesn't automatically make it better, in no way equating a plug to an AK.

I was countering the idea "its allowed in some places around the world so why not here" not the "a plug in the bathroom isn't dangerous"

rach_k

It doesn't bother me at all. Re: treating us like children, many people who use bathrooms are children (who are old enough to use the bathroom on their own now, but if there was electrical stuff in there they'd have to be accompanied until much older). I'm happy to have the 'inconvenience' of no bathroom sockets even if it means just one life is saved over the whole of history. It's such a minor thing to put up with.

With our generally smaller than the US houses (and bathrooms), I don't think it really is an inconvenience anyway. It would be more inconvenient to have two teenage girls trying to straighten their hair in the family bathroom instead of going to their own bedrooms.

r2015

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

Except that when an electric toothbrush is plugged into it it hums all the time.

benjus

martinsurrey wrote: »

Not quite, a major part of the point is that if its allowed somewhere else, why cant we allow it here, I was demonstrating that being allowed in other countries doesn't automatically make it better, in no way equating a plug to an AK.

I was countering the idea "its allowed in some places around the world so why not here" not the "a plug in the bathroom isn't dangerous"

Not just "somewhere else", but pretty much all developed countries.

benjus

PasturesNew wrote: »

They have an entirely different electrical system - that's why Americans don't use kettles, because they can't. They wouldn't get enough power/heat to do the job with their system.

Then who buys these? https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=kettle&cat_id=4044_90548_90546_1115307_2211902

I think it's got more to do with the fact that they don't drink much tea.

DominicH

It seems to me logically inconsistent to say, on the one hand, "people need to be protected from dangerous electrical arrangements that they don't understand", and on the other hand to say "oh well, on their own heads be it" when it is pointed out that those people will attempt to get around safety arrangements that they find unreasonable. Did the concern for their safety suddenly run out?

jack_pott wrote:

The justification [of the ring circuit] is perfectly reasonable, it gives an increase in capacity disproportionate to the extra copper used.

There's no evidence that saving copper was the motivation for the use of ring circuits, and if you think about it, really how much of the country's copper demand would be saved by wiring houses in a certain way? It doesn't make sense. There are plenty of drawbacks to ring circuits, as discussed in the, for once rather good, Wikipedia article on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_circuit

Seems like the ring circuit idea was promoted by one particularly prominent member of the committees at the time, for reasons that are not clear. As I say, nowhere else has seen fit to emulate this brilliant idea. Either they're wrong, or we are.