"N Cook" wrote in message
...
snip
as an aside someone told me that per million houses there are more house
fires in the USA due to wiring faults than any other country, partly due
to
a lot of timber construction and partly due to the higher current for a
given KW of power transfered - is that the case?
A colleague in Maryland said that he'd attended a safety talk from what
sounded like the equivalent of a Health and Safety guy, who advised that the
best way to reduce the probability of fire in the house was to rewire the
kitchen sockets using decent ($3) sockets rather than the $0.25 ones the
builders use. Apparently it's something to do with quality of the bits of
bent metal that make contact...
And he also advised to not unplug appliances if possible, since that wore
out the sockets faster.
Out of curiosity, I bought a double socket for $0.44 at the local Walmart,
and was somewhat dismayed by the apparent lack of robustness.
No comparison with our 230V 13A sockets, but maybe that's why they are
around $4+ each instead.
hth
Neil