"Jerry" wrote in message
...

"David Looser" wrote in message
...

snip
: I was singularly unimpressed with Italian mains safety. The 10A
plug has 3
: thin pins with no support for the plug other than that provided
by the pins,
: so the plugs tend to hang half-out of the socket due to the
weight of the
: flex. No shutters, no plug-top fuses and in the (modern)
installation I saw
: large numbers of sockets were all wired to a single fuse or
circuit breaker
: of significantly higher rating that of the plug & socket.
:

But how is that any different to some idiot in the UK bridging
out the fuse in a BS1363 plug and then using 3A cable to string a
large number of trailing sockets together, a prospect that has
increased since the introduction of "Part P" in the UK
(especially in hazardous areas such as wet areas and kitchens).

Well now, for starters there is poor retention in the socket for the Italian
plug, something for which the BS1363 design is particularly good. Also the
Italian plug is reversable, so its live/neutral polarity is a matter of
luck. Then the pins of the Italian plug are not sleeved, whilst all new
BS1363 plugs have been for for many years now.

I don't follow your logic that a safety device becomes a bad thing just
because some idiot somewhere will go out of his way to defeat it. The
overwhelming majority of BS1363 plugs are fused no higher than 13A, I don't
accept that the improved safety of the sensible majority is somehow
cancelled out by the actions of the occasional idiot.

As for your allegation that the introduction of Part P results in an
increase in the incidence of strings of trailing sockets wired with 3A cable
in hazardous areas, this seems to be another example of your notion that
safety rules are a bad thing because some idiot somewhere will ignore them.

Perhaps you might care to place your comments about Italian
electrical safety into some perspective, if it really is as
dangerous as you claim, would you like to cite a reference for
the number of electrical fires caused by such instillation
practises?

I said that I was unimpressed with Italian electrical safety, which is true.
I made no claims about statistics. What I do know is that an Italian
installation would fail a UK electrical safety check.

Only the ill-informed or idiots (those without common sense) make
something unsafe.

A comment that seems at odds with your repeated assertions that BS1363 plugs
are unsafe because some idiot somewhere might link-out the fuse!

As long as the rating of the socket or
conductor is not exceeded then there is no problem surely. I note
that you failed to specify the cross sectional dimension of
conductor used in these Italian instillations...
--

I did indeed "fail to specify" that, because I don't know what it was. But I
do know what conductor sizes were used on the flexes connected to those
plugs which was frequently 0.5 sqmm. Not adequate, I think, to handle up to
25A of fault current from a defective appliance. In the UK a flex of that
cross-section *should* be connected via a plug fused at 3A or less. OK, I
accept that many are actually fused at 13A (though less so now that new
appliances must have factory-fitted plugs) but I think that a less than
perfect safety system is better than no system at all.

David.