"Ron" wrote in message
...
On 31/01/2012 15:29, David Looser wrote:
wrote

The great advantage of radial circuits is that idiots find it a
little more difficult to bridge out the breaker in the panel,
unlike the silly fuse fitted in BS1363 plugs (which for some
silly reason is the same shape and diameter as many screws, bolts
and any other round bar) -

Well the BS1362 fuse certainly isn't the same shape as any screw, since
screws taper to a point, nor is it the shape of any bolt, unless you cut
the
head off the bolt. As for round bar, well it would have to be the same
diameter and length, how many people have bits of round bar just exactly
the
right size hanging around the house? not many.

For the last 20 years I have PAT tested every mains electrical item
submitted to a charity auction that is held twice a year in the village
where I live. In that time I met a fair few horrors: flexes so damaged
that
the bare live wire shows through, a standard lamp (with a brass fitting)
wired up with two-core bell-wire, flexes extended using a bit of
choc-block
wrapped in insulating tape, broken plugs, mis-wired plugs, plugs with the
cord-grip either missing or incorrectly used etc. But I've only ever had
one
example of a plug with anything other than a BS1362 fuse in it, and that
had
a few turns of 5A fuse-wire wrapped round the prongs of the fuse-holder.
So
I don't buy this idea that people are putting screws, bolts or bits of
metal
rod into plugs in any significant numbers at all. Its *so* much easier to
nick a fuse from another appliance than to start looking for bits of
metal
that will fit!

The best bit of electrical horror I encountered (and very nearly gave myself
a shock with) was the extension lead on my grandpa's mower: it had a
two-prong plug on the extension lead and a two-prong socket on the mower.
Wrong! That left the live pins exposed. OK, I know I should have unplugged
at the wall before disconnecting the mower from the extension lead to
untangle the cable. To spare his blushes, I quietly rewired it with the
socket on the extension lead and the plug on the mower while he wasn't
looking.