Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/03/2012 17:45, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
Martin wrote:

Or in the case of our local church fete a pair of 3kW kettles on a
mostly rolled up mad hot extension lead plugged into the wall. They did
it last year as well completely melting the inside of the reel. *SCARY*

Two 3 Kw kettles on the same extension should have blown the plug fuse
and
quickly.

Not quickly enough! About 10 minutes continuous use I would guess and
kettles tend to get used with only a small amount of overlap apart from
at the beginning when they boil both to get started. I can assure you
the 13A plug fuse did not blow in the time the water took to boil.

The fuse also recovers from thermal stress much faster than the bulky
reel of wound up and increasingly hotter cable.

I suspect part of the problem *IS* that people think the fuse will
always protect them if they are doing something wrong.

Its very easy to melt a coiled up reel of cable at less than 13A.
Most of them say exactly that.


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.