In article ,
Chris Holmes writes:
At work the Fire Officer is having a clampdown on Unfused 4 Way Mains
Blocks/Leads.

I presume this is following advice either from his "industry" or from
facilities (a separate company who charge us loadsamoney for anything
they do)

Any ideas what the rationale might be behind this?

I can think of a few....

Perhaps they feel that in general fused 4 ways are better quality then
unfused.

They feel that having a fuse at the outlet end of a 4 way on a long
cable (most of ours are 2 metres) might blow / blow faster than just
having them fused in the plug.

They feel that supplying us with a load of good quality (expensive) 4
ways at a premium, is a major contribution to their new greenhouse!

Any ideas as to whether these unfused 4 ways are generally regarded
with suspiscion (and why)?

I would guess that a 4-way socket is not explicitly covered by BS1363,
and therefore it needs a fuse to be legal (same as for 3-way adapters
and 3-way socket outlets). Double sockets and 2-way adapters don't
require a fuse, because they're explicitly covered by BS1363.

If this is the case, then 4-way sockets without fuses haven't been
manufactured to BS1363 (which makes them illegal to manufacture or
import), and there will be other aspects of them which don't
conform, and they haven't been properly tested. That's a good
enough reason not to use them, even though that fuse is redundant
when made up into an extention lead with a fused plug on it, _if_
the plug and fuse conform to BS1363 and BS1362. There have been
cases of this in the past where there was also something wrong
with the mains flexes used by the socket blocks.

I don't have BS1363 though (I did have some parts of it once, but I
can't find them now).

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]