On Tue, 15 May 2018 15:48:59 +0100, "NY" wrote:

"Archibald Tarquin Blenkinsopp" wrote in
message ...
For a 3kW heater, I would go MK or a similar known brand.

And ideally hard-wire it, as for a cooker. I've noticed 3-bar electric fire
plugs get quite warm, even on 2 bars (2 kW). Given the high current that
fires draw, I got into the habit of checking the plug every so often. On one
occasion I found that the neutral wire was down to just a few strands and
the insulation had melted so evidently that bit of narrower wire had got
rather hot. Of course if you cut that bit of wire off and start afresh, you
also have to do the other two wires to shorten them correspondingly.

When my oven stopped working, I removed it (the oven was separate from the
gas hob above it) and was surprised to see that the "Cooker" switch on the
wall simply switched a pair of 3-pin sockets. The oven was plugged into one
and the lighting mechanism for the gas hob went into the other. I'd expected
the oven to be hard-wired and that I'd have to do battle with ring-main
grade cable. As it is, it was just the 13A fuse that had blown so it was a
quick repair - the longest thing was working out how to unscrew and slide
the oven out of the worktop/cupboards into which it had been fitted by the
builders.

From my experience, with good quality kit terminated correctly, 13A
isn't a problem on a domestic socket.

Any loose connection, or even crud on the pins of a plug will raise
the resistance to the point where damage to conductors occur's

Indeed some plugs seem to do well where the point of contact to the
fuse is merely at three spots stamped out of a sheet of copper or
brass.

One dodgy connection and overheating can and does occur. The plus
point is that it does not take a degree in thermodtnamics to pinpoint
the source.

AB