David Brook wrote: ↑Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:37 pm
1/4" copper bar cut to 25.4mm long (exactly 1 inch)
Sorted.
Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote: ↑Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:42 pm
Wish it was legal, but who is to know. Legal on Radial Circuit, illegal on Ring Circuit, but as I said times are a changing. Trouble is the paranoid stooopidity at Wigwam seems unlikely to change.
Interesting! I was doing some electrical safety testing for a friend the other week, she plays and sings at parties etc. Many of her devices are low voltage with separate power supplies, none of these power supplies has a fuse but they plug directly into the mains socket and are legal. They can't be continuity tested or insulation tested, being Class II, so all I can do is a visual check for damage. The extension lead has to be tested as do the IEC leads she uses with her other equipment. Using an amplifier (active speaker as it happens) at the end of an extension lead there are three fuses between the wall and the amplifier, plus the one in the amplifier. A complete nonsense because the RCD (I prefer the term GFI but never mind) in the distribution board will react faster than any of them if there is a fault.
I am sure that back in the 1940s when the ring main was "invented" those responsible thought it was safe, indeed it probably was with only heaters, lights and possibly, a radio attached and nobody messing around adding sockets. The originators (I refuse to call them designers) of the system never anticipated today's range of loads and the demand for more and more sockets or sockets with USB chargers, usually fitted by the householder.
Even radial circuits have circuit protection so we can't be entirely "fuse" free, though MCBs are far less likely to cause the problems created by multiple fuses. Additionally, unless the equipment designer is really awake, there may be a mains fuse inside equipment, many IEC sockets incorporate a fuse.
Somebody, somewhere, is paranoid about electrical safety and fuses proliferate in the domestic environment. A circuit should really only need one protective device.