Re: British (european?) kitchen counter electric outlets

Unless you run it through a heat pump, which makes it 300% efficient.

Bask in the cold dark.

In my kid's kitchen the counter top receptacles mostly are 2 duplex receptacles together with the left one on one circuit and right one on the other. Two of the receptacles are GFCI and protect the rest of the receptacles downstream. GFCI trips are local and easily reset. GFCI receptacle with local reset is often convenient elsewhere. GFCI receptacles are mass produced and, last I looked, cheaper than GFCI breakers

My understanding of ring is the circuit starts in the "consumer unit", wanders around the dwelling, and returns to the consumer unit where it is protected in parallel with the start. It violates 2 rules on paralleling in the NEC. Wire for a 30A ring is rated less than 30A.

From what I have seen, recepacle-plug combinations don't expose live prongs that make the receptacles much deeper than ours.

AFCIs are just as much aimed at protecting the house wiring. The NEC wants protection located in the panel, generally not at the 1st receptacle protecting what is downstream, as then the wiring from panel to receptacle would not not be protected.

If I remember right, the NEC wants electric stoves to have a disconnect visible from the stove. Could be a subpanel. It is common to have a plug and receptacle where a drawer at the bottom of the stove can be removed and you can reach through and pull the plug, which is then accessible.

Brick and masonry sound like a major PITA. Here (Minneapolis) the vast majority of houses are wood frame with basements. I think by the time you put footings deep enough a basement is relatively cheap. Also attics. I didn't know we had it so good.

As I expect you figured out, Christmas lights have tiny wire and need protection. For power circuits a fuse available fault current rating is of interest. Would be interesting what the rating for the tiny fuse is. Maybe you can't get much fault current through the small wire

The logic for other cords may be that the wire is large enough that a short will produce a high enough current to trip a breaker and large enough to withstand the event.

Probably somewhere in this thread, the UK you have 30-32A ring circuits and current about half here with correspondingly small cord wire so you need fuses in plugs. One fuse?

Fuses in plugs is a UK thing. Continental 3 pin plugs are every bit as brutal in shape as UK plugs but are unfused. Continental 2 pin is pretty similar size to US except with round pins 230vac rather than flat ones.

I have to say that 13A fused plugs at 3kW run quite warm to the touch as well (at least on a continuous load). eg. Fan heater warming up a cold room.

Kettle is an intermittment load so seldom gets used for long enough for the heat to really build up to noticeable levels. UK 13A plugs and sockets have fairly recently been derated to 10A (2.4kW load). I suspect with the phasing our of beryllium copper springs in their internals.

Belgacom stackable telcoms plugs look like they were designed for

Cable TV guy was much more helpful.

But are perfectly reliable.

Well of course they're perfectly reliable John. It follows from the fact that anything made/used in the US can't possibly be less perfect than that which is used elsewhere.

Christmas lights are just the only example that came to mind in the U.S.A.

I would personally prefer to have a 13A fuse on an extension cord plugged into a 15A outlet so that the fuse would blow close to where I'm using the cord instead of having to traipse through a building to the breaker panel.

I would think that you'd want to open the (both) hot(s). Much like how you want a double poll breaker to open both hots on a 240 V domestic load in the U.S.A.

Blowing / opening one hot would still leave live power via the other hot in a dual hot cord.

Be careful when comparing historic matrial. A BTU was Board of Trade Unit which was equivalent to a kilowatt-hour, the BThU was the British Thermal Unit.

When BTUs were phased out in favour of kWh, the redundant abbreviation 'BTU" was repurposed as an alternative to "BThU". So depending on when it was written, "1 BTU" could mean either 1 kWh or 1 BthU.

The classic US units were fun. A "barrel" might be different volumes or masses, depending on what stuff you were selling.

I once calibrated a hot-water thermal metering system for a giant building in Moscow, that uses the city hot-water system. I guessed that a "barrel" was 42 gallons from memory, and calibrated the flowmeter and wrote it up. The authorities accepted that and I guess the hotel is still paying the city based on my math. [1]

How much is a "pinch" of tarragon? Probably not enough.

Popular units of measurement here are "football fields" and "Olympic swimming pools."

When I was growing up it was 240V live-neutral. And changing to 230V would have been unthinkable due to the number of "why has my TV picture width shrunk" complaints which would have occurred. I may have heard the word "hot" in other contexts but not for AC power. Also, some wiring installations still existed with live (hot) in red, neutral in black and earth (ground) in green.

It may be the case that 240V has now been reduced to 230V in line with the rest of Europe. And these days most, perhaps all, electronics won't care about the difference.

In the UK I remember being asked to wire a plug for a 230V piece of equipment which had arrived from the US. Fortunately by then I knew that black wasn't neutral in the US.

I think UK is 230V hot-neutral?

They still exist in older buildings. New wiring with that old code is not allowed.

No we have a nominal 230vac which in practice varies between 220vac and

Yes. Our 'old'houses have internal walls made of either brick (4" thick) and plastered. it's hard to recess the brick to take power sockets, but quite common. The cabling runs down the cavity (4") between the internal brickwork and external brickwork. Newer houses have internal stud walls built from 4x2 and 12mm plasterboard screwed to that. Sockets are easy to fit on that. By sockets I mean a box to which the power socket is screwed by way of 2 screws.

UK regs now dictate the minimum height at which a power outlet can be located.That is 450 mm ( In the very old days, they were screwed to the skirting board!)

Many houses have natural gas central heating to heat water filled radiators. Some apartments/ blocks of flats usually have electric night storage radiators. Current 'normal' electric costs ~23p/kWh. My 4 bed detached house ( we're retired) used to use 270 kWh/month. total cost then was around £90/month including 5% vat. We also have to pay a 'standing charge' of 60p /day ( robbery charge). I now have solar +

I don't think the gas ban will ever happen... At least, not until the UK becomes 100% totally self sufficient in green/renewable i.e. solar/wind/nuclear.It's a bit ilke the electric car situation.. It will be 50+ years before there are no IC cars. Jeff- Have you considered switching to Octopus Energy and get on their tracker/Agile tariffs? I'm from the UK..

It will happen, but not for years (unless The Greens get in, when we'll all be freezing in the dark...).

The Agile tariff is of no interest (no EV, solar, battery). Tracker is of more relevance, but I'm not a smart meter advocate, nor do I pay anything by DD (I think it might be possible to pay by non-DD with Octopus's agreement as per their T&C, but I'm not sure). I'll probably revisit the subject in a year or so.