Recent content by plugwash

Yup. A C50 has a fast-trip of 500A max giving a substantial overlap with the 1000A breaking capacity of a BS646, A D32 or B63 would give a smaller overlap. A D50 OTOH would be right on the margin of leaving a gap, and a D63 would leave a substantial gap.

The upstream device only helps us if it trips rapidly. What we want to avoid is leaving a "gap" where the fault current is high enough to overwhelm the downstream protective device, but not high enough to rapidly trip the upstream one.. It's weird that BS1363 apparently specified a high...

I don't know if it's explicitly addressed in BS7671, but IMO it is reasonable to consider "what upstream protection is acceptable/reasonable for a 13A socket". BS1362 fuses seem to have a breaking capacity of 6KA, but BS646 fuses (allowed by BS1363 for adapters, used in shaver adapters to this...

From an "electrical principles" point of view if rings with 20A cable and 32A breakers are OK, and 13A sockets on 50A cooker circuits are OK then it's hard to see how a ring with 40A cable and a 45A (or even 50A which seems more common nowadays) breaker would not be ok. If it hasn't already...

Indeed, if you wall-mounted it horizontally, half the sockets would be "upside down". A possible solution to this would be to wall-mount it vertically, so all the plugs are sideways, Is there a requirement for them to? I presume you are referring to the BS7671 requirement for "top surfaces of...

I think the "upside down plug opens shutters" "issue" is mostly if not entirely limited to extension sockets and multi-plug adapters. "Standard" UK plates are pretty big, and while the sockets are sometimes off-center, they are more often below-center than above center. There do exist some...

I just grabbed a tub of extension strips of various brands and ages (but afaict all of which were aquired from legitimate UK suppliers) and found 4 extention strips (branded Philex, PMS, Jo-Jo and Masterplug) that allowed this easilly. 1 extension strip (branded PMS) that barely allowed this...

Traditionally people would have said yes. And yet, we have (and have had for a fair number of years now) computers that can not only match, but absoloutely thrash the top chess grandmasters. Brute force number crunching/data lookup/machine learning can go a long way to replicating many of the...

IME the prices on Hager's website have pretty much nothing to do with reality.

Additional CUs are not specifically called out as notifiable, but "new circuits" are. Maybe there is some corner case where you could add an addtional CU without creating any "new circuits" but.............

However, FTTC is likely to live rather longer. If you live in an area where openreach have built out their FTTP service then it's probablly irelevent, but if not then copper wiring could still be relavent.

My experiance with velleman is that the contents of the kit are good quality, but they often teach very little because the documentation often does nothing to explain how the circuit in the kit works. The maplin (RIP) own-brand kits were the opposite, good documentation on how the kit worked...

Many electronics that don't do any "communication" get a FCC ID, though I'm not sure what the precise criteria are. As I said, the FCC is a US agency, if the product is not intended for sale in the US, there would be no need to involve the FCC.

They make a Quinetic switch in "Click minigrid" format, which allows 3 modules in a single backbox (though this does admittedly limit your color/style options).

Lots of products will have FCC IDs because they are also sold on the US market but the FCC has no regulatory significance on this side of the pond. Conformance with european directives is supposed to be indicated by the CE mark, but unfortunately that doesn't come with any form of ID, nor does...