Learn how to wire a UK Plug and explore how it's the worlds safest. Electrical safety: www.allaboutcircuits.com/textb... If you would like to support me to keep Simply Electronics going, you can become a Patron at / simplyelectronics
You should have made it CLEAR that the Earth ( circuit protective conductor) should be THE LONGEST lead inside the plug ... so that it is the LAST conductor to break free if the external cable is under strain AND .. conversely - the LIVE ( Brown) lead is the SHORTEST so it is the FIRST conductor to break free . THIS OS ABSOLUTLEY CRUCIAL in wiring a BS1363 plug !!!
I want to learn this to my 16 year old son and 13 year old daughter, so thank you very much for this detailed video, it’s exactly the recap I needed.xx
Jeez, and to think that until around 2000 we used to teach 13 and 14 year old kids how to do this in school science lessons. I was a lab tech and devised a simple device which had a 'You're dead!' buzzer and light when you plugged the plug into the socket on top*. I think it was actually part of the National Curriculum. We must have 'killed' dozens of kids over the years :-) * We used plugs like on the London Underground which have the live and neutral vertical rather than horizontal so the kids couldn't plug them in to the sockets in the lab.
Before 1992 equipment in the U.K. was generally sold without plugs as there used to be different sockets. In Finland before mid 80s on the other hand all kinds of wrings were banned from the consumer.
It's true that the British plug is one of the safest. However most of the plugs in the world have those features including the one that we use in my country German schuko which is earthed, and always the earth contact is first than the other two. Schuko is not insulated but the walk socket is recessed so there is no chance to insert your fingers when there is contact, most modern schuko sockets also have shutters. The only thing uk has schuko hasn't is that the earth wire is longer in case the plug is pulled. One advantage of schuko is that generally works with 16A. For unearthed items (double insulated devices) we use the europlug with it's main advantage being very small and compact and the prongs are insulated as unlike Schuko it doesn't cover the cavity of the recessed socket. The main disadvantage of Schuko is that is unpolarized, however that can also be and advantage because you can plug the devices both ways.
Is there a version of the plug that has a lamp (LED?) across the fuse visible from the rear to signal when the fuse is blown? Perhaps a red colored lamp?
Not sure if it's the case nowadays, but when I started secondary school (I'm in Scotland) aged 13, in 1984, one of the first lessons we had in Science Class was how to wire an electric plug. In those days new electrical items came with a bare wire in the box and you had to wire the plug yourself.
Since 1992 all equipment have had to have plugs. Te reason they did not have before was that there were different plugs. The life of an electric installation can be easily 40 years. Most other countries have had only one system of plugs and sockets from the beginning with gradual changes.
I’ve been wiring, changing ad fuse-changing plugs since I was 9. Trouble is, newer designs of plug are being made so that they are damn near impossible to open up without breaking them, which is a flipping nuisance.
Also used in several countries with high humidity climates, torrential rains and large urban areas prone to flooding, e.g. Singapore and Malaysia. Far safer than Indonesia and Thailand which often use the non-grounded, no-fuse, two pin EU plugs.
coming from ukrainian who lives in usa for many of summers and i was an electrician in my youth, i will say that it looks like british system is the safest
I can't believe it when I found out that the person hired to do the wiring for an extension cable at my house did it wrong and those wire are expose and they all the same length (L are shortest and E the longest) good thing I already fix it.
The UK plug is very old and yea, it is safe. It just takes a lot of space. The protective earth wire should be the one which comes off last (and live first), as this looks like. When wiring portable apparatus this is very important. The earth wire is the last to stay in contact. BTW, you could take slightly wider picture and keep the target steady. When you continuosly shake it, it makes the video hard to follow. When you have wider angle, the focus area also is larger. And adding more light makes the same when the iris is smaller.
:))) Yes I have heard that b....shiet about "safest in the world":))) Just how? - If you got small fingers you can easly make contactact with poles becaus "world safest plug" has no recess:))) C'mon britsies don't be more pathetic.
I live in Australia now and do miss the UK plugs system as the current Aussie plug is flimsy and lacks a lot of the safety features and build of the UK plug.
Can you use any plug that fits an appliance as long as it has the correct fuse for the appliance? e.g I lost my cable for my tv, it’s basically similar to a kettle lead and I found another one that fits. On the plug I found it says 3A printed on it and it has a 3A fuse. So i took the 3A fuse out and put a 10A fuse in, as I 100% know the tv needs a 10A fuse. Is this ok to use as I’ve put the correct fuse in the plug for the tv?
No, you can't. If you do, you may create a fire hazard, and in the example you give you have probably done so. If the plug says 3 amp, then the cable is probably also rated 3 amp, which means it is safe up to that level, but may overheat if it draws a higher current. If you run an appliance rated at 10 amp on a 3 amp cable you are asking for trouble. Bottom line is that the fuse is there to protect the cable from overheating, and so the two must be matched. It is not there to protect either you or the appliance.
i am trying to wire a 2 pin into a 3 pin plug but both cables are black - any ideas how I can identify the live and neutral cables? Or is it safe to actually "mix them up" ?
What exactly are you wiring? If its something like a heater or phone/laptop charger, it won't make a difference. It shouldn't affect other single phase electrical products either, although something like a fridge or washing machine I'd be a little more cautious just to be safe anyway. but then again you shouldn't trust strangers on the internet.
Shutter systems are inviting for kids to try and figure out how something can be inserted. The only time one of my 3 boys inserted something in a socket (and managed to trip the RCD) was with a UK socket (in Nairobi). It's apparently not interesting to put anything else than a plug in a socket if plugs and sockets connect and disconnect smoothly.
Jaco - I agree with your comments, however I can assure you that a good shutter system is impossible to feel. In other words, the plugs and sockets DO NOT connect and disconnect less smoothly.
Shutter systems save lives of kids. There were fatalities in Finland in the early 80s when they were not a norm. When I was a kid in the 60s the kids rooms had shutters, others had not. They were different from current ones. You had to insert the plug and then pull it up or down before pushing it in. Here is a description (google translation) from a case on September 1984: "A child pushed two nails into a 0-class socket. As a result, there was a fatal electric shock. The living room sockets were not safety sockets." December 1980: "A child pushed a beater of an electric mixer into a 0-class socket in the living room while touching the radiator or pipes to it. In that case, he got an electric shock, he immediately lost consciousness and died about half an hour later." Same month: December "A child was struck by a fatal electric shock while pushing the key to the power outlet next to the sink while supporting the sink itself." Currently the latest death of a small child is from 1996. Note how all those involved contact to both the live and ground or the neutral wire. Just connecting to the live wire is likely not fatal. The case reporting goes back to only 1980. I wonder how many there were earlier. This figure presents the decreasing trend of electric deaths in Finland. Red are users and blue professionals. There is some smoothing by averages on the graph. tukes.fi/documents/5470659/6914630/S%C3%A4hk%C3%B6tapaturmissa+kuolleet/41640960-716c-1233-6d0f-e04976d383b2?t=1542110522000 In the 60s there were about ten deaths annually, now just two. For the comparison about a hundred drown annually about 250 die in traffic.
The neutral is referenced to earth (or ground if you are in north America). If a metal cased appliance had a short with the live wire, it would become very dangerous (if someone was to touch it, they'd get a severe electric shock or may end up being electrocuted - being killed by an the shock). To get around this, the casing is earthed (connected back to this ground reference), and the short circuit current would then blow the fuse or trip the breaker. Thus rendering the device safe.
If your under 18? LOL At 11 I was rewiring the wires in the wall in my American bedroom. First I figured out how it was wired, then told my dad what I wanted to do. He said go for it. Without any supervision I proceeded.
also, GB plugs have very small plug-cable adhesion and the angled geometry with very short and stiff grommets case very often damages on sheathing and copper strands
@@Jimmy_Jones we've been manufacturing UK plugs for 20 years. They get dammaged by bending the cable very quickly. Two reasons: 1.)not benneficial angled geometry = extra stress on strands 2.) Small area between cable and grommet = cable gets loose very quickly.....that is what I wanted to say
You wrong about fuse size .Fuse size is there to protect the cable .It is matched to cable size .Washing machine will be fitted with heavier cable compared to a lamp
This is a very good instruction on how to wire a plug, thank you. However, Britain is hardly the onlu country in Europe even that has plugs with ground;]
But do you have fused plugs? But do you have sheathed live and neutral pins? But do you have the socket shutter protective mechanism? But...but...but 🤪
Wire can easily and 100% be damaged when the screw is being tightened. It is necessarily to use end sleeves (ferrules) for the safe termination of stranded wires.
Tinning the wires and put them into a screw type terminal is a big no-go. This procedure was banned in Germany in the late 1970s for a good reason. The tin will deform under the pressure of the screw, this will take some time, but then you've got a bad connection which will heat up and eventually cause arcing and in worst case a fire. The tin deforms and the screw remains on the position were you've tighten it. I've seen the worst case too, wires just falling out of the terminal. Or you loosen the screw and the tin had deformed so much it no longer fits through the hole of the terminal. End sleeves are the best method.
I have seen chinese cheap adapters or extensions where is possible to connect the earth pin sideways to 240v live and then you have a big chance to get an electric shock. I know that the earth pin is bigger and this cheap extensions or adapters are not made by any standar but the risk is there european plugs do not allow that. Its easier to figure out how to open the shutters in british sockets than european ones.
The Australian plug has ALL of the safety of the UK plug, but in a smaller and less ugly package. We don't have any safety issue with mains cables - the cables do not kill people.
The UK plug is like worlds best airbag in a car with the worst brakes. The UK plug is the way it is because when they wrote the book there were severe material shortages so they made some necessary but bad compromises that have come back to bite them, hard. The UK plug is a best effort attempt to make up for these shortcomings. Somehow this never get mentioned when touting all the good points about this plug. This is a dangerous omission.
I think Schuko might be better. It has pretty much every safety feature that the brittish plug has, but you can plug it in different ways and it is not as painful to step on it. Also the sockets are really durable. The only downside I can think of, is that the shuttersystem isn't standard for wallsockets. On the other hand, there are little spring loaded security plates that you can put in the socket. After that you have to turn the plug into the socket to plug it in as a safety feature. I don't think it gets much safer than this.
Fuse is not necessary for this system, the circuits containing Schuko are fused with maximal 16A. Not with 30 or 32A which is the case in the UK. The fuse is only to protect the cord between plug and appliance, which is naturally not rated for 30/32A. For this system a good solution, but for lower fused circuits not necessary. The issue with the polarisation is solved by permitting only 2-pole switches on appliances and multiple switched socket outlets. According to the german VDE-regulations it's banned to switch the neutral alone. You must ensure that the line is switched, or both (2-pole switch). In most cases you've got a neon indicator in the switch, and they require a neutral anyhow. BS1363 is the newest of the domestic plugs, and therefore it's one of the safest. And Schuko is only not polarised because when it was invented this wasn't necessary. There was no neutral. You got 2 lines, each one 110V against earth (like this american system). Then in the 1950s this system was dismantled, but the plug remained. There were several attempts to replace it, but you see how they ended...one was the Terko-system, but this had issues with the protection against contact. But this system was used in installations were a polarisation is strictly mandatory. And you still get plugs and sockets for this system. Picture of Terko plugs and sockets: www.wolfram-zucker.de/elektronik/verschiedenes/terko_dritte_wahl.jpg
You say fusing is not necessary however, without it you need to ensure every appliance has a cable rated in excess of 16A to ensure that a fault does not cause a current in excess of the appliance cable rating to flow and presenting a potential fire risk. While this could be done it isn't in practice and would be rather inconvenient for low current portable appliances (totally outweighing the size advantage of the Schuko plug). With the UK system fuses as low as 1A are available and can thus protect very light weight appliance cables etc.
Normally the 16A requires at least 1.5mm², but the VDE permits using cords with 0.75mm² if they're not longer than 1m, but the wire size is also depending on the demand of the appliance. If a fault occurs the prospective short-circuit current is still high enough to let the MCB trip before the cable is destroyed. They are testing how far they can go, and put in an additional safety margin. The rating for the B-characteristic (short-circuit) is 3 to 5 times of the rated current, the C is between 5 and 10 times. A Schuko should never be fused with a C16 MCB, if you're using C-characteristic it must be C10. There are only problems occuring if someone uses several extension cords with this wire size (el cheapo) and overload them plugging in several appliances with high demand. This can really get ugly. But if you use them like you should (you're getting confronted here in TV, newspapers and so on) then there's no safety issue.
age of 18...? Learnt how to do from my grandfather, being somewhat eight years old. But it was a SCHUKO...By law I would sit darkness...no certificate to do so
It 's definitely not 'the world's safest'. If the cable grip is not tight enough and the cable is pulled hard it's possible for the earth wire, if too short, to pull loose leaving the plug with no earth but live and neutral still connected. A potentially very dangerous situation.
He quite often says "ONE of the safest" then the bit of hyperbole "if not THE safest"", but as said elsewhere if the Earth wire is a little longer than shown here then pulling the wire shouldn't break the Earth link before the power . Lets be honest , all safe systems can be circumvented (make it fool proof nature will discover cleverer fools), but if this circumvention is made difficult, it is MORE safe
neville mason in all my 70 years I have never pulled the earth wire out a plug. Off to try it again........ PS if the earth wire came out last which one of the other two comes out first?. Live or neutral Panics and runs to main switch lol
Thomas, I worked for a company in the 1980s where the security staff were tasked with fitting plugs to new equipment (the days when stuff came with just a bare flex). They IGNORED the cable grip entirely and just connected each cable to the 3 terminals. Get my point? Nothing to stop the earth being torn loose. This was why some plugs have flexible plastic 'teeth' to grip the cord and doesn't rely on tightening up screws.
+neville mason There is NOTHING totally fool proof . There will always be people who "ignore" a step. The most that can be done is if something is used IN THE MANNER DESCRIBED then it is 100% safe but realisticaly make something that is safe for (say) 99.999% of use cases.
These british plugs must land allways pronges up then laying on the ground since the cable enters the plug from beneath and the prongs are in an 90 degree angle to the cable. The Europlug is straight foreward in the same line with the cable. The Europlug has as well plastic shielded prongs where just the tips are metal which can make contact. Problematic are these Typ A american flat prong plugs which have all the way exposed metal. How often does the fuse blow on these english systems? For third world countries that would be annoying for the people since they will not have spare fuses laying around. I am not particular fond of the Schuko System due to its deep recession. Europlugs and Type A tend to be wiggly and fall out rather easy. Over here in Latinamerica where I live they plan to switch over to the Type J swiss and liechtenstein System of plugs. Europlugs you are supposed to be able to use with the Type J outlets but no longer the standard american Type A plugs. That will be aproblem since over here allmost everything is bought and ordered from the USA. It is common here to cut off the ground prong to make fit a plug. Normally here power outlets are not grounded but only the main breaker box and houses. So people adapt and cut off the ground prong from any plug.
Tom Scott did a very similar video to this one: British Plugs Are Better Than All Other Plugs, And Here's Why: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UEfP1OKKz_Q.html
Strange that I have never had to wire a a plug. In fact here it was illegal until the mid 80s. All countries in Europe use grounding now on new installations. In Asia things can be different. Most plugs do not have ground but that is just because they are double insulated. In the UK the earth is not connected on those. There are safety issues on the UK system 1) The safety relies on the plug and not the socket. 2) The shutter system is obsolete, it can easily be bypassed 3) All plugs are same so British have poor knowledge of safety classes 4) For the same reason it is impossible to make a safe travel adapter for double insulated plugs. Nothing prevents inserting a grounded plug in it. This combined to 3 is a bad thing. 13:06 Here you show the problem. If you can do that then a child can do it also. In fact the shutters make it more dangerous as there now is a direct contact to the earth. If he then puts something on the live that will give a deadly shock. In European sockets that would not be possible. They require that you push the two pins at the same time. Such shutters have been available least since 1980. Earlier at least since 1950s there were different type of shutters that required you moved the plug up or down before inserting. We had such on the children's rooms. To be fair there are better British sockets that do not allow that but few know of them as they believe in superiority of their system with the same resolve as Germans though Enigma was unbreakable.
Most plugs in the uk are also now moulded. This skill is now mostly used for fixing s damaged cable or for old equipment ( manufacturers didnt have to fit them until the mate 80s ) . Fyi I've seen rewirable EU plugs as well.
@@Nevexo287 I have read that you had to learn rewiring as a kid already because there was some stupid reason. Idk what is the thing with that, I never had a device that couldnt use my EU socket.
Pye Ltd. no it's different The bathroom socket and plug on toothbrush /shaver is one amp rated Europe sockets are 16 amp Low power devices have a 2.5 amp plug
:))) Yes I have heard that b....shiet about "safest in the world":))) Just how? - If you got small fingers you can easly make contactact with poles becaus "world safest plug" has no recess:))) C'mon britsies don't be more pathetic.
UK plug isn't that safe compared to the rest of the world if someone snags the flex, A US or EU plug will simply pull out whereas the UK plug will snag and may damage the socket outlet, plug, cable or all.
@Roger Bailey - No, I have tested this and the plug comes out of the socket before breaking the plug or socket or pulling the wire out of the plug - something lots of people who have got carried away while vacuum cleaning can confirm.
The fuse in the UK plug is a good thing, Because a 32 amp ring circuit is a crazy British invention. 16Amp radial circuits are better because you don't know if dodgy molded plugs from China and abroad has a Fuse installed. That's why the rest of the world don't have 32A rings ( you simply don't need a 13A fuse in the plug). Maybe the sockets them selfs should have the 13A fuse fitted. That way the onus is on installation and not on the end user
The fact that a kid can with one knitting needle open the shutters and then insert another and get a lethal shot to the ground makes it inherently unsafe. In Schuko you need to press both at the same time and even if it is an unprotected one and you get a shock it likely is not lethal as there is no ground connection. There are better British sockets where you first need to press the earth pin and then both line and neutral at the same time. These are close to idiot safe.
the only reason the UK plugs are so safe, is because your wiring is the unsafest in the world. In my home if a device goes bad, my entire house wont burn down.
Cardinal Fang well, unsafe? Let me say anything running on 110v, drills, grinders etc have no balls compared to 240. For god sake if you need to run and drier or electric cooker or an immersion heater and you have 110v, you have to use a 2 phase system (2 x 110 = 220volts... because your 110 hasn’t got the balls to do the job
No, our wiring is not the most "unsafe" in the world. We use ring mains. It's virtually impossible to overload it. You say your house won't burn down. Good, I'm glad to hear. We have circuit breakers too. They trip when an appliance is faulty very quickly. Also our sockets deliver 32 amps.
MissRiaElaine i have used 110v and 240v grinders and drills in my workshop the 110v tools stall easier and have the tendency to draw more power to compensate. A typical small transformer for 110v outputs 5000w . Theres no way you can draw 5kw from a 13amp 240 socket without tripping a fuse. You get the same job done with less current with 240. As for 110 being safer, you cut through a 240v cable the fuse will blow or the breaker will at the board. A 110v transformer is isolated from the mains due to design of magnestic induction and will continue to pass current with a severed cable and not blow the supply fuse.
The Europe plug is safer than UK plug, because all contacts are in the snuff. No plastic, no shit, both contacts are in the snuff. My opinion is that Europe plug is safer than UK plug.
Why the hell does an article about a buggering plug turn into British bashing session? Don't say it's not because it is. I don't give a fuck what the rest of the world think of us, not my problem
OK, just to set the record straight I'm not UK bashing at all,( It's probably the best country to leave and start a revolution for your own country there is.) But I am tired of the misconception that everything European is the best,( The US, Canada and Mexico never started two world wars) and everything North American (Yes that is Canada,USA, Mexico) as inferior, You need to remember we use 110-120 Volts and most typically 15 Amps, while this will kill you, more times than not, you figure out that it hurts like freakin hell and don't do it again. I've lived 53 years with only a couple of shocks and none of them were plug related, I have never seen a plug catch fire that was not caused by abuse Ie. pulling out by the cord. I have yet to find a person that actually touched the contacts of a plug while unplugging or plugging something in. You are simply over regulating safety to a point where people loose all sense of personal safety and expect every one else to watch out for them. Why else do we see Idiots text and drive, text and walk into traffic, not understand that if you touch that pretty brass or silver colored thing on the plug while it still partially in the socket it can kill them. But then you say a person can accidentally touch it , to that I say people are more careful around dangerous things if they know the dangers, we can't regulate stupid out of people. If we could we wouldn't have traffic accidents, people falling to there deaths, listening to Hip Hop, or watching Steven Segal movies. Maybe if we allowed people to learn by making a mistake, and then having to fix it we wouldn't need "the worlds safest plug". I have nothing against being safe, I only have a problem when the government telling me how to be safe, I don't want them to tell others how to be safe either, I think the ones who supply the service are better at that than some no nothing with a government title. There, my personal responsibility rant is over. God save the Queen.
Actually US was partly responsible for the conditions that lead to WW2, but learned from that mistake because the US paid for both world wars, hence the Marshall Plann. Unfortunately it forgot that lesson soon afterward and didn't remember until after Georgie Bush left office.
British isn't European, it is British. Plugs are not a symptoms of over regulation. Children live in houses too, when they learn by their mistakes with electricity they get killed.
Yes, we have had some bad leadership in the past. I don;t think you can subscribe guilt to the US for the wars in Europe, Both were started by my ancestral family the Germans. The first by a man who wanted to expand his countries territory and influence. The second by an evil man who wanted to dominate the world. Who is a great lesson to the rest of us of what we need to avoid in our leaders and our views of others. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was caused by our embargoing Japan for its invasion of China. FYI Germany was forced to pay reparations after the first war which caused the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, Germany was left broke and started to print money out of thin air to pay its debt, which caused massive inflation and unemployment, on top of that you had the loss of national pride and the tides are right for a political revolution. If you think I am wrong then why do we have Donald Trump As President, and before that we had an even bigger asshole in Obama. I don't want to start an international incident over this. Politics, religion, and money are the three things to discuss if you want to make enemies from friends.
James Bishop American led the domestic electric revolution. Hence they were first. When you are first you pay a price, teething problems. The UK decided it's electrical system for domestic use in WW2. This plug came into use in 1946. Despite all the other designs, it is very safe, it's designed to be used by amateurs!
It's an english thing more than a European thing. The English think they're the best, smartest people on the planet. Thank god for the Scottish and Welsh or that whole island would disappear up its own arse
Why should they? Earth and ground are the same, though I tend to use ground for PCB and earth when it's connected to the protective earth. Most parts of the world use ground rather than earth.
