BS 1363 plug requirement

[LittleWheelsandBig]

British regulations are just insane. Nowhere in a bathroom to plug in a hairdrier but an electric power shower is absolutely fine. Require a pullstring for the light but no need for an earth leakage circuit-breaker. Mixer taps seem to be only recently accepted.

[FifeingEejit]

Residual current Circuit breakers are part of the consumer unit requirements, they do earth leaks.

Also pull cords are no longer legit, and there's zone age in the bathroom that states what IP rating things in there must meet in order to be legit.

Shaver sockets are electrically isolated from the mains by transformer and stuff so if it all fucks up its eiyah fucker not fucked.

I will however agree with you on mixer taps, though I've never not had one since it was one of my dad's default installs.

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[LittleWheelsandBig]

Corrections noted. British regulations now are close to what was commonplace in other countries in the 1980s. Where do I plug in my hairdryer?

[Beardy]

Corrections noted. British regulations now are close to what was commonplace in other countries in the 1980s. Where do I plug in my hairdryer?

Hairdryer should be plugged in in the bedroom so that you are not clogging up the bathroom unnecessarily.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Bollocks to that.

[Beardy]

I suppose if you’ve got multiple calls bathrooms or you live alone that’s fin, but as a man living with a family in a one bathroom home, spending more time in the bathroom than is strictly necessary would be considered a lynching offence.

[Diver300]

British regulations are just insane. Nowhere in a bathroom to plug in a hairdrier but an electric power shower is absolutely fine. Require a pullstring for the light but no need for an earth leakage circuit-breaker.

The regulations called for an ELCB soon after they became available.

There is some sense to the regulations. An electric shower is very difficult to get a shock from, as everything is earthed and enclosed. A hairdryer can easily be dropped into the bath, so sockets aren't allowed in the bathroom.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Hairdryers are a uniquely British danger? Other countries seem to cope without too many deaths.

[FifeingEejit]

Other countries weren't as obsessed about saving copper wire...

[Kim]

Like most things, regulations are made up of compound hysterical raisins.  The safe areas in bathrooms^[1] are a minor issue compared to the lack of mixer taps^[2], and the insanity of ring mains.


_{[1] With exemption for 240V tankless water heaters in the shower cubicle, to terrify USAnians.
[2] The original idea being not to allow dead pigeon soup from the local storage tank to back-feed into the potable water main during an outage.  Which, given the state of a typical BRITISH water tank, is entirely reasonable.  Mixer taps that avoid this problem have been available since forever, but since individual taps are cheaper and simpler to install and the landlords don't have to do the scalding-freezing-scalding-freezing dance to wash their hands under them, we're stuck with the bloody things.}

[Kim]

There is some sense to the regulations. An electric shower is very difficult to get a shock from, as everything is earthed and enclosed. A hairdryer can easily be dropped into the bath, so sockets aren't allowed in the bathroom.

It's presuming competence on the part of the installer and incompetence on the part of the end user.  Which is generally a good rule of thumb, until someone extends the feed to the shower by twist-and-taping wires fed from a 40A breaker on the non-RCD side of the consumer unit (DAHIKT).

[FifeingEejit]

There was iirc also not to allow the crap collecting in your domestic hot water tank system feeding into the direct mains supplied cold water.

Direct hot water from gas combo boilers had all but eliminated this but it snot exactly sustainable

See also the annoying things on shower flexi hoses that stop you putting the head in any pool of water whether the bath or sink, that also limit shower he's dmovement for lanky bastards.

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[Kim]

See also the annoying things on shower flexi hoses that stop you putting the head in any pool of water whether the bath or sink, that also limit shower he's dmovement for lanky bastards.

The pointless hose-holder at the bottom of the rail?  I always assumed that was for the inconvenience of anyone wanting to wash their bath, feet and/or nether regions.

[Pickled Onion]

British regulations are just insane. Nowhere in a bathroom to plug in a hairdrier but an electric power shower is absolutely fine. Require a pullstring for the light but no need for an earth leakage circuit-breaker.

The regulations called for an ELCB soon after they became available.

There is some sense to the regulations. An electric shower is very difficult to get a shock from, as everything is earthed and enclosed. A hairdryer can easily be dropped into the bath, so sockets aren't allowed in the bathroom.

Typical South American Shower

[Kim]

These are always fun, but my favourite dodgy electrics trope is cargo-cult imitation of BRITISH wiring practices by FOREIGNS who don't understand the theory.  Middle-eastern BS1363 plugs without any fuses, or Chinese ones with insulated earth pins, that sort of thing.

[FifeingEejit]

See also the annoying things on shower flexi hoses that stop you putting the head in any pool of water whether the bath or sink, that also limit shower he's dmovement for lanky bastards.

The pointless hose-holder at the bottom of the rail?  I always assumed that was for the inconvenience of anyone wanting to wash their bath, feet and/or nether regions.

Yes that's the one, them bits as well.

[Diver300]

There is some sense to the regulations. An electric shower is very difficult to get a shock from, as everything is earthed and enclosed. A hairdryer can easily be dropped into the bath, so sockets aren't allowed in the bathroom.

It's presuming competence on the part of the installer and incompetence on the part of the end user. 

True.
Fitting a shower should be something that the installer has time to deliberate over and do correctly, but that is clearly not always the case.

[Kim]

Fitting a shower should be something that the installer has time to deliberate over and do correctly, but that is clearly not always the case.

I think it's fitting the replacement shower when the first one dies that causes most of the bodgery.  Like-for-like replacement sounds easy until the connections aren't in the same place, and you're a lowest-bidder contractor who doesn't want to turn a 1-hour job into a 5-hour job by damaging the tiling...

[robgul]

Fitting a shower should be something that the installer has time to deliberate over and do correctly, but that is clearly not always the case.

I think it's fitting the replacement shower when the first one dies that causes most of the bodgery.  Like-for-like replacement sounds easy until the connections aren't in the same place, and you're a lowest-bidder contractor who doesn't want to turn a 1-hour job into a 5-hour job by damaging the tiling...

I have a solution - when I fitted a relatively inexpensive Triton electric shower (as a direct replacement for a probably 10 year old unit, phew!) in my daughter's flat we purchased an extra shower to keep as a "spare" as a) they do wear out*, and b) replacement would be simple.

* at our previous house the electric shower failed 2 years after we moved in (it would have been 8 years old) - and the replacement failed at about 14 years - and that's in a bathroom pretty much used by just one person (his and hers bathrooms)

[Kim]

I'm suspicious that some of the rubber parts in those showers get upset if they're infrequently used.  And if they're heavily used, the Canterbury Carbonate deposits eventually kill the heating elephant.  If the water's really soft, it might keep going until a knob snaps off or something.

[Cudzoziemiec]

[2] The original idea being not to allow dead pigeon soup from the local storage tank to back-feed into the potable water main during an outage.  Which, given the state of a typical BRITISH water tank, is entirely reasonable.  Mixer taps that avoid this problem have been available since forever, but since individual taps are cheaper and simpler to install and the landlords don't have to do the scalding-freezing-scalding-freezing dance to wash their hands under them, we're stuck with the bloody things.[/sub]

It's not just a landlord thing though as it's only fairly recently they've become stylistically – or culturally? – acceptable in owner-occupied bathrooms and kitchens.

[FifeingEejit]

I'm slowly realizing the priveledge of my dad being an architectural technician while growing up and every house he did work on getting mixer taps in kitchen and bathroom...
This being tempered by the house having the taps set up left handed... But it was always at friend's houses I soaked the bathroom/kitchen with the wrong temperature of water.

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[mrcharly-YHT]

I learnt from my Brother this weekend that Australia has only just got round to mandating MCBs on each circuit.
Previously they had an RCB for entire house and then just standard circuit breakers or fuses on individual circuits.


This is the same country where people are not permitted to change a plug (in the same way gen public aren't permitted to do gas work in UK).

[grams]

There's no additional electrical safety* from individual RCDs. They just make nuisance trips less likely and fault-finding easier.

(* there's a modicum of not stumbling about in the dark because your phone charger has fritzed safety)

[Kim]

in the same way gen public aren't permitted to do gas work in UK

AUIU you can do *your own* gas work, but not for someone else.  Landlords are of course required to have annual inspections by a registered contractor.


RCD for the whole house is okay from an electrical safety perspective, but brings the risk of accidents due to all the lights going out at the same time.  It's also increasingly less practical given the cumulative leakage of modern electronics causing too many nuisance trips.  I believe dual RCD split boards are currently acceptable in the UK, but RCBOs are the gold standard.