Wol

The Australian plugs are a travesty of design: cheap, nasty, badly thought out and difficult to use compared with any other country's.

An (older) electrician who was involved in wiring my build told me that the authorities took the UK standards then - as they do here - changed them and b*gg*r*d them around so as to make them unusable. So they were ignored in practical terms.

That's hearsay, so perhaps an electrician can put me right.

What *is* true is that IMO Australian plugs and sockets come at the very bottom of all the ones I've ever used except perhaps the original South African ones.

No, I take that back: they come well below South African ones.

derren7

Actually,in WA it is legal to wire your own plugs
http://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/Energy...f_electricity/
RCDs protect people. Fuses and circuit breakers protect electrical equipment. It's not unsafe to not have a fuse in a plug, but as KJ has pointed out it will stop the appliance from tripping the final sub-circuit breaker

datamile

Got to love QLD .. lucky that we are trusted to flick light switches

http://www.justice.qld.gov.au/fair-a...sumers/dontdiy

KJCherokee

I imagine that the Act governing electricians is similar to the one governing professional engineers (in Qld) namely the work has to be performed under the "direct supervision of a registered professional" - otherwise no apprentice would ever be allowed to install anything! So there is nothing to stop you doing your own electrical work as long as you have a mate with a licence who is prepared to 'supervise' you.

And to state that unlicenced electrical work is dangerous is just one of those statements that governments like to make - like "Every K over is a Killer". I did my engineering apprenticeship with English Electric, went from there to the CEGB Research Labs, then worked for a firm making electrical switches for level control. I know as much about power factors, insulation values, creep distances, air gaps, cable ratings, induction effects, etc. as any licenced electrician, although he probably knows more about the local regulations than I do. The fact that I don't have a licence doesn't mean my work is not safe, just that it is not legal.

LeeWillo

I bought about 20 from bunnings and swapped them over. Everything has worked fine. I find the plugs ok, they are different to UK plugs but nothing wrong with them.

db444

Thats not correct. the fuse has nothing to do with having a RCD.

Never the less Just remember to rewire with the active (brown colour) the first pin clockwise from the earth, the UK plug appears the opposite way round and may be confusing.

Lucas_Dad

Err, with UK plugs the brown wire is the first wire clockwise from the earth pin too..?? (Not opposite). I never forget what my dad taught me: BRown wire - BR - Bottom Right. BLue wire - Bottom Left. If I understand what your saying, you think it is the other way around?

That aside. I'm a little confused over the point of a fuse now. UK uses them, Aussie & many other countries don't bother. So why does the UK fuse a plug, with so many different fuse types? The lead for my laptop charger is only a 5A fuse. I'm sure it will work without a fuse, but it is there to protect something for a reason. What's the risk to my kit if I use a fuse-less Aussie plug then?

Cheers

jimbo_d

What do you think an RCD does then?

derren7

RCDs detect earth leakage, and protect people. Fuses detect overload and short circuit, and protect electrical equipment.

derren7

Your laptop will be fine. If a fault were to occur on your laptop (with a UK plug) then if you had a fuse in your plug then the fuse would blow in the plug. As your OZ plug doesn't have a fuse then it would blow the fuse, or trip the circuit breaker at the main switch/fuse board. No worries, your laptop is still protected.
Why does the UK use fuses in its plugs? Short answer, don't know.
It's probably a case of being over cautious but in the electrical field we have something called discrimination of fusing.
Basically, this means that a fault on one part of a circuit, or a number of circuits won't interrupt supply to that circuit or circuits.
So, this means that if your laptop were to develop a fault (with a UK plug) then it would just blow the fuse in the plug.
With an OZ plug it will take out the fuse / circuit breaker at the main switchboard and cause interruption of supply to any other appliance plugged into the same circuit.

Lucas_Dad

Ah. Understood. Good explanation, thanks :-). One to remember!

KJCherokee

When I was a kid the UK used plugs and sockets with round pins in 3 different sizes - 5A, 10A and 15A (there may also have been a 2A one) and so you not only had the plug to suit the appliance but you had to have the right socket on the wall - you could buy adaptors to enable you to plug a 5A appliance into a 15A socket but not the other way round!

As far as I can remember the fuse box only had two fuses in it, one for lighting and one for power, so any time an appliance fault blew the fuse it put out everything in the house. Then they brought in the fused rectangular pin plug and the 'ring main' where you still only had one fuse protecting the ring (which might have been a 20A fuse or even bigger depending on the capacity of the ring main) and each appliance was supposed to have a fuse in it matched to the rating of the appliance. This worked for new appliances which came from the factory with the correct fuse rating, but when it blew the householder usually replaced it with whatever he had handy - which included wrapping the blown fuse in tinfoil!

Houses today have several different circuits, each of which is protected by an overload circuit breaker as well as an earth leakage safety switch (residual current device or RCD, used to be called an ELCB) - one protects the circuit, the other protects people. The use of fuses is being phased out as circuit breakers can't be overridden like fuses can - the fact they still exist in the UK plugs is historic rather than for any safety reason.

Lucas_Dad

Thanks all for the advice and info. Lots of useful interesting stuff.

In a very small way I am strangely proud of myself for have just carried out my first Aussie plug wire-up, AND it works! Now my confidence it up, anybody need their house rewiring? How hard can it be?

Amazulu

Being a bit pedantic here, but then this is turning into a pedantic thread, but:
RCD can also protect electrical equipment
When I was an apprentice, we were taught that fuses and CBs protect the weakest link, which is usually the cable/wiring. We still apply this theory in electrical design.

Amazulu

I bought a house in the UK in 2001 that had only been re-wired a few years previously - I had all the paperwork. They had basically used rewirable fuses in the distribution board! In the late '90s FFS. There were 3 socket and 2 lighting fuses, no RCD. How that was legal/allowed at that time is beyond me.