Jerseygirl

He should have used the smiley...to avoid confusion.

SultanOfSwing

I thought the rolled eyes conveyed the tone adequately ...

Jerseygirl

Well yes...but some don't always get the British sarcasm.

Pulaski

I guess that not everyone has noticed that "Sarcasm Mode" is my default setting. .... It's a curse that I have been fighting a life long battle with, but only with limited success.

For clarity, and totally seriously, I work to raise the standards of electrical safety in every house I buy. I rewired most of the house I owned in London to current ring-main standards, replacing almost all the spurs and replacing 13A fuses in all my plugs with load-appropriate 2A, 3A, 5A or 7A fuses. I have made numerous improvements and additions to the houses I have bought in the US, and always strived to meet or exceed code requirements with conservatively rated breakers, load-appropriate cables, and with earth wires connected whenever humanly possible. I threw out the crazy three pin to two pin adaptors (why is it legal to sell those? ... Lowes still does!), we acquired with stuff my in laws left when they moved, and I have drilled anchoring points in the frame of two driers to properly connect a four pin pigtail to "earthless" driers manufactured pre '93 for use with a three pin pigtail.

scrubbedexpat099

Ring Mains, I also re wired a house in the UK and asked the electrician who did our building why they were not used. He was a Union guy and had worked in many areas but did not know.

Seems they are not liked here due to risk of backfeeding.

Pulaski

I understand the concerns about backfeeding, but I can't imagine how a ring main might cause it. ..... Two cables connected to the same breaker (yes, I know that would be at best irregular, if not against code) wouldn't cause backfeeding, so if you connected the two branches together, to make a ring, both live wires will be at the same potential (in fact whether connected in a loop, or not) so where would the backfeeding come from?

Pete H

Living the dream!!! Bass fishing in the day and Walleye fishing at night!!!

Gingerert

Yup, that's VERY American!

scrubbedexpat099

As I understand it the argument is if you have a defect then the power will not go past that defect and will be known whilst if it is fed the other way as well then it would not.

Seemed slightly spurious to me.

Pulaski

Very funny!

OK, so you could have a bad connection go unnoticed, and therefore have two spurs when you thought you had a ring. .... Which is why I used to test the ring with a torch (low voltage) before I connected the ring to the fuse box.

Maybe having live wires feeding two ways into each junction box is a bit confusing for American electricians?

lizzyq

Use decent connectors (not wire nuts) and you shouldn't get bad connections

Michael

If an electrician installed a ring, I would worry that they would use 2x14 gauge wires instead of 10 gauge wires. Both should be fine on a 30 amp breaker since electricity will travel in parallel down both wires to all outlets but if the ring got broken, the 14 gauge wires could possibly overheat since each run could then only handle 15 amps.

SultanOfSwing

This thread is becoming resplendent with double entendres

steveq

The same argument applies to a UK ring, since the standard 2.5 is only rated at 20A continuous. Here though, the chances of you HAVING a ring running at more than 5kW are unlikely, in the US, having one running at 1.6kW is very likely.

Stupid system. They get far more deaths from fires from their electrics, and deaths therefrom than we get electrocutions.

Gingerert

Good, because all this talk about wiring is boooooring.