Re: Buying new power cables
 

Have you seen how much they want for a replacement plug?
You can buy the ready made cable online for much less.

Re: Buying new power cables
 

Yep, completely agree there. I think that cable is aimed at businesses such as theater's, or millionaires who are kitting out their home theater.

Re: Buying new power cables
 

You could always get these speaker cables. :eek:

Re: Buying new power cables
 

It's aimed at millionaires. No business would waste money on such a thing! It's just a joke.

Now, as for the person who said you can't get rewireable NEMA (Edison/US) plugs - you absolutely can! They're not cheap though, usually new moulded cables are cheaper.

US plugs are not fused because we don't use ring wiring here.

Re: Buying new power cables
 

"We don't use fuses in our plugs because the socket is connected to the breaker box by two different cables in parallel", sounds suspiciously like a nonsequiteur to me. Please can you explain?

I have a fair amount of cabling experience, including rewiring the ring mains in my house in the UK, but I can't immediately see the connection between ring mains and the need for fuses. :confused:

Re: Buying new power cables
 

I would recommend holding on to a couple of the UK cables. I use my UK cables and chargers when going back to the UK, just seems easier to me than using adapters.

Re: Buying new power cables
 

Ring circuits are capable of providing more amperage than an individual appliance cable can handle and the main fuse for the circuit will be much higher than a radial circuit like in the US or Europe. So, in order to protect each appliance and its cable the plug on a ring circuit is fused at a much lower rating than the main fuse on the ring.

Re: Buying new power cables
 

Interesting. So the US system is pretty much dependent on there being a breaker box with dozens of breakers, and wiring many more sockets onto a thicker cable with a higher value breaker would cause safety issues. Hmmm. :huh:

Re: Buying new power cables
 

As mwdake explained, I highly oversimplified. It's not the fact they're ring circuits per se, it's the fact the circuit breaker is a much higher current rating.

In US wiring, the circuit breaker is usually 20A. While much higher than the rating of appliance zip cord, the zip cord can handle that for a tiny amount of time in the case of a gross fault - just long enough for the breaker to trip.

In the UK, the breaker rating is usually 32A - a current appliance cord shouldn't be subject to even instantaneously, because it's more likely it won't carry that much current, overheat, and start a fire than it is that it will actually let that much current through for an instant to trip the breaker.

Hope that helps!

P.S. ring wiring has safety issues too - mostly if half the ring breaks, you won't know until you've overloaded the other half and started a fire. Both systems have pros and cons. Both are equally safe when in good repair, and both can fail in different, equally catastrophic, ways.

Re: Buying new power cables
 

I realised that a few years ago, while explaining the British ring-main system to a licensed electrician here in the US, who was doing some wiring work for me. .... When I rewired my house in the UK I tested the completeness of the ring before connecting it to the fuse box. :)

Re: Buying new power cables
 

Well, obviously you test things at install time. The problem is wiring can and does fail. All the time. British wiring fails in a very silent way - you don't necessarily realise it fails until the whole ring is overloaded and the result can be catastrophic.

The wiring in the rest of the world (let's not just say American here, ring circuits are pretty uniquely British and places heavily British-influenced thing - Republic of Ireland, Indonesia, Singapore, etc) aka radial circuits, well, failure can be just as catastrophic but you'll usually know closer to the time of the failure. IDEALLY, it won't be quite as catastrophic since if you are lucky the circuit will break completely instead of coming loose, thus won't get overloaded and cause a fire. That's often not reality though, the truth is both systems fail in deadly ways.

Re: Buying new power cables
 

This has been a topic of discussion in the past. There are a fair number of on-line articles -- Google is your friend. There are historical reasons for the differences.

The UK ring circuit was introduced as a method of using less copper in the wiring. [BTW, be careful when purchasing houses wired with aluminum wire in the US from the late 60's to mid-70's].

Re: Buying new power cables
 

Ah, aluminum wiring, now THAT is some scary stuff!

Re: Buying new power cables
 

I just left a bunch behind - we could've done a swap. There have been a few occasions when I've thought how useful it would be if the MBTTUK people and the About to Move Abroad people could co-ordinate swapping useful gear.

Re: Buying new power cables
 

If you're interested, I have a very interesting discussion paper on ring v. radial circuits presented at the IEE a couple of years ago. Its not terribly technical, but comes down in favour of modern circuits being radials.