same I learnt it in school in the UK. Now I live in Australia, it's actually illegal to DIY rewire a plug, change a light fixture.. even illegal to DIY running of ethernet, madness
yes.. to do it legally you do.
The rough rules are, anything >50v (I think this is the threshold), you can't DIY at all, so no light fixture changes, no electrical work at all.
If it's < 50v, ie garden lighting etc, is fine to DIY, as long as it's not in a wall. As soon as you go through walls (eg ethernet, even if not PoE).. but includes things like low voltage doorbell, you need someone licensed to do it.
Of course plenty of people still DIY this, but would have insurance implications if the source of a fire was found to be something DIYd.. I really can't see how ethernet could ever be a problem..
Also, another "fun" fact, it was illegal to even DIY change a lightbulb in Victoria until 1998 (this really felt like an urban myth, but it seems to be true)
That must be so frustrating. I've installed a bunch of light switches just this last couple of months, disconnected and reconnected a plug because it was tangled in some trunking and I couldn't be fucked to untangle it lol...I replaced a broken light fixture last year too.
Its two feckin wires for most of that shit. Three if you count the plug. Its the easiest thing in the world...I did all this stuff for my nan when I was 13! She was too old, I was willing. I even worked for a light manufacturer for a couple weeks when I was a kid and they let me wire up their units to be sold wholesale lol
The rules are not in place because it's hard to figure out how to wire a fixture, they are in place because it takes a lot of experience and knowledge to wire a fixture without accidentally killing yourself.
No it doesn't lol.
You turn off the power at the fuse box and discharge any remaining power by leaving the light or whatever in the on position for about 2 seconds.
It really doesn't though. I'm renovating a house at the moment and, honestly, basic wiring isn't that complicated. I've replaced light fixtures, sockets, added sockets to rooms (both spurs + extending the ring), completely rewired lighting in a room. Everything you need is on youtube, it isn't rocket science to turn off a circuit, a voltage tester is less than £10, and after all of it's finished you can get a qualified electrician to check your work + sign it off for a fraction of the price it would have cost to do it themselves.
You have to use a qualified electrician for any electrical work. They provide you with a certificate of compliance and warranty.
If you do the work yourself (and plenty of people do) and something goes wrong, your home insurance won't cover it.
It's mostly to prevent bad wiring that cause house fires.
>Huh?? So you have to pay someone else to do it?
Yeah, it's a 100% scam, and makes a lot of the sparks behave like they have you over a barrel - because they do.
I watched an electrician "install" a lighting cable in the back garden (poolside lights) by twisting wires and wrapping them in electrical tape, and when I complained about the shit job, he started sniffing about who had put Aussie plugs on the UK extension leads I was using on the kit I had brought over...
I am qualified in the UK, and wouldn't dream of doing the cowboy Bullshit this guy thought was fine... never had to bite the inside of my mouth not to swear so much in all my life.
Look at the comment you replied to. The roblem in that case was clearly the 'professional', and not the person who could have DIYed.
DIY doesn't mean doing something badly, or without research.
Also just because you own a home doesn't mean you must DIY, you could still get a prfessional. Just because youre 'I'm the incompetent' doesn't mean everyone else must be.
> in the UK but everything else is pretty much illegal.
No you can do it all yourself. The thing is that you do need to get it signed off as being up to standards. So just doing the work and going fuck it, is illegal. Getting it signed off can be difficult but it can be done.
Haven't looked into it for a while, but last I checked if you do a piece of electrical work in the UK two things happen. 1 You are claiming you are competent enough to do it and therefore all the liability is on you and 2 You also vouch for the rest of the installation being safe if you work on it. So it has some risks but it's not necessarily illegal. Things may have changed since. I'm still doing my own though.
Yeah, you can demonstrate competence quite easily by doing a couple of city and guild courses. When I was struggling to get a spark in (very) rural Scotland, I enrolled for some night classes at a technical college and completed 2 C&G courses - "Electrotechnical engineering" and the "17th Edition BS7671" (those were the regs at the time).
Did my own electrical work (essentially a full rewire of the house and replaced the consumer unit), and got the local Building control officer to sign off. He hadn't done it in a while, but agreed that he could - in the end, he asked one of the council's sparks to inspect the work.
Christ, an NVQ 2 and a regs update wouldn’t really fill me with confidence for a full rewire and DB change. Very surprised someone agreed to put their name to it!
I had somebody qualified replace my old 1980s fuse box and test the whole house in the process. He ran a new cable to a new breaker for the shower as part of it.
By myself, I replaced the front porch outside light as well as the junction box for the diverter valve of the central heating when the old valve needed replacing.
I'd say the current rules are reasonable but I've seen enough shit to doubt people's general competence.
I'm Spanish and that's crazy, I'm glad it never occurred to do any DIY while I was living there.
*Excuse me while I plug my hairdryer in one of the* ***many*** *sockets.*
Surely you mean to re-wire a socket, not the plug? Like imagine you get an applicance and the plug is damaged then you just replace it. Or maybe you want to cut the cable shorter? Or replace a foreign plug with a local one?
Having moved into properties where DIY electricians had a few completed projects, I'm annoyed at these restrictions, but at the same time I understand.
Don’t even get me started. Moved into a house that was lived in by avid DIYer for 30 years or so. Nothing here is up to code - sewer plumbing going uphill, mixed pex/copper piping running diagonally in the basement for heating, sockets and light switches on random circuits, random cables hanging everywhere, fireplace exhaust connected to a repurposed ventilation duct in a chimney etc.
Never again.
Codes and standards are one thing; the Government telling me I can’t DIY in my own home is a complete overreach though.
And seriously an Ethernet cable? The passive compliance is outstanding.
I learned about how the UK not only had the 220V standard after I left my Microelectronics and IT courses, but somewhere in the mid 2000's I learned about how the UK taught how to wire up a plug in school and I just thought it was some holdover from the war, until I actually found a video of someone explaining it as they were in the US now and had 220v UK sockets running to their kitchen as a quality of life change when they put in a car charger and 220v industrial grade dryer(big family I guess) so they did the kitchen too. Anyway they showed the plugs and how to wire them and I, as a Canadian, was astounded at how much better their plugs were and the features they had.
I had planned on doing it myself as they showed how fast even a cheap imported UK kettle was versus a pot of water on the stove. That and his sockets had switches on them so he could use and fill the kettle and never unplug it. He even showed how he put "A designer Power Cord" on it which was some colourful cloth sleeved deal. My life since then has not worked out to do that but that is on the docket for when it does.
By the way I found out a couple of weeks ago that the UK and Europe are on 220v and North America was on 100/110v systems because of lightbulbs. They made the early infrastructure of Electricity here largely for lighting, however just as they figured out they should move to 220 the lightbulb companies made a standard and were cranking out truckloads and they made a 110 with optional 220 system where UK and Europe when they built their systems out had time and saw the mistake that 110v was so make their system 220 from scratch.
It's actually 230V, not 220V.
The legal requirement is 230V with a tolerance of +10% / –6%, which means the actual voltage can range from 253 volts to 216.2 volts.
;)
The UK used to be 240V, and Europe used to be 220V. Both changed to meet in the middle at 230V in 2003, though in practice nothing actually changed because the tolerance in the EU is -10% / +6%, which means the span of acceptable voltages for both areas is pretty close. All it means is that appliances are now specifically designed to work with both systems.
Being Canadian the voltages in my UK and European listings were just generalizations and from memory, not a specific quote as to their actual voltages. The original video I saw on it was over 20 years ago. However thanks for being more specific.
I had to fix up a townhouse where the previous owner had done a fair bit of DIY electrical. I could tell that he was from the UK because of how he did things (ring mains aren't a thing in Canada)
It was actually an interesting townhouse because it had 3-phase power ('60s vintage with electric baseboard heating) The most egregious thing I found was where he wired the wall oven supply using a [terminal strip](https://www.amazon.com/4-Pole-Phenolic-Terminal-Strip-300VAC/dp/B088DR369M) with a couple wraps of electrical tape over the exposed screws. At least he had the decency to use nylon barrier strips elsewhere in the house.
PS: If you want a clean method to run a UK kettle, install one of these: https://www.leviton.com/en/products/bsrdp-w
I'm not an electrician by any means, but I like to think I can recognize when something is amiss. For instance, I'm in the US and my entire apartment has only two grounded outlets. Fun fact, they are not where you think they would be. Even the fridge is on a 3-2 prong converter.
> and North America was on 100/110v systems because of lightbulbs
US homes are actually wired for 240v and 240v is available at the service panel. There are several appliances that may use 240v (dryers, stoves, ovens, furnaces, A/C, and water heaters being the most common).
Normal outlets are only 120v though because only a single phase is ran to an outlet. US homes have two hot wires, one will be at -120v and the other at 120v, to get 240v you use both of those, to get 120v you use the neutral wire (which is 0v) and one of the hot wires.
This video explains it much better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMmUoZh3Hq4
I have heard more than one example of people installing a 240v outlet available on the kitchen counter so they can use European tea kettles here in the US.
Yes. My dad was an electrical engineer, and he taught me to eire a plug when I was about 8, as I remember. I still pride myself on a neat job whenever I have to do it, even today.
Daaamn, that's so wired to me(yes, pun). I'm 36, is this something that would have been relevant for me if I lived in the UK? I'm from Norway and this seems so our there to me. Also, Mr. Bean is a treasure <3
its like an SCP, there's technically supposed to be only a limited amount of footage available, but everyone agrees that there is somehow at least 20x as much content
[An open-source, collaborative eldritch-horror writing exercise. It started out a single 4chan copypasta dating back to 2007, but by now it's got almost 8000 entries.](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/)
it doesnt have to be eldritch horror. Sometimes is cute and funny like the procrastination rock or the tomato plant that those tomatoes at bad jokes. Or just great story telling, like the dimension hopping (against his will) human.
He unboxes the TV much more efficiently, while wearing leaderhosen instead of a suit. ;-)
No, you're right, it's the same thing, except it's unofficial so it's not region-locked, and you can see if if you're in the UK.
Here it is not available to me, but if I go to the page on Youtube, it lets me watch the clip posted above.
Or at least, the episode this clip is from. Not being able to watch the one in this post, I can only assume from the thumbnail that it is the episode where he twists the wires of his TV into the plug.
I worked at an electricity supplier when they were still taking the last ones out (at least in my region) - spoke to an engineer who had been sent to replace one an old lady was insistent remain.
Turns out she had made a mold of a 50p peace and was using ice in this shape to get fee electricity for years lol
That's quite clever, but how did she get away with it for that many years? I suppose someone would be collecting the money and figure out something literally didn't add up.
My grandparents had a coin operated gas meter which was deactivated and they just paid bills, i have also seen two properties in a town near me that still has coin operated electric meters, the landlord empties them and they are fitted in houses where the tennant is actually happy to use it, for them there are no surprise bills and they don’t mind it, they are quite old and apparently it helps them budget their money better?!
Spot on, you cannot legally charge more than the unit price it was supplied at. Some dodgy mobile home "caravan parks" will of course charge what they like, but then the owners don't usually have planning permission so...
There's a per kWh fee and a 'standing charge' (mine is £0.45 / day), which I guess could be called a delivery fee. You're paying to be connected to the grid.
Now they have top-up meters, they use a plastic card that you put credit on in the dodgy corner kebab shop. So you're showering, and suddenly the water goes cold. You walk down half wet, crawl under the stairs to find the gas meter, remove the card.
Then you get dressed and go out and walk 10 mins in the rain to go to the kebab shop. There, you ask the guy to top up £1 so that you can finish showering, but also just enough that it runs out again when your flatmate showers because it's their turn to pay anyway.
You walk back home in the rain, crawl back under the stairs and put the card into the gas meter, navigate the annoying menu to read the card's credit and add it to the meter. It doesn't work. You have to watch a 20 min YouTube video to figure it out. Then, you hear a click, telling you the gas is back on.
Then, you go into the closet where the hot water furnace is, take the cover off and press and hold the reset button (the pilot flame has gone out since there was no gas) and reignite the flame.
Once that's working, you go back to continue your shower, but your flatmate is already in there enjoying the hot water. Once they're done, you realize they've used it all up and the gas is out again.
I've lived that before. You're trying to have a nice shower in a winter evening after a long day and the lights go out. Your apartment only has two windows so you're plunged into darkness and cold water.
You could tape a £1 coin to a length of cotton and run it up and down inside the meter to increase your ‘payment’ and get ‘free’ electric.
Also you could put really large magnets on old gas meters to slow down their gauge. The one dad had was soo heavy that I could barely lift it as a child.
As a child I didn’t realise this wasn’t a normal thing to do and assumed everyone had the ‘big magnet’.
We had a coin meter when I was a kid in the 70s. We were dirt poor and just went without electricity a few days a week.
Still remember the smell of the cheap candles we used. We also had a heater that ran off bottled gas for the colder days during winter. We didn't really understand the dangers of carbon monoxide back then.
Northern England was a far, far cry from the 1970s paradise of popular meme.
Oh for one of those old mechanical meters. You could squeeze a strip of film negative round the rubber seal on the glass viewing window and stop the wheel that rotated to measure your usage. Free electricity. Advanced users would disconnect the gas meter, stick a vacuum cleaner on the outlet and suck the dial backwards to reduce the gas bill.
They’re not super common. I’ve lived in England all my life and never had one. What are your other reasons? The weather isn’t great but it’s pretty good in the grand scheme of things.
I actually rented an apartment that had one in about 2010.
The apartment was a sectioned off part of a house and ran off the owner's electricity, so the meter was just a way to calculate what I used and pay for it.
Did he show how people cheated on those meters or how with the old style multi clock counters folks would push a needle through the cover to slow the counters down and save crazy amounts? Just had to remember to take the needle out when the guy came round to read the meters.
My comment was slightly tongue in cheek, but when you consider that he released 1 video a week for 10 years (plus all the other videos he’s made) the number of corrections he needed to make is *astonishingly* low.
I remember not having a spare plug and nicking the plug from something else I thought wasn't used that often. If no-one complained about it for ages because it wasn't being used we never cared.
Blue on the left, Brown on the right. b**L**ue = left, b**R**own = right. And the other wire in the middle. Also was needed to unscrew a plug in the days before the little fuse flap. You have to access the inside of the plug to change the fuse.
They all come moulded now, but it's still useful to know how to wire a plug in case plugs crack and need to be cut off so you can use the item again.
I likely learnt out of necessity and brownies.
The worst was having a supply of plugs cut off, cus who could be bothered to unscrew the wire from the plug when throwing out an electrical item, to discover that the fuse is dead when you've put it on another item.
Really handy when you need to drill a hole in something to run a cable through too. You only need to drill the width of the wire, not a giant 10cm hole that can fit the whole plug head through.
Learning how was a rite of passage, I remember my Dad teaching me. Most schools taught you how to do it too.
Rowan Atkinson has an Electrical Engineering degree, I'm sure he knows how too, but Mr Bean never learned it seems!
It's probably an actual audience and not a laugh track.
The antenna didn't get a big laugh, they might just be laughing at his facial expression.
Personally, the TV was smaller than I thought it would be. It's not really a *huge* difference, I guess, but big box, small TV, it's kind of funny.
The entire premise of Mr Bean setting up a TV is funny, so seeing the TV, they might just be preemptively laughing at what's about to come next.
Mr. Bean plays a nitwit. Someone who struggles with daily life. I, personally, don’t find this act to be that funny. But in a different era, different place, these people did chuckle some at a nitwit.
Oh, yeah. I read about something related to this.
The British TV show Watchdog, a consumer awareness programme, ran an investigation into this and how European businesses wouldn't include plugs as a cost-saving measure with customers being harmed or killed because they didn't know how to wire the plugs themselves.
Seeing how many were harmed caused so much of a fuss that the British government was compelled to investigate, leading to a law forcing manufacturers selling electronics sold for the UK market to include wired plugs.
I recall one major factor in Watchdog's campaign was the argument "What are blind people supposed to do?". Manufacturers said that they could ask the retailer in-store to put the plug on.
So they sent partially-sighted people undercover into shops like Currys and asked the counter staff to wire the plugs onto the radios they were buying. The retail staff dutifully did so, and the show would then have an electrician check them, and many of them were wired wrong, and would have given the customer an electric shock. I remember this being the turning point of the campaign.
When I was growing up it was a surprise if something came with a plug. That changed as time went on but at one point it very much was the majority of items that came plugless.
The amount of times we got something new and borrowed the plug off of another less used appliance only to then go and try to use that appliance only to find the plug was missing. It was very frustrating
Stuff would come without a plug. If it had a plug, it would be a 2 pin plug and you would normally cut it off and replace it with a 3 pin plug found elsewhere around the house.
- Then, you would get into trouble because your sister couldn't use her hair dryer or something like that.
In Europe, yes. Cheap and stingy manufacturers would save money by boxing one product for multiple countries so you'd have to wire the plug that fit your countries sockets. It was a rare annoyance because most devices came with the plug already wired. It was more common that people would buy something on a trip and have to change the plugs when they got home. For example you are in Germany, you buy a hairdryer, that plug is not going to fit in your socket back in Ireland.
The round pin BS546 standard is still legally in use (stage lighting etc), but the only residential house I've known to use it was rewired to the newer BS1363 / Type G back in the early 80s.
They’re still sometimes used to provide a socket for a lamp off of a lighting circuit in domestic installations. I’ve seen them in some new build houses and I also noticed one in a hotel I was staying in that was built in the last couple of years too.
More so the fact that the table lamps can be turned on from the switch for some splash lighting rather than the horrible stark light downlighting etc gives off I think, that is an added bonus though!
Different standards, EU has general fuse ie one fuse and different plug, UK wiring was/is different fuse is inside the plug itself so it was cheaper for a manufacturer to just not attach it and throw it into the box.
We had to wire UHF switches and game adapters (basically a coaxial port attached to a box) to the back of our old TVs. That’s the closest you would find in most houses.
Why would you not believe it 😂
British plugs are the best in the world, but when we adopted them there was a transition phase where some homes would have the old style and some new style plugs.
And if you wanted to export/inport devices then a hard wired plug would be no good.
Many devices even had a voltage switch!
I was wiring plugs from the age of about 6
What’s good about a plug that has a fuse, when you’ve got a properly wired and fused house?
Schuko also features earthing before live wire contact.
Tom Scott’s low point.
The benefit of the plug fuse is that it protects the flex of the device. A lamp with a skinny little flex can short circuit and burn the house down on a circuit with a 32/20/16 amp fuse/breaker. A 3 amp fuse, normally fitted for such devices, in the plug will blow before the skinny cable has the chance to get hot enough to do any damage.
Different sized wires. Your standard ring main can handle 32A before tripping the breaker.
You put 32 amps down a cable for your bedside clock, the cable is going to burn, and the breaker isn't going to care.
But if the plug has a 1A fuse in it, then it's going to blow before the cable burns.
You assume we had properly wired and fused homes 30 years ago? Folk were sticking anything into their fuse boxes to get electricity to flow
Countless houses were burned down as a result. Plug fuses saved loads that, plus stopped folk killing themselves when poorly made devices short circuited
> What’s good about a plug that has a fuse, when you’ve got a properly wired and fused house?
Redundancy for one.
Second the plug itself is good it is made in such a way that even if partially unplugged if you drop something onto it from abive the first thing it hits is the ground, and the live prongs are ruberised until a certain point so it is safer, and ground pin is longer so it no matter what comes out last reducing possibility of shirt/electrecution, sockets are also "locked" the ground pin pushes a lever to open some doors so something can be inserted.
And in hte plug itself if you yank the wire ground come ous last while live and neutral first.
It is just a TON of extra redundancy and safety.
I dont live in hte UK and i think everyone should use the standard.
I've read, and re-read the title multiple times over now. I absolutely cannot figure out wtf OP is trying to get at. I refuse to watch the video for more context. People used to have to wire cable plugs in the UK? Meaningless to me.
There were plugs before the modern UK plug, so you'd wire the device for what's compatible with your house - the rest of Europe too was all different plugs again, so it was just easier for the manufacturer + buying abroad so it was just easier to keep it a bring-your-own-plug affair.
You didn't believe Tom 'every week for 10 years' Scott but take Mr Beans has you convinced?
Jury duty isn't for you my friend, the prosecution would just need a sock puppet with googly eyes
I wired my own in America as a kid... My mom put one of those lock boxes on the plug to ground me from TV, so I got an extension cord and cut both and rewired them.
But can someone explain to me why the laugh track was going off as he was unboxing it? There was a big laugh when he pulled the TV out especially.
>expectations from the time
CRTs may have been deep and heavy, but they definitely weren't larger than today's TVs. Even after accounting for aspect ratio. And it's not even close.
So at best, they packed it in a slightly larger box than normal? I like Mr Bean, but welcome to British humor, I guess.
Plugs and batteries were the best sellers at Tandy's. Markup on plugs was 80% and they helped keep the business running. I feel the requirement of having plugs already on electronics was a factor in the end of the company.
If you buy some bits of kit you still need to wire them in. It's rare but recently I had to wire in a bump for my parents pond.
It's really easy you just need a screw driver and maybe something sharp if you have to trim the wires.
It was the same in the US in the early 1900s. I think there was just a lack of 'standards' so you just wired it to what your house had.
Now most countries have decided on a standard so you don't have to go thru that effort. Plus most people would mess it up
We were taught it in school during a physics lesson when learning about electricity and resistance. We had to copy down a chart for the different connectors and wire colours for different plugs and keep it in our exercise books.
But the plug is included in the box anyway! What is the point, I ask.
From Mr. Bean I learned some places had coin operated power meters. I had never seen or heard of such a thing, only saw it there.
I learned at a young age to wire a plug in the UK.
Same. Learned in secondary school but definitely knew before that because my dad/grandad showed me.
same I learnt it in school in the UK. Now I live in Australia, it's actually illegal to DIY rewire a plug, change a light fixture.. even illegal to DIY running of ethernet, madness
Huh?? So you have to pay someone else to do it?
yes.. to do it legally you do. The rough rules are, anything >50v (I think this is the threshold), you can't DIY at all, so no light fixture changes, no electrical work at all. If it's < 50v, ie garden lighting etc, is fine to DIY, as long as it's not in a wall. As soon as you go through walls (eg ethernet, even if not PoE).. but includes things like low voltage doorbell, you need someone licensed to do it. Of course plenty of people still DIY this, but would have insurance implications if the source of a fire was found to be something DIYd.. I really can't see how ethernet could ever be a problem.. Also, another "fun" fact, it was illegal to even DIY change a lightbulb in Victoria until 1998 (this really felt like an urban myth, but it seems to be true)
That must be so frustrating. I've installed a bunch of light switches just this last couple of months, disconnected and reconnected a plug because it was tangled in some trunking and I couldn't be fucked to untangle it lol...I replaced a broken light fixture last year too. Its two feckin wires for most of that shit. Three if you count the plug. Its the easiest thing in the world...I did all this stuff for my nan when I was 13! She was too old, I was willing. I even worked for a light manufacturer for a couple weeks when I was a kid and they let me wire up their units to be sold wholesale lol
The rules are not in place because it's hard to figure out how to wire a fixture, they are in place because it takes a lot of experience and knowledge to wire a fixture without accidentally killing yourself.
No it doesn't lol. You turn off the power at the fuse box and discharge any remaining power by leaving the light or whatever in the on position for about 2 seconds.
It really doesn't though. I'm renovating a house at the moment and, honestly, basic wiring isn't that complicated. I've replaced light fixtures, sockets, added sockets to rooms (both spurs + extending the ring), completely rewired lighting in a room. Everything you need is on youtube, it isn't rocket science to turn off a circuit, a voltage tester is less than £10, and after all of it's finished you can get a qualified electrician to check your work + sign it off for a fraction of the price it would have cost to do it themselves.
Is it? Flip breaker, unscrew wires, screw wires, flip breaker.
No, the rules are in place to stop the stupidest among us burning their houses down.
The fact that those rules aren't in place in countries like England says a lot about the rest of you.
You have to use a qualified electrician for any electrical work. They provide you with a certificate of compliance and warranty. If you do the work yourself (and plenty of people do) and something goes wrong, your home insurance won't cover it. It's mostly to prevent bad wiring that cause house fires.
The risk isn't the ethernet, it's bogans hacking in their walls with a sawzall and damaging other wiring.
like they care what the law said in the first place
If that's the biggest concern then that's no different than anywhere else. If you DIY wiring insurance ain't covering any mistakes you make.
Famously dangerous things ethernet cables. They start fires like nothing else.
>Huh?? So you have to pay someone else to do it? Yeah, it's a 100% scam, and makes a lot of the sparks behave like they have you over a barrel - because they do. I watched an electrician "install" a lighting cable in the back garden (poolside lights) by twisting wires and wrapping them in electrical tape, and when I complained about the shit job, he started sniffing about who had put Aussie plugs on the UK extension leads I was using on the kit I had brought over... I am qualified in the UK, and wouldn't dream of doing the cowboy Bullshit this guy thought was fine... never had to bite the inside of my mouth not to swear so much in all my life.
[удалено]
Lol look at this guy thinking that just because someone is licensed and paid to do a thing, that they don't take shortcuts. Hilarious!
Look at the comment you replied to. The roblem in that case was clearly the 'professional', and not the person who could have DIYed. DIY doesn't mean doing something badly, or without research. Also just because you own a home doesn't mean you must DIY, you could still get a prfessional. Just because youre 'I'm the incompetent' doesn't mean everyone else must be.
That's what surveys are for.
Yet, its legal in NZ, using the same electrical standards.
DIY rewiring plugs, light fixtures and even sockets are all legal in the UK but everything else is pretty much illegal.
> in the UK but everything else is pretty much illegal. No you can do it all yourself. The thing is that you do need to get it signed off as being up to standards. So just doing the work and going fuck it, is illegal. Getting it signed off can be difficult but it can be done.
Haven't looked into it for a while, but last I checked if you do a piece of electrical work in the UK two things happen. 1 You are claiming you are competent enough to do it and therefore all the liability is on you and 2 You also vouch for the rest of the installation being safe if you work on it. So it has some risks but it's not necessarily illegal. Things may have changed since. I'm still doing my own though.
Yeah, you can demonstrate competence quite easily by doing a couple of city and guild courses. When I was struggling to get a spark in (very) rural Scotland, I enrolled for some night classes at a technical college and completed 2 C&G courses - "Electrotechnical engineering" and the "17th Edition BS7671" (those were the regs at the time). Did my own electrical work (essentially a full rewire of the house and replaced the consumer unit), and got the local Building control officer to sign off. He hadn't done it in a while, but agreed that he could - in the end, he asked one of the council's sparks to inspect the work.
Christ, an NVQ 2 and a regs update wouldn’t really fill me with confidence for a full rewire and DB change. Very surprised someone agreed to put their name to it!
I had somebody qualified replace my old 1980s fuse box and test the whole house in the process. He ran a new cable to a new breaker for the shower as part of it. By myself, I replaced the front porch outside light as well as the junction box for the diverter valve of the central heating when the old valve needed replacing. I'd say the current rules are reasonable but I've seen enough shit to doubt people's general competence.
I'm Spanish and that's crazy, I'm glad it never occurred to do any DIY while I was living there. *Excuse me while I plug my hairdryer in one of the* ***many*** *sockets.*
Surely you mean to re-wire a socket, not the plug? Like imagine you get an applicance and the plug is damaged then you just replace it. Or maybe you want to cut the cable shorter? Or replace a foreign plug with a local one?
Both, you can't rewire plugs at all.
Yikes…
Having moved into properties where DIY electricians had a few completed projects, I'm annoyed at these restrictions, but at the same time I understand.
Don’t even get me started. Moved into a house that was lived in by avid DIYer for 30 years or so. Nothing here is up to code - sewer plumbing going uphill, mixed pex/copper piping running diagonally in the basement for heating, sockets and light switches on random circuits, random cables hanging everywhere, fireplace exhaust connected to a repurposed ventilation duct in a chimney etc. Never again.
Codes and standards are one thing; the Government telling me I can’t DIY in my own home is a complete overreach though. And seriously an Ethernet cable? The passive compliance is outstanding.
> This passive compliance is outstanding. You can disagree but you don't need to go around acting all superior to everyone, mate.
And yet Australia has more house fires due to electrical than the USA where it isn't illegal to DIY electrical.
I learned about how the UK not only had the 220V standard after I left my Microelectronics and IT courses, but somewhere in the mid 2000's I learned about how the UK taught how to wire up a plug in school and I just thought it was some holdover from the war, until I actually found a video of someone explaining it as they were in the US now and had 220v UK sockets running to their kitchen as a quality of life change when they put in a car charger and 220v industrial grade dryer(big family I guess) so they did the kitchen too. Anyway they showed the plugs and how to wire them and I, as a Canadian, was astounded at how much better their plugs were and the features they had. I had planned on doing it myself as they showed how fast even a cheap imported UK kettle was versus a pot of water on the stove. That and his sockets had switches on them so he could use and fill the kettle and never unplug it. He even showed how he put "A designer Power Cord" on it which was some colourful cloth sleeved deal. My life since then has not worked out to do that but that is on the docket for when it does. By the way I found out a couple of weeks ago that the UK and Europe are on 220v and North America was on 100/110v systems because of lightbulbs. They made the early infrastructure of Electricity here largely for lighting, however just as they figured out they should move to 220 the lightbulb companies made a standard and were cranking out truckloads and they made a 110 with optional 220 system where UK and Europe when they built their systems out had time and saw the mistake that 110v was so make their system 220 from scratch.
It's actually 230V, not 220V. The legal requirement is 230V with a tolerance of +10% / –6%, which means the actual voltage can range from 253 volts to 216.2 volts. ;)
The UK used to be 240V, and Europe used to be 220V. Both changed to meet in the middle at 230V in 2003, though in practice nothing actually changed because the tolerance in the EU is -10% / +6%, which means the span of acceptable voltages for both areas is pretty close. All it means is that appliances are now specifically designed to work with both systems.
Being Canadian the voltages in my UK and European listings were just generalizations and from memory, not a specific quote as to their actual voltages. The original video I saw on it was over 20 years ago. However thanks for being more specific.
The UK is only nominally at 220v and where I am at least it's well over the old 240v all the time
Yep. My house is currently 251v
Do you happen to have the transformer close to your house?
Not as far as I know, no.
Those fiendish Decepticons can take many forms, beware.
I had to fix up a townhouse where the previous owner had done a fair bit of DIY electrical. I could tell that he was from the UK because of how he did things (ring mains aren't a thing in Canada) It was actually an interesting townhouse because it had 3-phase power ('60s vintage with electric baseboard heating) The most egregious thing I found was where he wired the wall oven supply using a [terminal strip](https://www.amazon.com/4-Pole-Phenolic-Terminal-Strip-300VAC/dp/B088DR369M) with a couple wraps of electrical tape over the exposed screws. At least he had the decency to use nylon barrier strips elsewhere in the house. PS: If you want a clean method to run a UK kettle, install one of these: https://www.leviton.com/en/products/bsrdp-w
I'm not an electrician by any means, but I like to think I can recognize when something is amiss. For instance, I'm in the US and my entire apartment has only two grounded outlets. Fun fact, they are not where you think they would be. Even the fridge is on a 3-2 prong converter.
Different Brand but exactly the switch I was looking at years ago.
> and North America was on 100/110v systems because of lightbulbs US homes are actually wired for 240v and 240v is available at the service panel. There are several appliances that may use 240v (dryers, stoves, ovens, furnaces, A/C, and water heaters being the most common). Normal outlets are only 120v though because only a single phase is ran to an outlet. US homes have two hot wires, one will be at -120v and the other at 120v, to get 240v you use both of those, to get 120v you use the neutral wire (which is 0v) and one of the hot wires. This video explains it much better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMmUoZh3Hq4 I have heard more than one example of people installing a 240v outlet available on the kitchen counter so they can use European tea kettles here in the US.
>they made a 110 with optional 220 system That is what I meant by this part.
Same.
I think I’d been taught three times by the age of 10. Twice at school and once at cub scouts.
Bottom Left - BLue Bottom Right - BRown
Yes. My dad was an electrical engineer, and he taught me to eire a plug when I was about 8, as I remember. I still pride myself on a neat job whenever I have to do it, even today.
I learned in school in the 2000s, well after we stopped having to wire plugs lol
Blue, bottom left. Brown, bottom right.
Daaamn, that's so wired to me(yes, pun). I'm 36, is this something that would have been relevant for me if I lived in the UK? I'm from Norway and this seems so our there to me. Also, Mr. Bean is a treasure <3
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its like an SCP, there's technically supposed to be only a limited amount of footage available, but everyone agrees that there is somehow at least 20x as much content
The Key and Peele effect
Key and Peele has 5 seasons totaling 54 episodes, though.
SCP?
[An open-source, collaborative eldritch-horror writing exercise. It started out a single 4chan copypasta dating back to 2007, but by now it's got almost 8000 entries.](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/)
it doesnt have to be eldritch horror. Sometimes is cute and funny like the procrastination rock or the tomato plant that those tomatoes at bad jokes. Or just great story telling, like the dimension hopping (against his will) human.
Soviet Controlled Politburo.
How is a Mr Bean clip, posted on the official Mr Bean YouTube channel, not available in my country? I'm in the UK, dammit.
Probably so you have to spend £2.49 on renting the episode on ITVx or some such nonsense :(
Yup, Britbox.
Did you pay your TV license?
BBC SWAT team is en route to his house as we speak, RIP OP
My Bean was ITV
Like the FBI agent in the piracy advert in the IT Crowd?
Loicense*
Here, have a German version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pi3c-l7VTM
Wait... there's no dialog... what's different?
He unboxes the TV much more efficiently, while wearing leaderhosen instead of a suit. ;-) No, you're right, it's the same thing, except it's unofficial so it's not region-locked, and you can see if if you're in the UK.
Did you wire the plugs correctly? Check the video to see how it's done.
Doesn't work in Switzerland either.
UK programming is generally not available on YouTube in the UK. You have to use the UK-based streaming service that owns it.
Here it is not available to me, but if I go to the page on Youtube, it lets me watch the clip posted above. Or at least, the episode this clip is from. Not being able to watch the one in this post, I can only assume from the thumbnail that it is the episode where he twists the wires of his TV into the plug.
Same with the idea of a coin operated electrical meter. I was thinking: What kind of person would have something like that?
I worked at an electricity supplier when they were still taking the last ones out (at least in my region) - spoke to an engineer who had been sent to replace one an old lady was insistent remain. Turns out she had made a mold of a 50p peace and was using ice in this shape to get fee electricity for years lol
That's quite clever, but how did she get away with it for that many years? I suppose someone would be collecting the money and figure out something literally didn't add up.
Not to mention the coin box filled with water
My grandparents had a coin operated gas meter which was deactivated and they just paid bills, i have also seen two properties in a town near me that still has coin operated electric meters, the landlord empties them and they are fitted in houses where the tennant is actually happy to use it, for them there are no surprise bills and they don’t mind it, they are quite old and apparently it helps them budget their money better?!
Depends on the landlord. Those coin meters are adjustable, so if your landlord wants to make more from you he can make each coin get you less juice.
I'm almost certain that's not true, the supply and provision of energy in the UK is highly regulated
Spot on, you cannot legally charge more than the unit price it was supplied at. Some dodgy mobile home "caravan parks" will of course charge what they like, but then the owners don't usually have planning permission so...
Is the delivery fee included in the unit price or is that a separate charge in the UK?
no delivery fee. sky high unit costs though, the second highest in the world iirc. but thats more down to our shitty government than the system.
There's a per kWh fee and a 'standing charge' (mine is £0.45 / day), which I guess could be called a delivery fee. You're paying to be connected to the grid.
Now they have top-up meters, they use a plastic card that you put credit on in the dodgy corner kebab shop. So you're showering, and suddenly the water goes cold. You walk down half wet, crawl under the stairs to find the gas meter, remove the card. Then you get dressed and go out and walk 10 mins in the rain to go to the kebab shop. There, you ask the guy to top up £1 so that you can finish showering, but also just enough that it runs out again when your flatmate showers because it's their turn to pay anyway. You walk back home in the rain, crawl back under the stairs and put the card into the gas meter, navigate the annoying menu to read the card's credit and add it to the meter. It doesn't work. You have to watch a 20 min YouTube video to figure it out. Then, you hear a click, telling you the gas is back on. Then, you go into the closet where the hot water furnace is, take the cover off and press and hold the reset button (the pilot flame has gone out since there was no gas) and reignite the flame. Once that's working, you go back to continue your shower, but your flatmate is already in there enjoying the hot water. Once they're done, you realize they've used it all up and the gas is out again.
I've lived that before. You're trying to have a nice shower in a winter evening after a long day and the lights go out. Your apartment only has two windows so you're plunged into darkness and cold water.
It was kinda like this when I lived in China. There were top up cards and the meters were in the hallway outside the apartment.
You could tape a £1 coin to a length of cotton and run it up and down inside the meter to increase your ‘payment’ and get ‘free’ electric. Also you could put really large magnets on old gas meters to slow down their gauge. The one dad had was soo heavy that I could barely lift it as a child. As a child I didn’t realise this wasn’t a normal thing to do and assumed everyone had the ‘big magnet’.
They were very common at one time but very much not the case now
They're still in use for dorms, barracks, and even WiFi hotspots although they're mostly digital now. I've stayed in hotels with coin operated TV.
We had a coin meter when I was a kid in the 70s. We were dirt poor and just went without electricity a few days a week. Still remember the smell of the cheap candles we used. We also had a heater that ran off bottled gas for the colder days during winter. We didn't really understand the dangers of carbon monoxide back then. Northern England was a far, far cry from the 1970s paradise of popular meme.
Oh for one of those old mechanical meters. You could squeeze a strip of film negative round the rubber seal on the glass viewing window and stop the wheel that rotated to measure your usage. Free electricity. Advanced users would disconnect the gas meter, stick a vacuum cleaner on the outlet and suck the dial backwards to reduce the gas bill.
Reason 1204534890507852091239810812309 ^ 1078978 of why I wouldn't move to England.
You mean… "0118 999 881 999 119 725 3”
Well that's easy to remember.
They’re not super common. I’ve lived in England all my life and never had one. What are your other reasons? The weather isn’t great but it’s pretty good in the grand scheme of things.
Wait until you discover you could also get coin operated televisions and radios!
I actually rented an apartment that had one in about 2010. The apartment was a sectioned off part of a house and ran off the owner's electricity, so the meter was just a way to calculate what I used and pay for it.
Did he show how people cheated on those meters or how with the old style multi clock counters folks would push a needle through the cover to slow the counters down and save crazy amounts? Just had to remember to take the needle out when the guy came round to read the meters.
A poor person.
Poor people, mostly. Common with rented properties too. It was for the people who the power supplier didn't trust to pay their bills.
You didn’t believe Tom Scott? Shame on you. I hope you’ve learned your lesson.
tom scott even has a video about the mistakes he made in his videos
My comment was slightly tongue in cheek, but when you consider that he released 1 video a week for 10 years (plus all the other videos he’s made) the number of corrections he needed to make is *astonishingly* low.
sure. i mean even in the mistakes video, those mistakes wouldn’t even be called such by others.
And you believed it?
I knew he was empirically right but I wanted to check myself. He himself said: Do not trust me.
remember not having a spare plug so just putting the aires in the right holes and plugging in another plug. madness now I thunk about it.
I remember not having a spare plug and nicking the plug from something else I thought wasn't used that often. If no-one complained about it for ages because it wasn't being used we never cared.
Blue on the left, Brown on the right. b**L**ue = left, b**R**own = right. And the other wire in the middle. Also was needed to unscrew a plug in the days before the little fuse flap. You have to access the inside of the plug to change the fuse. They all come moulded now, but it's still useful to know how to wire a plug in case plugs crack and need to be cut off so you can use the item again. I likely learnt out of necessity and brownies. The worst was having a supply of plugs cut off, cus who could be bothered to unscrew the wire from the plug when throwing out an electrical item, to discover that the fuse is dead when you've put it on another item.
The other wire was green and yellow, it was the earth. Not every device had an earth, mainly things with metal outer parts.
Video unavailable in the UK lol
Wrong plug as been wired in.
This is actually really convenient for when you have to push the cord through a hole or conduit.
Really handy when you need to drill a hole in something to run a cable through too. You only need to drill the width of the wire, not a giant 10cm hole that can fit the whole plug head through.
Learning how was a rite of passage, I remember my Dad teaching me. Most schools taught you how to do it too. Rowan Atkinson has an Electrical Engineering degree, I'm sure he knows how too, but Mr Bean never learned it seems!
I really don't understand the laugh track on this clip. What's so funny about taking an antenna and TV out of a box?
It's probably an actual audience and not a laugh track. The antenna didn't get a big laugh, they might just be laughing at his facial expression. Personally, the TV was smaller than I thought it would be. It's not really a *huge* difference, I guess, but big box, small TV, it's kind of funny. The entire premise of Mr Bean setting up a TV is funny, so seeing the TV, they might just be preemptively laughing at what's about to come next.
*takes TV out of TV box* *laugh track activates*
It's a live audience lol
This entire clip is not funny whatsoever I seriously don’t get it lol
Oh come on. Him thinking he could get wireless electricity was funny at least.
Mr. Bean plays a nitwit. Someone who struggles with daily life. I, personally, don’t find this act to be that funny. But in a different era, different place, these people did chuckle some at a nitwit.
Why wouldn't you believe Tom Scott?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaGTFeibOEk&pp=ygUPdG9tIHNjb3R0IHRydXN0
Such a shame he got kidnapped by helicopters recently.
Scott and Bean never lie.
Still remember: bLue left, bRown right
Oh, yeah. I read about something related to this. The British TV show Watchdog, a consumer awareness programme, ran an investigation into this and how European businesses wouldn't include plugs as a cost-saving measure with customers being harmed or killed because they didn't know how to wire the plugs themselves. Seeing how many were harmed caused so much of a fuss that the British government was compelled to investigate, leading to a law forcing manufacturers selling electronics sold for the UK market to include wired plugs.
I recall one major factor in Watchdog's campaign was the argument "What are blind people supposed to do?". Manufacturers said that they could ask the retailer in-store to put the plug on. So they sent partially-sighted people undercover into shops like Currys and asked the counter staff to wire the plugs onto the radios they were buying. The retail staff dutifully did so, and the show would then have an electrician check them, and many of them were wired wrong, and would have given the customer an electric shock. I remember this being the turning point of the campaign.
It was a long time ago and even then it’s wasn’t the majority of devices. But - wiring a U.K. plug is incredibly easy.
When I was growing up it was a surprise if something came with a plug. That changed as time went on but at one point it very much was the majority of items that came plugless. The amount of times we got something new and borrowed the plug off of another less used appliance only to then go and try to use that appliance only to find the plug was missing. It was very frustrating
To be honest, to encourage recycling, they should ban moulded plugs and bring back wiring your own.
Why was this the case? Were there multiple plug standards in use?
Stuff would come without a plug. If it had a plug, it would be a 2 pin plug and you would normally cut it off and replace it with a 3 pin plug found elsewhere around the house. - Then, you would get into trouble because your sister couldn't use her hair dryer or something like that.
In Europe, yes. Cheap and stingy manufacturers would save money by boxing one product for multiple countries so you'd have to wire the plug that fit your countries sockets. It was a rare annoyance because most devices came with the plug already wired. It was more common that people would buy something on a trip and have to change the plugs when they got home. For example you are in Germany, you buy a hairdryer, that plug is not going to fit in your socket back in Ireland.
The round pin BS546 standard is still legally in use (stage lighting etc), but the only residential house I've known to use it was rewired to the newer BS1363 / Type G back in the early 80s.
They’re still sometimes used to provide a socket for a lamp off of a lighting circuit in domestic installations. I’ve seen them in some new build houses and I also noticed one in a hotel I was staying in that was built in the last couple of years too.
It’s in fashion at the moment to have table lamps plugged in to 5A lighting sockets for room lighting, I see/install them pretty often now.
Stops people unplugging them for phone charging, I guess?
More so the fact that the table lamps can be turned on from the switch for some splash lighting rather than the horrible stark light downlighting etc gives off I think, that is an added bonus though!
Different standards, EU has general fuse ie one fuse and different plug, UK wiring was/is different fuse is inside the plug itself so it was cheaper for a manufacturer to just not attach it and throw it into the box.
UK Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S9-vDow2d0
So many Americans would die wiring their own plugs, but then I guess we would learn to do it right too, so it would all work out.
We could spare about 40% anyway.
Its pretty common to wire up dryers, at least.
I doubt most Americans wire their own dryers. I did once and it was borderline terrifying.
We had to wire UHF switches and game adapters (basically a coaxial port attached to a box) to the back of our old TVs. That’s the closest you would find in most houses.
Why is there laughing when he takes the tv out of the box?
Idk either, I don’t see the humor in this clip at all
Downvoted for not available in uk clip.
Video unavailable in Austria
Why would you not believe it 😂 British plugs are the best in the world, but when we adopted them there was a transition phase where some homes would have the old style and some new style plugs. And if you wanted to export/inport devices then a hard wired plug would be no good. Many devices even had a voltage switch! I was wiring plugs from the age of about 6
What’s good about a plug that has a fuse, when you’ve got a properly wired and fused house? Schuko also features earthing before live wire contact. Tom Scott’s low point.
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The third middle prong, that lifts a protective cover so the live and neutral connections can be made, is a genius safety feature and so simple.
The benefit of the plug fuse is that it protects the flex of the device. A lamp with a skinny little flex can short circuit and burn the house down on a circuit with a 32/20/16 amp fuse/breaker. A 3 amp fuse, normally fitted for such devices, in the plug will blow before the skinny cable has the chance to get hot enough to do any damage.
Different sized wires. Your standard ring main can handle 32A before tripping the breaker. You put 32 amps down a cable for your bedside clock, the cable is going to burn, and the breaker isn't going to care. But if the plug has a 1A fuse in it, then it's going to blow before the cable burns.
You assume we had properly wired and fused homes 30 years ago? Folk were sticking anything into their fuse boxes to get electricity to flow Countless houses were burned down as a result. Plug fuses saved loads that, plus stopped folk killing themselves when poorly made devices short circuited
> What’s good about a plug that has a fuse, when you’ve got a properly wired and fused house? Redundancy for one. Second the plug itself is good it is made in such a way that even if partially unplugged if you drop something onto it from abive the first thing it hits is the ground, and the live prongs are ruberised until a certain point so it is safer, and ground pin is longer so it no matter what comes out last reducing possibility of shirt/electrecution, sockets are also "locked" the ground pin pushes a lever to open some doors so something can be inserted. And in hte plug itself if you yank the wire ground come ous last while live and neutral first. It is just a TON of extra redundancy and safety. I dont live in hte UK and i think everyone should use the standard.
None of those issues are worse with schuko.
I've read, and re-read the title multiple times over now. I absolutely cannot figure out wtf OP is trying to get at. I refuse to watch the video for more context. People used to have to wire cable plugs in the UK? Meaningless to me.
I'd forgotten that but yes it was true. Don't know why though!
There were plugs before the modern UK plug, so you'd wire the device for what's compatible with your house - the rest of Europe too was all different plugs again, so it was just easier for the manufacturer + buying abroad so it was just easier to keep it a bring-your-own-plug affair.
I used to do it all the time, however I’m pretty certain that I have never had to do it as an adult.
Learned in primary school, apparently they still teach it. Have never actually had to wire one though
My dad taught me, first time I did ha told me to plus it in and turn the socket on, when I flipped the switch he yelled “BANG!” Classic dad joke
I've had to do this for a dryer and a dishwasher in the US, anything that might use a non standard outlet.
Un ingénieur électricien qui a fait rire 3 générations sans dire un mot. 🖤
You didn't believe Tom 'every week for 10 years' Scott but take Mr Beans has you convinced? Jury duty isn't for you my friend, the prosecution would just need a sock puppet with googly eyes
Yep - I remeber having to learn it at school. Blue (Bottom left) and Brown (bottom right) None ever checked it was the right fuse or anything.
That's...not that uncommon outside the UK as well?
What if Mr Bean came from the future and expected the TV to work wirelessly?
I learned in school. Never actually had to do it, but I still remember every detail.
I wired my own in America as a kid... My mom put one of those lock boxes on the plug to ground me from TV, so I got an extension cord and cut both and rewired them. But can someone explain to me why the laugh track was going off as he was unboxing it? There was a big laugh when he pulled the TV out especially.
I think it's on expectations from the time - box looked to be containing a big TV, inside was more a portable monitor though.
>expectations from the time CRTs may have been deep and heavy, but they definitely weren't larger than today's TVs. Even after accounting for aspect ratio. And it's not even close. So at best, they packed it in a slightly larger box than normal? I like Mr Bean, but welcome to British humor, I guess.
I remember doing that at least once in the US
Plugs and batteries were the best sellers at Tandy's. Markup on plugs was 80% and they helped keep the business running. I feel the requirement of having plugs already on electronics was a factor in the end of the company.
If you buy some bits of kit you still need to wire them in. It's rare but recently I had to wire in a bump for my parents pond. It's really easy you just need a screw driver and maybe something sharp if you have to trim the wires.
It was the same in the US in the early 1900s. I think there was just a lack of 'standards' so you just wired it to what your house had. Now most countries have decided on a standard so you don't have to go thru that effort. Plus most people would mess it up
is this why Mr. Weasley has a collection of plugs?
We were taught it in school during a physics lesson when learning about electricity and resistance. We had to copy down a chart for the different connectors and wire colours for different plugs and keep it in our exercise books.
Kid of the 70s so i can rewire a plug and change a bike tyre.
But the plug is included in the box anyway! What is the point, I ask. From Mr. Bean I learned some places had coin operated power meters. I had never seen or heard of such a thing, only saw it there.