Underfloor Bus Bar Systems

The ability of an electrical accessory to supply an appliance (or flex) doesn't make it a plug either.

Indeed - I was just making the point that the approach of thinking "the difference being that the plug is intended for both electrical connection and mechanical retention of a flexible cable, whereas a tap-off unit need not directly supply a flexible cable" doesn't really help given BS 7671's rather outdated definitions, as many types of tap-offs are supplied pre-wired with flex. The same argument applies the other way around too - if I plug a "wall wart" kind of appliance into a BS 1363 outlet, does the outlet cease to be a socket? (of course not I would have said, since it's still capable of accepting a plug that supplies a flex... but that then brings up back to the OP's point of being able to distinguish them using BS 7671's definitions).


I'm not arguing against your conclusions - quite the reverse! But I do still sympathise with the OPs situation and think that BS 7671's definitions could do with a bit of an update (or complete overhaul). As things stand we're still not even quite sure what's meant by "fixed wiring" - is a dangling flex permanently connected at one end to the rigid building wiring part of the fixed wiring or not?


  - Andy.

The ability of an electrical accessory to supply an appliance (or flex) doesn't make it a plug either.

Indeed - I was just making the point that the approach of thinking "the difference being that the plug is intended for both electrical connection and mechanical retention of a flexible cable, whereas a tap-off unit need not directly supply a flexible cable" doesn't really help given BS 7671's rather outdated definitions, as many types of tap-offs are supplied pre-wired with flex. The same argument applies the other way around too - if I plug a "wall wart" kind of appliance into a BS 1363 outlet, does the outlet cease to be a socket? (of course not I would have said, since it's still capable of accepting a plug that supplies a flex... but that then brings up back to the OP's point of being able to distinguish them using BS 7671's definitions).


I'm not arguing against your conclusions - quite the reverse! But I do still sympathise with the OPs situation and think that BS 7671's definitions could do with a bit of an update (or complete overhaul). As things stand we're still not even quite sure what's meant by "fixed wiring" - is a dangling flex permanently connected at one end to the rigid building wiring part of the fixed wiring or not?


  - Andy.