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Never Enough Sockets in Modern Houses.

Zoomup
Yes folks, it's count the wiring accessories time. You have 30 seconds......your time starts NOW!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7642785/Bizarre-five-bedroom-house-dozens-PLUG-SOCKETS-room-goes-sale-1-3million.html


Z.
  • 0

    Chris Pearson:

    Blimey!


    This is what I have in my office at home:


    phone transmitter/receiver

    desk phone

    modem

    desk fan

    desk light

    internet computer

    screen for the above

    scanner

    photocopier

    main computer

    screen for main computer

    speakers for main computer

    printer

    iPad charger

    laptop charger

    camera battery charger

    television

    freeview box

    video recorder

    DVD player

    speakers for television


    It doesn't seem excessive to me, but I have far too few socket outlets and a shameful number of extension leads and two and three way adaptors.




    Sounds good to me

  • 0

    Sparkingchip:

    I live in a road that has three and “four” bedroom semi detached houses built in the 1960’s.


    At that time the Council Rating Officer visited new homes to assess the Rateable Value of Homes to determine how much the home owners or tenants would have to pay in Rates to the council  each month.


    The number of bedrooms and the number of socket outlet were both assessed with the Rateable Value increasing with additional bedrooms and sockets.


    The three bed houses had one single socket in each bedroom. The “four bed” houses were sold as houses with three bedrooms and a box room, only the bedrooms had a socket which was a single, the box room did not have a socket although it is big enough to use as a single bedroom. 


    This kept the Rateable Value down leading to a saving on what had to be paid to the council for many years. Fifty years later some of the four bed houses still only have three single sockets upstairs.


    Andy Betteridge 




    Wow Andy, never heard of sockets affecting rateable value, years ago windows did, at least around our way. Water rates on some premises depended on number of taps. A nd wasmate of mine hrented a small factory unit. For years he had 2 fulltime and one part time employees and himself. One water tap for brews and handwash. He was going to add one tap at another location but it would have doubled his water rates so he didn`t. Not effing gonna use a drop more with same number of us he said.

    To be fair though I suppose more sockets, rooms, taps, windows or whatever might mean more usage or more people potentially but reminds me of floorspace served by a ring final or radial - I did quite a few LA grant aided works - rewires, one twin socket per room two twins in kitchen was grantable, they hoped folk would have extras at same time but very few actually did

  • 0
    The house in which I grew up had one single 13 amp socket per bedroom, one in the dining room, one double in the kitchen and one double in the living room. Seemed adequate at the time.

    Bedroom sockets almost never used.

    Kitchen had one side of the double used for the fridge, and the other side spare for the washing machine. or anything else.

    Living room had one side of the double for the TV with other spare for vacuum cleaner or maybe a heater.

    Single socket in dining room was used for the Christmas tree.

    Also a few 2 amp sockets on the lighting circuits.

    4 way Wylex consumer unit, but only 3 ways used.


    I remember delivery of the fridge, the washing machine and the TV as being new and exciting. The service was 40 amps 240 volts AC. Later increased to 60 amps.
  • 0

    ebee:

    I thought middlesex was still middlesex. In truth it may well be. Lancashire is still Lancashire which includes Liverpool, Blackpool, Manchester etc. They may have chaged their admin boundaries but geographically they remain to me. So three cheers for Middlesex I says. Long Live Cumberland and the Ridings of Yorkshire too.




    Yes, but don't forget Lancashire across the water! ?


    I used to live in the East Riding, but then it became Humberside. ?


    Nonetheless, Harold Wilson (no sir as PM) said that although we were paying our rates to another authority, we could still regard ourselves as Yorkshireman (as he was) or WHY. ?

  • 0

    broadgage:

    The house in which I grew up had one single 13 amp socket per bedroom ... Bedroom sockets almost never used.




    The ones that I started in probably had 5 amp sockets.


    I really cannot remember what we had when we moved house and encountered the modern era. I don't think that a bedside lamp was unusual, and in cold weather, softies might have used an electric blanket.

  • 0

    ebee:

    Go on then. Own up. Who wired it. Which one of you was it?


    Nice weekend quiz Zoom




     

    I'd guess that someone has been making a mint renting out, by packing them in. Also, probably installed by one of them.  


    Jaymack
  • 0

    dustydazzler:

    Am I being a bit think here but the plug top goes into a socket hence plug socket....




     

    Thank you, dustydazzler, and to everyone else who responded to this point.


    Any type of plug, electrical or otherwise, probably has a type of socket it plugs into.


    Any type of socket probably has a plug that plugs into it.


    Hence a plug-socket is a socket into which one plugs a plug.


    You can't define something by stuttering recursive repetition to the point of exhaustion. (Except in politics, perhaps.)


    Ask ourselves: 


    Would you expect a manufacturer of wiring accessories to use the term "plug-socket" in its catalogues?


    Would you use the term "plug-socket" in the submission of a technical report to the IET or some similar learned body?


    Come on, now, we engineers know better!
  • 0

    Zoomup:

    Many believe that Middlesex no longer exists as it was abolished in 1965. Greater London was formed and, with that, Middlesex County Council was dissolved. But Middlesex is still used as a reference to where people live all the time.


     




     

    Well, OK then, but it is not a very good reference to locality, is it! London used to be within the County of Middlesex, until it became a county in its own right in 1889. This left Middlesex with a rather odd and elongated shape. Nowadays, quite rightly, it is not shown on maps, which show instead the modern London boroughs. It is difficult to relate somewhere like Enfield as in the same locality as Twickenham, almost on the other side of London, especially with Hampstead, not associated with Middlesex, roughly on a line midway between. A better and more accurate reference to where people live would be to use the actual London borough names, thus Uxbridge is in Hillingdon, London.


    I suggest that the persistent usage of the name Middlesex is more to do with old habits dying hard than with desire to express location. It particularly grieves me when I find young people using the term, having been inculcated with this idea by an older generation resistant to change.
  • 0

    Sparkingchip:

    I live in a road that has three and “four” bedroom semi detached houses built in the 1960’s.


    At that time the Council Rating Officer visited new homes to assess the Rateable Value of Homes to determine how much the home owners or tenants would have to pay in Rates to the council  each month.


    The number of bedrooms and the number of socket outlet were both assessed with the Rateable Value increasing with additional bedrooms and sockets.


    The three bed houses had one single socket in each bedroom. The “four bed” houses were sold as houses with three bedrooms and a box room, only the bedrooms had a socket which was a single, the box room did not have a socket although it is big enough to use as a single bedroom. 


    This kept the Rateable Value down leading to a saving on what had to be paid to the council for many years. Fifty years later some of the four bed houses still only have three single sockets upstairs.


    Andy Betteridge 




    Fank gawd for the four way trailing socket. A blessing to many.


    Z.

  • 0

    davidwalker2:
    Some government organisation may well have disposed of Middlesex in the 1960's, but no one told the Post Office, or at least they didn't acknowledge it.  Round here our postal address still includes "Middlesex", normally truncated to "Middx."


    David



    Thanks,David. I think the Royal Mail did allow the continuing usage of Middlesex as a postal address after Middlesex was absorbed into Greater London, because it decided that the administration of altering postal addresses would be too much of a problem. Royal Mail does not have a good track record of keeping up with government changes. In its favour, however, in 1974 it did bring out a useful and interesting guide to post towns affected by the county changes following the Maude Report.


    The present-day position is that county names are no longer required on postal addresses, as long as the post town is shown, preferably in  capitals, and the postcode of course. Continued usage of county names on letters is however not objected to; it can be a guide to location within the country and of course there are cases where town names are duplicated. (I can think of two Richmonds, three Bradfords, four Newcastles.)  Mail is sorted and distributed according to main sorting offices - not on a county basis.


    So although Royal Mail does not require Middlesex, it has not proposed an alternative, e.g. London boroughs. Hence the habit lingers on.
     

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