Electrical Safety First Warning.

It is well for non technical persons to be cautious, but let us remember that most of the items needed for working from home are of very low loading. My usual advice to NON TECHNICAL persons is


"DO NOT USE ANY FORM OF HEATING* OR COOKING* OR LAUNDRY APPLIANCE FROM AN EXTENSION LEAD OR MULTIWAY ADAPTER.

NEVER CONNECT MORE THAN ONE EXTENSION LEAD TO ANOTHER.

DONT USE EXTENSION LEADS THAT TOTAL MORE THAN 10 METERS IN LENGTH"


*Including, fan heaters, oil filled heaters, halogen heaters, any other heater, hair dryer, portable cooker, kettle, microwave oven, or anything else used to heat or cook food, washing machine, tumble dryer.

I think any of us that daisychain etc usually make a mental note of what`s plugged in ref total load out of habit. Other folk will not have this ability though

So I shouldn't be plugging my oil-filled radiator into an extension lead, which is plugged into a 3-way multi-plug?  Unfortunately, my new "office" (dining room) only has one double socket to power everything.


In my defence, it's only a little radiator, 1.2kW maximum, and the only other things on that socket are a laptop, monitor and a few lights.


But if you want to see proper daisy-chaining, there's my home computer desk that I'm sitting at now.  But there's no heaters there.  Just computer kit.  And more lights.

No, if you evaluate the  max load and all your connections are good and all your equipment is in working order then OK.

You might be capable of making that engineering judgement call.

A normal person might not be

Anyone capable of O level maths should be up to adding up watts off equipment, it might be more sense to tell people what to do to calculate if it is safe, rather  than just frighten them to drum up business - all modern appliances and extension leads are marked with wattages. OR say does it feel warm after half an hour. - the average home office, laptop, printer, monitor, powered speakers, telephone charger, desk lamp, shredder and laminator, probably has change from 5A and could run of a light fitting.

Also, the fuse in the first plug or fused adaptor sorts out the gross overloads.

Only the unfused 2 way adaptors are truly dangerous, the rest just leads to melting of the visible local cable - the classic being the rolled up reel type of lead.

Simon Barker:

So I shouldn't be plugging my oil-filled radiator into an extension lead, which is plugged into a 3-way multi-plug?  Unfortunately, my new "office" (dining room) only has one double socket to power everything.


In my defence, it's only a little radiator, 1.2kW maximum, and the only other things on that socket are a laptop, monitor and a few lights.


But if you want to see proper daisy-chaining, there's my home computer desk that I'm sitting at now.  But there's no heaters there.  Just computer kit.  And more lights.

By my simplified guide for NON TECHNICAL persons, no you should not use an electric heater from any form of extension lead or multiway adapter.

However you no doubt have the technical knowledges to decide that a single 1.2 Kw heater together with other low loading appliances will be fine.


For NON TECHNICAL persons it is simpler and safer to say "no heaters" rather than "small heaters only"

A visual example of an overloaded or poor quality 13 Amp adaptor showing serious overheating signs. Details at the end of the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o26Soer1GJY


Any comments on the new plug fuse?


Z.

My shack and workshop are fed via a 13 amp sockets which is outdoors I have a 1.5 kilowatt heater 3 fluorescent lights plus what ever else I'm.using and in all these years I've never popped a 13 amp fuse I think I would of once when I reversed an electrolytic cap and when I switched on it tripped the 16 amp RCBO in the house. I know my installation is wrong by the regs but now I have neither the physical ability or the money to change it

Why are you only so suspicious of mains extensions and adapters Z, there is no extra danger now is there, the same could be said at any time? This kind of thing simply raises stress unnecessarily, in stressful times due to other factors. Would you hand out the same message if we were being bombed? The current situation is no less serious. The news media are the same, overall death rates have changed very little indeed, and the reporting requirements now lead to the number of CoVid-19 assisted deaths being given by the news. How many flu assisted deaths are there? They are reported as pneumonia or heart failure or stroke or anything else.