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Domestic wiring fittings, screw heads

Alex Barrett
Is there a reason why all conventional domestic electrical wiring fittings use exclusively slotted screw heads, rather than the much more practical Phillips or Pozidrive heads? Don't tell me that electricians can only carry one screwdriver?
  • 0
    Chris Pearson:
    Denis McMahon:

    It's a bit like those pictures of cars you see in sales brochures. The maker's logos on both wheels are always exactly the right way up. You would hardly ever see this in practice - even in a car showroom.


    Oh no, you have that all wrong. Rolls-Royce emblems always come to rest the right way up. Mind you, it wasn't always the case. ?




    "Hardly ever" doesn't mean "never". Rolls Royce - say no more!


  • 0
    MHRestorations:

    I saw a kitchen fitter do up screws to the 2 oclock position this afternoon.  He's a rare breed, one who doesn't bodge his own 'lectrics, he calls us in to do the work. But his eye for 'finish' is perfect.  Asked him why... his response: i was taught vertical or horizontal looks artificial, but a slight italic lean to the screw slot looks 'swish'.

    . . .


    We live and learn. As from today I am going to set all my slotted screw heads at five past seven. It is looks and presentation that count - not whether it is too loose or too tight.


  • 0
    There’s a programme on the telly about the Orient Express, a carriage has been restored at a cost of over half a million pounds and the manager is checking all the screw heads line up with the grain of the timber.
  • 0
    That is so sad
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    You've never met an old fashioned public sector clerk of works have you ?


    I know of at least one acute district hospital where every single accessory screw was moved from horizontal to vertical slot position at his insistence - he even had an argument that vertical was better if condensation was likely to be present - I gave up arguing in the end and just paid the lads to go around adjusting the screws on weekends - I was the guy that told them all "put them in horizontal" in the works information packs - neatly stenciled on every layout drawing in my own fair hand, at the instruction of the principal engineer !!


    Same guy who told me to wire every circuit using the phase colours - so a lighting circuit on L3 would be blue and black fixed wiring and brown and blue on the flexible wiring (back in the day when we put a conduit box above a luminaire with porcelain connects to terminate the fixed wiring to the HR Flex connected to the luminaire terminals. It was wrong even then, but was a well used urban myth that it should be that way.


    Regards


    OMS
  • 0
    Alex Barrett:

    Is there a reason why all conventional domestic electrical wiring fittings use exclusively slotted screw heads, rather than the much more practical Phillips or Pozidrive heads? Don't tell me that electricians can only carry one screwdriver?

     

    To help preserve the threads. [slight] less chance of mullering by the builder or DIYr if it is slotted.
  • 0
    OMS:

    You've never met an old fashioned public sector clerk of works have you ?


    Regards


    OMS




    I worked as a carpenter in a hospital X-ray Department that was being refitted and up dated.


    We fitted a sink and unit in the nurses station so they could make tea and coffee, when I say “we” I mean the thirty three people it took to do it. There was even three different plumbing contractors, one for the hot tap, a second one for the cold tap and a third contractor for the waste pipe. I started a “Who does what dispute” which was not hard in the 1970’s, all three plumbers said it was their job to secure the stainless steel sink top to the base unit, so I did it and they kicked off saying it should have been done by a plumber, but without any them actually saying  they would have done it.


  • 0
    There were several jobs I did then that I have never done again, one was hang a Wardray lead lined door on a lead lined frame to the toilet off the X-Ray suite for those people who had had a barium meal.


    Another was paint the inside of the ventilation ducting from the developing lab matt black, painting the inside of 100 mm pipes and fittings is a good way to spend an afternoon.

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