How to change a fuse on a plug socket

[eveares]

See: https://clockwork.property/help-advice/change-fuse-plug-socket/

Poor advice as best.

 

[EFLImpudence]

The title is bad enough.

 

[pilsbury]

Love when it says "if you are not confident, call an electrician" - have any sparkys had a call to change a fuse?

 

[SUNRAY]

Love when it says "if you are not confident, call an electrician" - have any sparkys had a call to change a fuse?

Er... Yes.

 

[EFLImpudence]

I like this bit:

"if you replace 3A red with a 13A brown, because these aren’t an exact replacement your electronic item will not work"

That must be a good way of telling whether you have chosen the correct fuse.


Why do these people decide to give advice?

 

[SUNRAY]

I like this bit:

"if you replace 3A red with a 13A brown, because these aren’t an exact replacement your electronic item will not work"

That must be a good way of telling whether you have chosen the correct fuse.


Why do these people decide to give advice?

Mmm good question.

I was sent a link to a video recently about refurbishing loudspeaker cabinets and part of it showed dunking the stripped wooden enclosure in a tank of water prior to applying the PVA glue for the new carpet/rexine covering.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Why do these people decide to give advice?

Because they've decided they know what they are doing.

 

[ericmark]

It is rare to find a plug socket with a fuse in it. In the main the fuse is in the plug not the socket for the plug. English it seems is a problem, the French OK have a plug socket, but in Britain we have either plug or socket, so either it should be the plug's socket, or the socket's plug, one assumes they have missed the 's? Taking the screws out of the plug's socket without isolation is dangerous, and there will be no fuse there anyway. I the person following the instructions knows the fuse is in the plug not the socket, then they hardly need instructions.

I taught my children how to select a fuse and replace it. I told them the difference between resistive items and motors, and how to read the appliance plate to decide the size required. It seemed my daughter then corrected her school teacher telling the teacher all about selecting the fuse. It seems they were being taught how to change a plug at school. I don't remember being shown at school, so seems things have improved.

So why is there a need to instruct with a web page? Of course anyone can write a web page, I was asked to write some pages for a woodland owner who wanted to promote natural forest practice. He was a clever man, however his expertise was in designing hospitals, and although he had learn a lot about the woodland, some times there were errors, because I was writing the page, I would often pick up on the errors, however it would have gone unnoticed if he wrote the page himself.

I picked up on an error in an advert clearly these large firms are not proof reading their own pages. Even when they passed my comments, they did not actually alter there own replay which is clearly wrong.

 

[John D v2.0]

Looks ok to me, the headline was probably written by someone else. What issues did people find?

 

[winston1]

I taught my children how to select a fuse and replace it. I told them the difference between resistive items and motors, and how to read the appliance plate to decide the size required.

But there is nothing on the appliance plate to indicate fuse size. I hope you explained that the fuse is to protect the cable, not the appliance on the end of it.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Looks ok to me, the headline was probably written by someone else. What issues did people find?

The "headline" is surely just the description of those G4 LED lamps, and the problem Eric is reporting is what Screwfix say about supplying a lamp marked 50/60Hz from an 'LED driver' or 'electronic transformer'.

 

[aptsys]

Looks ok to me, the headline was probably written by someone else. What issues did people find?

" a loose connection can cause overheating and an increase in current which may be why the fuse blew initially)."

 

[John D v2.0]

" a loose connection can cause overheating and an increase in current which may be why the fuse blew initially)."

Fair enough, I wouldn't call that poor advice, just vague. If the loose connection is causing a motor to fail to start I could imagine an overload could be engineered. But either way it's good advice to check for loose connections.

 

[JohnW2]

The "headline" is surely just the description of those G4 LED lamps, and the problem Eric is reporting is what Screwfix say about supplying a lamp marked 50/60Hz from an 'LED driver' or 'electronic transformer'.

I think this post needs to be moved to the thread entitled "Suppliers 12 volt LED advert and advice".

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[ericmark]

But there is nothing on the appliance plate to indicate fuse size. I hope you explained that the fuse is to protect the cable, not the appliance on the end of it.

If you look at the range of fuses that will fit a plug you have 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10 and 13 amp, if you look at flex you did have 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, and 1.5 mm² this gives you 3, 6, 10, 13, 16 amp, so you would only need the 3, 6, 10 and 13 amp fuse, however a 6 amp fuse is not made, but even a 13A fuse will remain intact and the 32A MCB will open instead, with a short circuit, and in real terms cable damage is always short circuit. So why make the whole range? Well I would say it is a historic thing, before we joined the EU we did use the fuse in the plug to protect the appliance, however to harmonise it was realised that if UK stuff was taken into Europe it could be a problem when the plug is changed. So the rules changed, not sure what date, but my son is 40 now, so it was at least 25 years ago when they went to school. At that time what was written on the plate was used to work out fuse sizes.

Today there are two things which control the fuse size, one the cable, and two the connector, it does not matter what size cable is used with a fig of 8 lead set, that socket is rated 2.5 amp so the fuse will be no bigger than 3 amp. We have a range of connectors rated 0.2 (shaver) 2.5, 6, 10 and 16 amp, ups there we go again with 6 amp and we only have 5 or 7 amp fuses.

So we need 2.5, 6, 10 and 13 amp fuses to protect cable and connector, but that's not what we can buy.