[alias_neo]

I'm on board with what you're saying, but also electrics done to "code" can burn down your house.

My mother in law told me yesterday that my sister in law's mother in law's house burned down while they slept (they're safe) this week due to brand new electrics in a brand new house extension, carried out by a licensed (is that the correct word for an electrician?) professional.

This is in England

[sschueller]

Isn't the code in the UK quite lax? From what I understand this is the reason every plug in the UK is required to have a fuse because the homes are not properly fused.

[alias_neo]

I don't know honestly, the plug fuse thing is due to us having ring mains which I heard was due to copper savings around war time I believe; I'm too young to know as a 30-something millennial, and haven't looked into it properly as that reason seems plausible.

Our circuits are "properly fused" though with RCDs/circuit breakers, but they're high current because we can have so many large current drawing devices on a single circuit (such as in the kitchen) which is always given its own circuit.

[pmyteh]

Plugs are fused because the current capacity of the in-wall wiring (and the breakers that protect it) is much higher than the safe current capacity of a single appliance's power lead. The circuits are often 32A and most appliances are rated for 13A or less. So without a plug fuse a fault in the appliance that draws, say, 25W would potentially overheat and set fire to the appliance cord without tripping the breaker. This is true of most countries' larger radial circuits too, I think, and the British practice of fusing plugs is a safety upgrade. How much risk it reduces in practice, I don't know.

The final ring circuit is an idiosyncracy of British wiring practice, where the cable goes out in a loop from the distribution board to sockets etc and then connects back to the board again. It allows smaller gauge wires to be run for a given current rating, and was introduced after WWII to reduce copper use during reconstruction. This does have some unusual failure modes, but the code is absolutely fine for this system as long as it's followed (including the testing regime after new installations, which will catch, for example, a ring circuit with the neutral conductor disconnected only on one side of the ring). Obviously bad work can happen anywhere.

[yieldcrv]

whose house? I need a chart, or was this sarcasm about hearsay

[alias_neo]

Sadly not, it was a bit of a confusing one to write, there may be an easier way to describe the relationship but it seemed quite funny to read so I left it.

I meant to say my wife's sister's partner's mother.