They’re like that in this apartment we’re renting and I keep seeing them elsewhere. I don’t get it.
Great for turning off a device or several devices without having to unplug (e.g. if the sockets are behind a bookcase, this is much more convenient). Not a super common need but when it saves moving furniture it helps. Given that UK switches are tougher to plug in and unplug than most (due to safety features), I prefer using a switch. Also, the switches are cheap and give more options, so may as well!
I rely on one for a light where the switch broke and wasn’t easily replaceable, so being able to fall back on the mains switch meant I can keep using the light.
It’s not about having a switch it’s about having the switch right next to the plug instead of next to the doorway (where it usually is in the US)
You have a switch for your electrical sockets by your door? What a weird place to put them all.
We have our light switches by the door. Much more useful.
I mean there can be either outlets or light fixtures connected to them, generally the switched outlets have lamps plugged in though.
And we have that too.
We are talking about standard sockets, they all have off switches on the socket.
It’s common in the U.S., especially in apartments, to have rooms with no light fixtures. Instead, there will be one outlet that is wired to a switch by the door. That outlet is sometimes upside down to distinguish it from the other outlets. That gives you the option to connect a lamp to the switch to get the same result as having a light fixture. I would generally prefer that every room has a light fixture on the ceiling, but this is marginally better than having to walk across a dark room to turn on a lamp.
Huh, TIL.
Here in Australia every house I’ve been in that has an electrical connection has had a light of some form mounted on the ceiling of each room of the main structure.
It just shows how any assumptions we might make will be proved wrong at a global scale.
Safety, easier to switch things off without unplugging them. Why not have one if it’s more convenient? Not all of them have switches though.
It made a lot more sense when things didn’t have their own power switches but…what does that apply to anymore? How many devices do you own that are powered off exclusively by unplugging it? Why pay for the manufacturing time and material to add a switch if nothing uses it anymore?
There are still times where it’s convenient. I have some display cases with integrated lighting and the inline switches are incoveniently between the case and the wall so its super handy to turn it on and off at the plug.
Being able to turn things off at the plug also reduces standby/phantom power when things are in sleep, which for some devices adds up more energy usage than you’d think.
Sometimes when people go on holiday for two weeks they like to disconnect the electrical items in their house for safety. With switched sockets you can just turn them off instead.
I’m sure I could live just fine without switched sockets, but it’s convenient they are there.
Ah, now all of that makes sense! Thank you!
Fridge, washing machine, dishwasher, television, phone charger, robovac dock, lamps, computer monitor, aquarium pump… I could go on.
It’s not strictly necessary, but it’s a convenience.
Most of those have power buttons and, aside from the charger and vacuum, those things are supposed to stay on.
I meant more things like lamps that you actually turn on and off…And the majority lamps have switches nowadays, I’m not sure why you included it on your list
We’re getting into the weeds a little bit here, but there’s a lot of things that have power buttons that will put the thing into standby, not off. I’ve often done a ‘hard reset’ on my ‘smart’ tv when it starts acting up, just gotta cut the power.
It’s a small convenience, but it’s nice. I’ll happily pay the extra three cents in manufacturing costs for something that lasts decades and may be occasionally mildly helpful.
Being a uk person its cause they can & its also in to building / electric code. Its just a switch that breaks the live leg, stops sparking when plugging in stuff.
Your sockets spark when you plug something in?
No, unless something is very wrong. I don’t know if that was maybe a bigger problem with older devices though. I remember being taught to turn the socket off before plugging things in or taking them out when I was a kid
All will if there is a load. Doesn’t matter ac of dc or even load. Plug an ethernet cable in and there will be a spark.
Most of the time the spark is tiny and you need a good lab to measure it though.
I’ve definitely had that happen to me, sort of at random, in the U.S.
But it doesn’t seem to have any effect. It’s not like a gigantic spark and it’s pretty contained.
Oh I’ve never seen that in the US, maybe I just didn’t notice
Home electricity in North America has roughly half the voltage as elsewhere in the world, and double the voltage is double the arcing potential, so that figures.
Laptop power bricks is probably where I see it most. Or if you plug in something with a motor already switched on. Listen for a soft popping noise if you plug in a big power brick.
You’re right, now that I think about it. Laptop power does it more than anything else.
Many, many big power-smoothing capacitors inside those jumping from 0 to 120V in a microsecond, that’s why. The better-smoothed the power supply, the more capacitors and the bigger the sparks tend to be, although some really high quality ones put most of them behind inrush-current limiters to reduce the sparking, but that can also marginally reduce efficiency. High power electronics are always a bit of a tradeoff. The problem is that capacitors charge and discharge almost instantly in most cases, and when empty they act like a short circuit until they’re filled, so they can create some pretty big sparks, even though the actual energy going in is minuscule by any reasonable measurement. It’s almost like a static shock, huge spark, tiny energy.
Some motors will also spark badly when disconnected, but the reason is slightly different. They have a huge electromagnetic field which suddenly fills or collapses and that inductance in the coils can draw a lot of amps on startup and generate some pretty high voltages, more than enough to spark across the gap. Like the capacitors, they are very nearly a short circuit until they start moving.
To turn things on and off.
Big if true.
Massive if correct
Large if accurate
I remember when I was young and bending down all the time was a thing you could do painlessly. Ah, youth.
Have you tried using your toes?
You can use your toes for switches.
Not when there are no switches and you have to pull out the plug everytime you want to switch off the appliance.
I can still bend down ok, but getting back up off my knees however….
Smart plugs are awesome!
This is virtually standard in Australia
It is standard in NZ
Depending on who built the house, it’s the standard for a “good” house in Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia and I think Kenya.
I thought that’s building code, literally never seen any other outlets in the UK, as well as in Malaysia where they adopted the system. Though why it is or became code, I’ve no idea.
That’s to make up for how incredibly dangerous they are. /joke
Everything you’d want to know about British wiring and my introduction to Tom Scott:
Safety and convenience versus the cost of including them, I expect.
The Wikipedia page for BS 1363 says they’re optional and weren’t added to the standard until 1967. I can’t recall having seen a domestic socket without one.
But it seems the only legal way to read the actual standard is to pay for it, and even the HSE website isn’t much help.
So basically, this concept was invented by a committee.
Yes, but what’s your point here? “Oh no, someone preserve us from… *checks notes* a group of subject matter experts!”?
If that annoys you for some reason, you’d best not learn how the overwhelming majority of products and services see the light of day. Rage aplenty awaits.
I didn’t have a point, I had a question. And it doesn’t annoy me, I just didn’t know why.
Why are people giving me shit for asking a stupid question in the stupid questions community? Is there a supremely stupid questions community I should have asked instead?
Your original question was answered by numerous people in the spirit of the community, so you have got best answers it can provide at the moment, but your follow-up comments suggest that you don’t think so.
But I may have misjudged your intent, as looking further I can see you’ve been replying to comments individually. My initial impression was that you were masquerading statements as questions. If I have that wrong, then my apologies.
I was genuinely trying to understand.
Yes. Welcome to the UK. You will need to adjust to small aggravations such as this. Good luck.
For safety I guess?
I don’t get how that makes it safer.
So when the dumb person tries to insert a fork in the plug, they don’t die electrocuted.
There are already slats so the only hole you can get a fork into is the earth, unless you’ve already got something convincingly shaped like an earth pin in the earth hole to open the slats over the live and neutral. If you’re going to that much effort to zap yourself, the switch isn’t going to be much of a hurdle.
I’d suspect that it’s largely because it’s more convenient to have a switch than to unplug things and plug them back in again, especially as our plugs are a nightmare to step on to the point that Americans complaining about stepping on lego seems comical to anyone who’s stepped on lego and a plug.
Some of our sockets now have interlock type slats. Not only do you need to insert the earth pin first, but you also have to insert the live and neutral together. Now, even if you wedge the earth open, you still can’t insert a fork into the live.
Have you seen the list of safety features on UK plugs and sockets? The sockets have shutters in them that prevents anything being inserted into the live or neutral sockets unless the (longer) earth pin of a matching plug is inserted first.
Having said that, I agree: seems to be a belt-and-braces approach. No downsides.
And it allows you to cut power to an appliance without having to remove the plug.
In my work, I’ve learned that when you see a safety measure that looks overkill and that “no one can’t be that stupid” to do what the measure keeps you from doing is because, in fact, someone was that stupid.
Warning signs and safety regulations are written in blood. I call the certificates of Darwin awards.
Sockets with flaps are code in the us too and have been for a while.
Isn’t the USA 2 pin for many outlets, though. So there is no earthing. The uk socket requires the earth connection to be made by the longer earth pin on the plug before the flaps will open.
yes but you have to open both shutters at the same time. The ground doesn’t have a shutter.
Not positive but those could be GFI outlets.
All modern wiring in the UK has every socket in the building connected via RCD (the more common name for GFCI outside America), but they’re usually in the main fusebox/consumer unit rather than individually per socket. These are just normal on/off switches for the convenience of being able to turn things on and off.
That’s a convenience we could all use, pretty crafty!
Saw a video of how the Japanese wire their panel’s and thought it was pretty genius.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqClY6PDCW0
Is it similar across the pond? Or is it like here where you can GFCI the panel through a breaker?
That’s what I thought at first, but it’s literally every socket in this building both inside the apartment and outside in the hallways, and I keep seeing it in other buildings too.
Yup, they are the standard.
Would be fun to see some stories about you discovering things in the UK and how they are so different than in the US!
I am doing that, but I’m sort of putting them in appropriate threads. Otherwise I’d be writing a novel. Or I suppose creating a Flying Squid in Britain community. Maybe if I get less exhausted at some point I’ll post something long.
As any cautious parent could tell you, these are helpful when the toddler starts sticking things in places where they don’t belong. Such as metal cutlery. In the power sockets.
Don’t toddlers start pressing buttons even earlier? Not sure this alone could protect them
True, but this is at least a little safer
The shutters inside the socket are more effective at preventing Anthony from being stuck in.
I think you meant to write “anything”, but I have to laugh anf think this could be another internet moment like what started “Karen” or “Chad” or “Stan”.
Er… I stand by what I said…
This isn’t the reason.
The switch is more likely to attract a toddlers attention. Some have little red lights even. It would be false sense of security at best. You can get those plastic blank plugs to stop your kid putting a fork in there.
The switch is so, if you kid is being electrocuted by putting their fork in the toaster, you can turn it off at the wall without having to touch the electrified kid.
All plug points in India also have (regular sized, not these tiny ones) switches to control them
Huh, it’s interesting- Here the power switches are a similar size to the UK, so when I searched up a picture of the Indian switches I thought they were ridiculously giant, not like regular sized UK/Australian ones
I guess it’s just whatever you’re used to is the ‘regular’.
Are light switches the same? What happens when you have a lot of switches together, like six or eight? Do you just have really wide banks of switches?
No one seemed to mention the important fact that UK and I think most Europe is a higher voltage than the US. Tom Scott as well as Technology Connections have some good videos on the whys and differences it causes.
Weird that you think anywhere other than North America has 110v electric
I think Japan has but literally every other country is 230
France used to have 110v too, it started to be phased out and replaced by the 220v in the 1950s.
Wow only 70 years ago
Not related but another surprising thing about our shared standards is that Sweden used to drive on the left until 1967. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H
As on the Wikipedia map, you see it’s essentially North and Central America, Japan, Taiwan and some Pacific islands plus some countries where there is a mix of standards.
It’s also kind of misleading. This map labels North America as 115-120V like everyone always does, when in fact it’s ALSO a 240V system, it’s just that the “common” plug and the “typical” circuit don’t use it, they only use half of a center-tapped 240V line. So that’s the “standard” they choose to use to label the whole system.
But it’s kind of unfair. It’s 240V coming into the house just like everywhere else in the world, except you also get the choice for it to be 120V. Being split-phase makes it easy to run multiple 120V circuits with a minimum of wire and still allows 240V for high-wattage appliances on their own dedicated circuits. It’s actually a very clever system and basically every house is effectively supplied with both voltages. It’s often poorly utilized, yes, with a few practical limitations and a lot of limitations due to historical conventions, but as a technical design it’s really kind of the best of both worlds, and it could be utilized a lot more effectively than it is.
If I was allowed to have an outlet with two 120V sockets, and one 240V European-style socket, there’s no technical reason I could not safely do that in a single outlet box. I could choose to plug in whatever I want at either voltage as long as it wasn’t more than 15 amps. Of course code would never allow that, because we consider the higher voltage “more dangerous” but it’s always right there, across two opposite phase 120V lines. We’re just not allowed to use it, except for large electrical appliances like air conditioners and clothes dryers. It’s frustrating.
UK kettles use the standard 240V mains and it’s excellent. Under 2 minutes to boil 3 US Pints with a 3000 Watt kettle.
By that logic, Europe should be labeled with 400 V, as this is our split-phase voltage between two 230 V phases. It is commonly used to power ovens or water heaters. Industry and even some households have CEE connectors for movable heavy gear.
Having grown up with it I missed those tbh. Makes saving power easier lol
Does it? Can’t you just turn off the device instead?
yes.
Im from the states and live in Ireland. Here, people unplug lamps when they leave for the weekend. Dozens of times, I’ve had to plug lamps back in when coming into the office over a weekend or things like Christmas break.
I’ve also had to explain to at least 5-6 people that something that does not draw power by being plugged in, such as a toaster, electric kettle or light fixture (unlike a computerized device that has a stand-by mode) is not “wasting power” unless you unplug it or turn the outlet switch off.
I had a person at a party tell me their father was an electrician and taught her to turn the switches that lead to anything such as lamps OFF when they’re not being used because it costs electricity to “keep the wire charged”. True story.
Mainly they exist because there weren’t central fuse boxes for a while due to wartime copper shortages.
Mainly they exist because there weren’t central fuse boxes for a while due to wartime copper shortages.
Someone elsewhere in the thread pointed out that the Wikipedia page for BS 1363 says they’re optional and weren’t added to the standard until 1967.
huh! shit. thanks
turn the switches that lead to anything such as lamps OFF when they’re not being used because it costs electricity to "keep the wire charged
Lol what a donkey. For anyone that’s unaware, your meter spins when current is flowing, when a device is actively using power. If there’s no current flowing, the meter isn’t spinning. Just because a wire has potential doesn’t mean it’s actively drawing current, it only means it’s ready to do something, and any device that has the main feeder going through a physical switch (ie no standby like a computer or tv) has zero current path when the switch is open/off. Even devices in standby are drawing such a negligible amount of power that it doesn’t matter.
My mom used to unplug everything all the time, and it took years to convince her that’s not how that works. She only finally got it when I became an electrician.
You can test this theory yourself if you have a multimeter. Select ohms/continuity, and put the leads across the two prongs. If there is a resistance value present, it will draw current. If it says OL or 0 ohms, that means open line and it won’t draw anything.
the only thing that would make a shred of sense would be reactive power from plugged but unused transformers and the like, and for this reason you should disconnect these when not in use. but the only loads of this type that matter are welders and such
A lot of devices can be turned off, but they still use power. So you can waste electricity even though the devices are “off”.
Things like normal table lamps aren’t the problem, it is stuff like TVs, computers, stereos, etc.