at9

I'd go for the boots. Beware that some footwear advertised as UK9 is actually EU42 which means UK8. As always, the only proof is trying them on.

Never mind high heels, I recently tried to buy a pair of ordinary Sanita unisex clogs. I've bought them before and I need EU43. The supplier (Spartoo) listed them as UK9. Guess what, I got EU42. Complained, they said they'd got it wrong, gave them another chance. Still EU42. Ordered from elsewhere.

18 hours ago, HappyinHeels said:

I guess there are scores of people in the U.K. waiting around to be offended at the least little thing. I expect people with such high standards to not have a scrap of anything in their abodes made from animal products. Yeah, maybe when you live in a glass house you'd think twice before casting a stone at another but many of these folks don't have the mental clarity to first look at themselves. So much energy expended at hurling insults rather than making the world a better place. HinH

At least people don't get shot in the UK for wearing the wrong shoes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/91a740d4-7bd9-4758-8bee-499e5f7c635e

Outrage is hardly a new thing in the US as this old article shows: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/30/us/anti-fur-groups-wage-war-on-mink-farms.html

Nor is offence and outrage confined to one side of the political divide.

I don't think we have bullet trains here in the UK. Their natural habitat is Japan. in France they have TGV (Trains a Grand Vitesse) and near identical technology is used on the Eurostar trains that run through the tunnel.

London and the UK as a whole have loads of smaller and quirky museums and other attractions. As a staritng point in London here are a few suggestions.

For a really offbeat little museum: http://www.thelasttuesdaysociety.org/museum-curiosities/

If you're a movie fan this one is great: http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk/

Great little place and it's free: https://www.soane.org/

The great London museums and galleries are all free to visit for their main collections. You could spend half a lifetime here and not see everything. I think this is a full list of London's major world class museums and galleries: Science Museum, Natural History Museum, V&A, British Museum, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery,Tate Britain, Tate Modern

The Southbank is always interesting. From Tower Bridge, Globe, Borough Market, Southwark Cathedral, Golden Hind, Oxo Tower (somewhat hidden free public viewing area on top floor), Festival Hall, BFI, National Theatre, London Eye and loads more.

Eurostar will whisk you to Paris or Brussels in little more than 2 hours.

If you have a contactless credit or debit card it MAY work on London transport buses and tubes. Foreign cards don't always work. Otherwise get a pay-as-you-go Oyster card when you arrive. You can't use cash on London buses and it's an expensive way to travel on the tube.

43 minutes ago, Puffer said:

Yes, I realise that socket/switch height is only applicable to new-build (thank goodness).   But WHY is the floor area directly relevant to a circuit?   Is it because, in addressing diversity, there is an assumption that more appliances will be in use simultaneously in a larger area?   Often, the Regs don't seem to square with one's intuition or common-sense and, if there was a brief explanation of a requirement or restriction, compliance would be better.

 

Where alterations/additions are made to a (domestic) circuit wired in the 'old' colours, it makes sense to continue using the old cable, if possible, and I don't think anything in the Regs actually prohibits this (not that detection is likely).   No need then for the warning labels either.   I use my 'old stock' for this reason - and I ain't throwing it away.   To my mind, the old 'triple and earth' cable (for two-way lighting, switched fans etc) was much more logical, e.g. red for phase (live); yellow for switched live; blue for neutral.   Brown instead of red is fine, but the application of the black and grey is hardly obvious - a blue instead of black would be more logical.

AFAIK, using old colour cable for new work is no longer permitted. Not that it stops us doing so.

When using cable for single phase applications where cores are live, it's mandatory to sleeve them in brown if the insulation isn't already brown. That's mainly for switched live and 2 way switching situations. I have very rarely seen this done.

I would have thought it obvious that floor area is related to diversity. No matter how many sockets you have in a given area, there's a practical limit to the number of high current appliances you're likely to use in that area. By allowing an unlimited number of sockets you can have plenty of sockets where you might need them without the expense of separate circuits. If you're going to allow an unlimited number of sockets then you have to impose some kind of limit, most sensibly done by specifiying area served. For commercial and industrial premises the designer may need to make his/her own calculations.

A further limit is set by voltage drop. In domestic work unless there is an unusually long distance from consumer unit to sockets this is unlikely to be a problem. In commercial/industrial or very large houses a designer might well specify subsidiary distribution boards.

The regs themselves are complemented by commentaries and guides. Some published by the IET, others by 3rd parties. These often give the reasoning for regs as well as advice on practical ways to meet them. These days there are also forums where this sort of thing is debated. One item of interest in the new 18th Edition is the provision of arc fault detection: https://www.electrium.co.uk/18th-edition

10 minutes ago, dww said:

Only problem is , the rules I was following were from 1970, things have changed a bit since then. Still cannot get over this brown and blue cable colours, nowt wrong with red and black.

It's worse with 3 phase. The phases are brown, black, grey. Instead of the old red,yellow, blue. You're working in a 3 phase environment and there's a blue wire. Or a black wire. Whoops! There are meant to be labels showing that mixed colours are used in an installation but you still need to take care.

In different countries at different times all sorts of colours have been used. In the past the Germans have used red for earth (ground). In the USA black is (was?) live.

The higher socket height is for new build. Doesn't affect existing properties being rewired. Same regs also specify light switches should be lower than we are used to.

The area served by a circuit is part of the diversity calculation. 20A radials require greater care than 32A circuits and are only allowed to serve a smaller area. I forget the numbers.

Fixed appliances needing a high current (typically for cooking or water heating) should normally have their own dedicated circuit.

Ouch! Your doctor can give you a document that you can show to airport security but it's not universally accepted.

https://www.allcleartravel.co.uk/blog/travelling-metal-implants/

If you're lucky you may even find that wearing heels makes your back more comfortable. Due to medical issues HHP member Cali would be in real pain unless he wore heels.

As David said, our NHS may be underfunded and overstressed but it doesn't matter whether you are rich or poor, in work or out of work, all hospital treatment is free to all UK citizens.

2 hours ago, Shyheels said:

Heels could be handy for reaching hard to reach places!

Only if they have platforms. Otherwise it's no more than you could do by standing on your toes. I was given a pair of goth style boots with 3" platforms and 5" heels. Very comfortable but deceptive and potentially treacherous. I've worn them for halloween and occasional parties. Would be good for cutting my hedges where I can only just about reach the tops.

1 hour ago, dww said:

Yes I remember in Benbridge on the Isle of wight, our landlord asked me if I could wire up his flat, yes I said looking at wiring regs all sockets have to 9 inches above damp course (sorry for those metric types) sockets endened up 8 foot from the floor. But he was happy.

I don't think the regs explicitly give a distance above DPC. But it would be against the regs to install ordinary flush mounted domestic sockets in a wall that was known or likely to be damp. There is a requirement to site sockets sufficiently above horizontal surfaces to ensure that the flex isn't stressed as it exits the plug. This distance isn't explicity stated in the regs but is commonly taken as 6"/150mm.

42 minutes ago, Gudulitooo said:

For newbies (like me), it is easier to plug a <16 A appliance on an outlet and check that the matching line in the electrical box is rated at 16A, thus I am sure it works.

If I need several appliances on outlets connected to the same fuse 1) I can easily identify which are together (by removing the fuse), and 2) I sum up all rated currents and insure the sum is below 16A.

Period.

A domestic user should never have to do these sorts of calculations. The whole point of a corectly designed installation is that you can use it in any reasonable way (and many unreasonable ways) without causing overloads. Of course you can defeat the system. If you have a washing machine, tumble drier, toaster, electric kettle and fan heater all working at once you'll be pushing or exceeding the limits of a 32A circuit. That's why special care must be taken when designing kitchen wiring. Perhaps providing a separate circuit for washer and dryer. In UK regs a 32A final circuit can serve an unlimited number of sockets in a house but these must be within a 100 sq metre area. Perfectly sensible for most purposes. For commercial/industrial premises the designer must work out likely usage rather than use customary limits.

CIrcuit protection by fuses and circuit breakers is actually a complicated subject. Here's a very basic primer on the subject. A 13A fuse doesn't blow as soon as you take 13.5A. In fact it won't blow for quite a long time even if you take 20A.The design aim is that the fuse should blow or breaker trip before the wiring reaches a harmful temperature. Whether that takes seconds or hours. It's very hard to protect against small overloads. 22A will take a very long time to blow a 20A fuse. The wiring may start to deteriorate if that happens too often. Conversely a fuse/breaker has to be able to interrupt a potentially very large current in the event of a short circuit. I've seen thin flex explode in a shower of sparks where it has shorted due to wear and tear. The fuse shoudl have blown before the flex but didn't.

One of the consequences of having 32A final ciruits is that you really need a fuse in the plug. This is largely to protect the flex, not the appliance. Most countries have 16A or 20A finals which is just about adequate to protect all but the thinnest flexes. There are several problems with the fused plug. The worst (IMO) is that when loaded with more than about 10A there are plenty of plugs whose quality is marginal and they overheat. I've seen scorch marks on too many plugs and sockets caused by poor fuse contacts or sometimes poor contacts in the socket. The German Schuko (and similar French design) used in many countries is generally better quality. It also allows many small double insulated appliances to have a very compact 2 pin plug.

So in conclusion the UK BS1363 13amp system is generally OK but rather clunky and suffers some failures. If you were starting from scratch now you wouldn't invent it. There have been a few attempts to invent a new system for the UK but none have got anywhere. Changing over would be almost impossible. Though the Italians are gradually changing from their own unique sockets to Schuko.

PS: I have sometimes done electrical wiring at home while wearing heels:-)

The US arrangements sound far too complicated. In the UK and Europe we have almost universally 3 phase. 230V phse to neutral and 400V phase to phase. The neutral is earthed (grounded) at the star point of th distribution transformer. Domestic users get a single phase, commercial and industrial users get all 3. That's it. Unless you're a big industrial user in which case you'll take power at 11kV or higher.

Gudulitooo, in France, you have the problem of the "disjoncteur" (circuit breaker) fitted by the power company that trips if you take what is a very modest amount of current by UK standards. Most houses in the UK have a supply that can deliver between 60A and 100A. If everyouse did that all the time the system would break but fortunately the average demand is quite small.

I'm sure every country has its quirks. The Japanese have both 50Hz and 60Hz power!

Most countries use radial wiring. This is just a string of socket outlets run from the fuseboard. This wiki article explains the ring final (the term "ring main" is commonly if incorrectly used) better than I can. The ring final is really only used in the UK and possibly in Ireland  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_circuit

Here's the intro from that article:

" In electricity supply design, a ring final circuit or ring circuit (often incorrectly called a ring main or informally a ring) is an electrical wiring technique developed and primarily used in the United Kingdom. This design enables the use of smaller-diameter wire than would be used in a radial circuit of equivalent total current. The reduced diameter conductors in the flexible cords connecting an appliance to the plug intended for use with sockets on a ring circuit are individually protected by a fuse in the plug. Its advantages over radial circuits are therefore reduced quantity of copper used, and greater flexibility of appliances and equipment that can be connected. "

A ring main, strictly speaking, is somethng rather different. Ring topology is often used on high voltage networks to provide fault resilience. Doesn't alwys work as I found out a few years ago. One day my power failed. Then came back for a few hours, then failed again. the electric company had to bring in mobile generators for almost a week until they could fix the blown cables. Apparently some old undeground 11kV cables had failed. You wouldn't want to have been standing over the ground where that happened, it blew a nice hole. The auto-reclosing circuit breakers had restored power (may have been done manually, I don't know for certain). Then the other leg of the 11kV ring, overstressed from having to support more load failed too. They had a lay a fair bit of new underground 11kV cable to fix all that.

In some urban areas, notably central London, the low voltage network (400V delta, 230V star) is in mesh configuration. With lots of feeds from different transformers, all interconencted more or less at random. This give high fault tolerance but also very high prospective fault currents. Every now and then an underground joint box explodes. It's a miracle nobody's been seriously hurt.

Yuk

9 hours ago, Puffer said:

One big electrical advantage we have in the UK is a standardised 230V AC single-phase domestic mains supply.   Our electric kettles boil quickly and don't need large (and therefore expensive) supply cables!   (2.5mm sq is the standard for a ring main, allowing up to 24A in most configurations.) 

In the UK every outlet can deliver 3kW so can feed a good, fast kettle, a washing machine or just about any appliance. Same is true in most European countries.

The ring final circuit is just about unique to the UK and allows 32A to be taken from a circuit wired in 2.5mm^2 cable. The use of rings is now discouraged for new installations. mainly because it's harder to verify that they are correctly done and also that faults can develop un-noticed. Best practice is now 20A radial with 2.5mm^2 cable or 32A radial with 4mm^2 cable.

Remember that the USA has a Federal system of government where all sorts of regulations can vary between states.

I read @Shyheels' last post very carefully in case his spelling or grammar had slipped:-)

26 minutes ago, Shyheels said:

Dresses or skirts are designed to be worn solely by women ......

Garments that closely resemble skirts and dresses are worn widely by men. For skirt-like garments the scottish klit the nearest to home for me but there are numerous other examples. In biblical lands and times men wore commonly wore robes, a kind of dress.

The sarong is a sort of skirt, widely worn by both men and women in some countries.

Not sure that HHP is really the place to be pushing a political agenda, be it conservative or liberal. Or communist, facist or any other for that matter.

Incidentally, should "stepping on hypocrites" be done in stilettos, or will flats be sufficient?

As Tom Lehrer once said: "There are people who do not love their fellow man. And I hate people like that!"

Surprisingly, according to this source, India has more PV manufacture than China:

https://www.pv-tech.org/news/key-solar-manufacturing-location-trends-in-2016

3 hours ago, HappyinHeels said:

As for electricity it is generally given credit to the person who first perfected the science and then made it available to the masses.

I'm not sure that's a generally valid definition. As a counterexample take television. In the USA the names that come to the fore are usually Jenkins and Farnsworth. In the UK it's Baird who did the world's first witnessed demo of television in January 1925. None of these really brought TV to the masses. That was done by RCA in the US and Marconi-EMI in the UK.

The world's first public electricity supply was in 1881 in Godalming, a small town not far from London: http://www.godalmingmuseum.org.uk/index.php?page=1881-godalming-and-electricity

The same year there was also a trial scheme in in Brighton, on the south coast of England. Neither of these had any famous names or companies involved. Again in 1881 the Savoy Theatre in London was lit by electric light, the first public building to be lit thus. The lamps were supplied by Joseph Swan: https://gsarchive.net/carte/savoy/electric.html

The following year  (1882) Edison set up schemes in both London and New York. There was then rapid expansion in many countries.

Tesla is still a bit of an enigma. I place him as genius and nutcase in equal measure. The greatest thing he handed down to us was the 3 phase AC system. With its efficient motors and generators. The basis of virtually all electricty generation, distribution and usage for over 100 years.

Shyheels correctly says that over geologic time the climate has had some huge extremes. Wouldn't have have been very habitable for us, had we been around at the time.

57 minutes ago, HappyinHeels said:

Or Thomas Edison inventing electricity when it is now known that Nikola Tesla actually perfected it but he was a poor businessman who allowed others to steal his ideas and get away with it.......

I didn't know electricity had been invented. Rather like Newton invented gravity. The ancient Greeks knew about some electrical phenomena. Their word for amber gave us the word "electricity". In terms of understanding electricity the best known pioneers were Galvani, Volta, Ohm, Ampere, Oersted and perhaps greatest of all, Faraday. All at least half a century before Tesla and Edison. Faraday discovered how to make an electric current flow using magnetism. The principle used in almost all electrical generation to this day.

Edison was one of the pioneers of public electricty supplies. He supplied the whole system, from generators to distribution to lamps. His DC system lost out to the Tesla/Westinghouse AC system for some very good engineering (and economic) reasons.

As for the electric light bulb, there were a number of pioneers before Edison. The best known, in the UK at least, was Joseph Swan. His patent position was so strong that the notoriously litigious Edison decided it wasn't worth fighting. They jointly set up the Ediswan company to make lamps in the UK.

As for climate change, talk about "saving the planet" is a load of rubbish. The planet will get on perfectly well whatever we do to it. Though things might not be very comfortable for us humans. I forget who said that the planet might shake us off, rather like a bad case of fleas. There is a very good case for taking good care of spaceship earth with its incredible and complex life support systems. Never mind any high flown "green" messages. Just out of sheer self interest. Coal mining will die out, not because of green campaigns, but simply on econmic grounds. When it's cheaper to build PV and grid scale storage than to burn coal or gas guess where the smart money will be going. PV and wind are already cost competitive. Grid scale storage will get there pretty soon. It's essential to have it for when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.

Forgot to say that China is investing in more PV capacity than any other country. Like other countries that industrialised, they've found that smog isn't nice.

I don't mind paying the VAT on imports (and duty if applicable). What I object to is the (usually) £13.50 "handling" fee you have to pay to Royal Mail etc. If the order is for a few thousand pounds of kit that fee deosn't really matter but for a few tens of pounds it makes it totally uneconomic.

I should add that most imporst I've done have been realted to my business. Since I'm VAT registered I can claim the VAT back from HMRC.

I don't fly a lot but a few months ago flew from London Luton to Rome. There were quite a few women in heels, though only a tiny fraction of the total.

Don't know if anyone has mentioned it before on HHP but this website has a lot of useful information for those with larger feet. That's from UK9/EU43/US11 upwards.

https://www.prettybigshoes.com/

Especially their listing of stores etc that have larger sizes: https://www.prettybigshoes.com/shops