I remember always being the one unfortunate enough to get the obligatory little old lady who buys a kettle back in 1986. Every time without fail "can you fit the plug for me?" said with that hint of both pleading and desperation. Meanwhile as little old lady maximises her sole human contact for the day, my deadly arch rival will bag three VHS HiFi VCR's, a Hotpoint washer dryer and slickly sell the lucrative extended warranties while I'm wiring a bloody plug on an eight quid kettle. Oh the joys of 1980s retailing!
I love your sense of humour😅 I remembered this book & economy 7 we had it on the farm, we had two metres in the house, yard & house. My parents paid for all the poles a mile away back to the farm, has we had no electricity, then everybody joined on to it 😡 nothing we could do about that. When my parents asked if anyone wanted to help pay for poles so they had electric they all said no, then hooked up. Keep up the good work👍
Lecy blankets. We lived in a flat (maisonette) with single glazed crittall windows. We had ice on the inside in the winter. The electric overblanket was a life saver during the winter months. We also had the slot meter, running out of 50ps was a nightmare. I'd be sent to knock on the neighbours doors and ask if they had any 50p coins to spare. Another problem was the coin box filling up. We'd have to bang the meter to get the coins to settle and make a little more space until the Seeboard man came around to empty it.
I really enjoy your and bigclive's videos. I studied circuits in school but the material was way too abstract for my tastes so I switched my focus back to computer programming, which I had been doing as a teenager. With TH-cam I can now find people who know how to teach and I can learn what I should have learned in school. No matter what my experience was at the university, I never lost the joy I get from taking electronics devices apart and fixing them. Will I ever become an electrical engineer? Sadly, no, but career wise I'm completely satisfied.
I actually just learnt something from that booklet, believe it or not - I'd never given any thought to why shaver sockets were allowed in bathrooms. It doesn't say specifically, but I'm guessing that there's an isolation transformer involved. Obviously 1:1 for 240v and 2:1ish for the 110v.
+reggiebacci Yep, no danger of shock from contact with one wire to ground (earth). The fact they have a transformer in them is the main reason they use a double plate, they also need an extra-deep backbox to accommodate it!
Old shaver sockets only had an autotransformer to allow 110 & 240v outlets, so really weren't that safe. However, for quite long time (perhaps 30 years) a full isolation transformer is included. It's easy to tell the difference as the old ones were the size of a single outlet, those with a full isolation transformer are double-size (it the shaver outlet is integrated into a cupboard or mirror then it will depend on its age).
***** Thanks JW. Great video- it made me smile and brought back some old memories. I had one of those slim-line storage heaters in my first house. They were crap.
***** I actually liked the last version of mechanical storage heaters, could get them to easily maintain the room at around 21c for most of the day in winter. As the weather got warmer they would just store less and heat until completely off. The new micro controlled ones seem optimised for electricity consumption not comfort. I just use a 2/3kw heater it's actually cheaper for me to run :-)
Life was very different back then John. As you so rightly point out, you can now buy your electricity from a whole number of suppliers, all of whom will charge an absolute fortune for the same thing, it's the same with landline telephone deals, gas tariffs, and European flights, privatisation has done very little for the consumer, it's all been one big conjuring trick.
Really enjoying the video's. @15:09 it was mention that tumble dryers are a good way to piss money away. Is there a better method/tech to dry cloths in the uk all year round, that has a reasonable pay off period? in summer the washing line comes out, but in winter that doesn't work all that well, genuinely looking for ways to reduce power consumption.
Heat pump dryers will use significantly less energy, but they cost significantly more than the basic heating element type. Or a dehumidifier in a closed room with the the wet clothing on a rack. Perhaps add a fan for additional air circulation.
I have three CFL lights in my house running off timers. Haven't experienced any issues except for one extension cord going bad. But the lights work fine, and I don't worry about them starting a fire.
(2:39) - As far as I am aware, being found guilty of dealing drugs from any property was never grounds for cutting off or otherwise denying an electricity supply to such premises. At least not in the UK. Perhaps you could enlighten me JW. >
I am aware, but it comes down to whether I am happy to pay and not upset my landlord, or if I want to upset my landlord and risk eviction for an unrelated matter, such as the untidiness of my house or noise complaints. As it stands, I'm quite happy to pay the extra 11p KWh, I wish I didn't have too, but houses are hard to comeby these days :D
+Darren Tipple Woah! I thought it was somewhere between 30-40p a unit, I think I might ask for a increase in my units per coin to around 5 instead of 2, thanks Dave
(4:20) - The £3.90 per quarter charge for a prepayment meter is in *_addition_* to the exiting quarterly charge of £7.02. You seem to have brushed past this. >
Surely covering a storage heater should make no difference, safety-wise at least. At night-time when it's heating the bricks, no heat should be escaping to the outside anyway - that's why they're called storage heaters, after all. If they are covered during the day, then since they are not electrically on and not building up any further heat, even that doesn't seem so dangerous to me. Or am I missing something here?
Heat definitely escaped from my storage heaters overnight, and they were hotter when I woke up than when going to bed. Basically they provide a constant(ish) background heat - they don't just stop releasing heat at night.
To turn those prices into modern day inflation-adjusted equivalents multiply by 2.8. So the price per kWh is about 14.3p and the standing charge comes in at about £20 a quarter. So, for a typical UK household using the average 4,600 kWh that's about £738 a year, inflation adjusted. Of course there's now 5% VAT applied, so £775 a year. Plugging that into a price comparison price site, the best price now is £675 a year at my address. So electricity is (at least potentially - pun intended) a bit cheaper than it was. Of course if you are American you will wince at paying 20 cents per kWh
PuchMaxi1988 There wasn't any particular idea, it was just a fact that most electrical equipment was not supplied with a plug. The end user had to fit it themselves, either a new one or the plug removed from an old item if it was being replaced. This had been the case for decades, and it was only mandatory to supply items with a plug fitted from the early 1990s, although some items were supplied with plugs before then.
***** Yeah, I remember as a kid the common ritual when a new appliance arrived... looking around the house for something to steal the plug off of! To this day I like to keep a few spare plugs in the cupboard.
MrSwanley Actually, come to think of it, it was always us kids who did the job of rewiring plugs - our parents didn't have the confidence. Letting your children rewire your mains electrical appliances! I guess that today this would be frowned upon. :)
I have taught all my Nieces and Nephews how to wire a plug, it's a valuable skill, even if it's not required. However, my mother always did that and I was born in 1987
Not mentioned but the typical rating of 500W given for a hairdryer is now almost comical... just had a look on tescos website and the lowest rating I can see is 1000W for one marketed for children... 2000W is probably average. Vacuum cleaners are also seemingly more powerful than they used to be .
You say the booklet says that one may only install a pull cord power switch in a bathroom but that this is no longer true. What is the situation now, please? Also I have no central heating in my remote rural home so I do use a heated over blanket and am very grateful for it in winter.
I wouldn’t be without my electric blanket. Maybe a few days in the summer when it can be left off. Pull cords still best for the bathroom, but some people would rather get a shock from a damp switch than spoil the decor. Also switch has to be on the outside, so you can be left in the dark by pranksters.
Those bargain unit prices and standing charges... or are they? I plugged them into an inflation calculator and compared them with SSE (the successor to Southern Electricity Board)'s standard tariff for that region, currently 14.04p/kwh for unit rate and a standing charge of 27.41 p per day. The 5.09p per unit charge is 13.95p in today's money and the standing charge works out at 21.37p per day in today's money. So unit price is roughly the same but the standing charge has gone up quite a bit. Of course this assumes you have twiddled your thumbs and never changed supplier since liberalisation. And that assumes you're paying using pay as you go or quarterly on receipt of bill, the former of which was more expensive anyway. If you pay direct debit you'd pay only a 16.45p/day standing charge or 14.8 p if you're willing to do without paper bills - so electricity is actually cheaper nowadays! Have to say I'm normally critical of privatisation etc so it actually surprised me. And that's not to mention some other company or tariff is almost certainly cheaper still.
uwanthits Remember there were many different kinds of plugs in use (see one of John's other videos about the 'fitall' plug!), so you might well find the plug on the appliance didn't fit... so yes, people did do that. (not with matchsticks tho, the shutters will hold the wires in ;) )
Horrible cartoons?!! - Bill Tidy did fantastic stuff in those days that reflected the times and people that were around then. Just look at those faces. Where's your sense of humour?
uk state (owned by us all)made electric was much better than this mainly foreign owned capatalist eu governments its smells and its eratic and the profts not spent here and prob pays no tax bit like state owned but at least was all ours maggie and the tories would have sold the queen back too the germans instead like idiots we bought the shares but we already owned it nationalise it all again with mickey mouse utility bonds see how them continetalists like that truth is maggie made us mini capalists and our pension pots are invested in them
I remember always being the one unfortunate enough to get the obligatory little old lady who buys a kettle back in 1986. Every time without fail "can you fit the plug for me?" said with that hint of both pleading and desperation. Meanwhile as little old lady maximises her sole human contact for the day, my deadly arch rival will bag three VHS HiFi VCR's, a Hotpoint washer dryer and slickly sell the lucrative extended warranties while I'm wiring a bloody plug on an eight quid kettle. Oh the joys of 1980s retailing!
oh the joys of errant apostrophes...
I love your sense of humour😅 I remembered this book & economy 7 we had it on the farm, we had two metres in the house, yard & house. My parents paid for all the poles a mile away back to the farm, has we had no electricity, then everybody joined on to it 😡 nothing we could do about that. When my parents asked if anyone wanted to help pay for poles so they had electric they all said no, then hooked up. Keep up the good work👍
Lecy blankets. We lived in a flat (maisonette) with single glazed crittall windows. We had ice on the inside in the winter. The electric overblanket was a life saver during the winter months.
We also had the slot meter, running out of 50ps was a nightmare. I'd be sent to knock on the neighbours doors and ask if they had any 50p coins to spare. Another problem was the coin box filling up. We'd have to bang the meter to get the coins to settle and make a little more space until the Seeboard man came around to empty it.
I really enjoy your and bigclive's videos. I studied circuits in school but the material was way too abstract for my tastes so I switched my focus back to computer programming, which I had been doing as a teenager. With TH-cam I can now find people who know how to teach and I can learn what I should have learned in school. No matter what my experience was at the university, I never lost the joy I get from taking electronics devices apart and fixing them. Will I ever become an electrical engineer? Sadly, no, but career wise I'm completely satisfied.
Damn! The 50p in ice tip comes 30 years too late for me!! I wonder if it would have worked for 10p’s in a phone box?
I actually just learnt something from that booklet, believe it or not - I'd never given any thought to why shaver sockets were allowed in bathrooms. It doesn't say specifically, but I'm guessing that there's an isolation transformer involved.
Obviously 1:1 for 240v and 2:1ish for the 110v.
+reggiebacci Yep, no danger of shock from contact with one wire to ground (earth). The fact they have a transformer in them is the main reason they use a double plate, they also need an extra-deep backbox to accommodate it!
Old shaver sockets only had an autotransformer to allow 110 & 240v outlets, so really weren't that safe. However, for quite long time (perhaps 30 years) a full isolation transformer is included. It's easy to tell the difference as the old ones were the size of a single outlet, those with a full isolation transformer are double-size (it the shaver outlet is integrated into a cupboard or mirror then it will depend on its age).
Love the hack with the ice 50ps
I can't believe it's been 7 years since I watched this. Wow, time flies really fast. I must be a long time fan without realising it lol.
***** Thanks JW. Great video- it made me smile and brought back some old memories. I had one of those slim-line storage heaters in my first house. They were crap.
***** The new smart ones are even worse! The have basically have 2 setting expensive and too hot or off. Ignore the fancy new controls.
Coolkeys2009 Wow.... And the worst thing with storage heaters is, you need to be psychic and forecast what the temperature will be tomorrow!
***** I actually liked the last version of mechanical storage heaters, could get them to easily maintain the room at around 21c for most of the day in winter. As the weather got warmer they would just store less and heat until completely off. The new micro controlled ones seem optimised for electricity consumption not comfort. I just use a 2/3kw heater it's actually cheaper for me to run :-)
Life was very different back then John. As you so rightly point out, you can now buy your electricity from a whole number of suppliers, all of whom will charge an absolute fortune for the same thing, it's the same with landline telephone deals, gas tariffs, and European flights, privatisation has done very little for the consumer, it's all been one big conjuring trick.
A great bit of history.
The voltage change is handy now for getting stuff from Europe, and being able to use it over here.
Paul Potter Except the voltage never changed.
stefantrethan We had 240, they had 230
Paul Potter Now you still have 240, check it.
stefantrethan Pretty much. I've seen it as high as 250+ before.
Really enjoying the video's.
@15:09 it was mention that tumble dryers are a good way to piss money away. Is there a better method/tech to dry cloths in the uk all year round, that has a reasonable pay off period? in summer the washing line comes out, but in winter that doesn't work all that well, genuinely looking for ways to reduce power consumption.
Heat pump dryers will use significantly less energy, but they cost significantly more than the basic heating element type.
Or a dehumidifier in a closed room with the the wet clothing on a rack. Perhaps add a fan for additional air circulation.
I have three CFL lights in my house running off timers. Haven't experienced any issues except for one extension cord going bad. But the lights work fine, and I don't worry about them starting a fire.
Why would having CFL lights on a timer be a fire risk? Are you referring to the part of the video that said not to put electric heaters on a timer?
Electric blankets. I still use them and they are brilliant. Also cheap to run.
Was watching this in college. Got to 15:09 literally burst out in a quiet class laughing... 🤣
At last an insight into 1980s electricity charges. Almost impossible to find historical prices online
hi john could you please post a video up on stripping back and terminating pyro cable
How much is entrance to your museum.
(2:39) - As far as I am aware, being found guilty of dealing drugs from any property was never grounds for cutting off or otherwise denying an electricity supply to such premises.
At least not in the UK.
Perhaps you could enlighten me JW.
>
I wish coin meters were long gone, I still have one, sub-metered form the landlord and about 50p/KWh :(
I am aware, but it comes down to whether I am happy to pay and not upset my landlord, or if I want to upset my landlord and risk eviction for an unrelated matter, such as the untidiness of my house or noise complaints. As it stands, I'm quite happy to pay the extra 11p KWh, I wish I didn't have too, but houses are hard to comeby these days :D
+Darren Tipple Woah! I thought it was somewhere between 30-40p a unit, I think I might ask for a increase in my units per coin to around 5 instead of 2, thanks Dave
(4:20) - The £3.90 per quarter charge for a prepayment meter is in *_addition_* to the exiting quarterly charge of £7.02.
You seem to have brushed past this.
>
Surely covering a storage heater should make no difference, safety-wise at least. At night-time when it's heating the bricks, no heat should be escaping to the outside anyway - that's why they're called storage heaters, after all. If they are covered during the day, then since they are not electrically on and not building up any further heat, even that doesn't seem so dangerous to me. Or am I missing something here?
Heat definitely escaped from my storage heaters overnight, and they were hotter when I woke up than when going to bed. Basically they provide a constant(ish) background heat - they don't just stop releasing heat at night.
I laughed at your explanation of electric blankets at 13:19 haha
To turn those prices into modern day inflation-adjusted equivalents multiply by 2.8. So the price per kWh is about 14.3p and the standing charge comes in at about £20 a quarter. So, for a typical UK household using the average 4,600 kWh that's about £738 a year, inflation adjusted. Of course there's now 5% VAT applied, so £775 a year.
Plugging that into a price comparison price site, the best price now is £675 a year at my address.
So electricity is (at least potentially - pun intended) a bit cheaper than it was. Of course if you are American you will wince at paying 20 cents per kWh
Or if you are German you would love to pay the UK prices. Electricity here becomes a luxury item at around 25 to 30 Eurocents a KWh.
Hello john. Whats that Film called with the match sticks in the socket ?
th-cam.com/video/zH0Kxjx0sEM/w-d-xo.html
What was the idea behind letting consumers install their own plugs?
PuchMaxi1988 There wasn't any particular idea, it was just a fact that most electrical equipment was not supplied with a plug.
The end user had to fit it themselves, either a new one or the plug removed from an old item if it was being replaced.
This had been the case for decades, and it was only mandatory to supply items with a plug fitted from the early 1990s, although some items were supplied with plugs before then.
***** Yeah, I remember as a kid the common ritual when a new appliance arrived... looking around the house for something to steal the plug off of! To this day I like to keep a few spare plugs in the cupboard.
MrSwanley Actually, come to think of it, it was always us kids who did the job of rewiring plugs - our parents didn't have the confidence. Letting your children rewire your mains electrical appliances! I guess that today this would be frowned upon. :)
I have taught all my Nieces and Nephews how to wire a plug, it's a valuable skill, even if it's not required. However, my mother always did that and I was born in 1987
Ahhhh 1986, the same year Aliens came out!
I like to keep this handy, for close encounters
Not mentioned but the typical rating of 500W given for a hairdryer is now almost comical... just had a look on tescos website and the lowest rating I can see is 1000W for one marketed for children... 2000W is probably average. Vacuum cleaners are also seemingly more powerful than they used to be .
You say the booklet says that one may only install a pull cord power switch in a bathroom but that this is no longer true. What is the situation now, please? Also I have no central heating in my remote rural home so I do use a heated over blanket and am very grateful for it in winter.
Dennizon1 Switches can be installed provided they are at least 60cm away from the edge of the bath or shower.
***** Thank you. I do enjoy your videos - keep up the good work.
+John Ward hello john, wondering can you do a video about diagnosing faults on a immersion heater.thanks
+John Ward hello john, wondering can you do a video about diagnosing faults on a immersion heater.thanks
I wouldn’t be without my electric blanket. Maybe a few days in the summer when it can be left off. Pull cords still best for the bathroom, but some people would rather get a shock from a damp switch than spoil the decor. Also switch has to be on the outside, so you can be left in the dark by pranksters.
Highly amusing wit from John
Those bargain unit prices and standing charges... or are they? I plugged them into an inflation calculator and compared them with SSE (the successor to Southern Electricity Board)'s standard tariff for that region, currently 14.04p/kwh for unit rate and a standing charge of 27.41 p per day. The 5.09p per unit charge is 13.95p in today's money and the standing charge works out at 21.37p per day in today's money. So unit price is roughly the same but the standing charge has gone up quite a bit. Of course this assumes you have twiddled your thumbs and never changed supplier since liberalisation. And that assumes you're paying using pay as you go or quarterly on receipt of bill, the former of which was more expensive anyway. If you pay direct debit you'd pay only a 16.45p/day standing charge or 14.8 p if you're willing to do without paper bills - so electricity is actually cheaper nowadays! Have to say I'm normally critical of privatisation etc so it actually surprised me. And that's not to mention some other company or tariff is almost certainly cheaper still.
Excellent, and fun to watch. Why do they increase the charge for the day rate when one’s on economy seven? Such a rip off....
I suppose that those keys and cards are the modern equivalent to 50p coins...
I thought I heard you swear so I rewound it and you did, I was some what surprised, tumble dryers ay, they bring out the worst in all of us.
I still don't believe people just used matchsticks to hold in the wires, was is really that hard not to use a plug?
uwanthits Remember there were many different kinds of plugs in use (see one of John's other videos about the 'fitall' plug!), so you might well find the plug on the appliance didn't fit... so yes, people did do that. (not with matchsticks tho, the shutters will hold the wires in ;) )
ahhh it kinda makes sense now, thanks for that :)
+uwanthits I remember my dad in the 80s wrapping the wires around a plug on another appliance and sticking that in the wall... crazy times!
travelling in some less developed countries I still see this quite routinely
That’s actually the current kW/h rate here at 0.06 usd funny enough.
All you need now is to find an old bill from the Norweb Alliance (Red Dwarf joke).
hahaha heavy piece of dead tree good one.
Economy 7 gave me many a sleepless night. All the cheapskates would put their washing machines on at one o'clock in the morning.
Horrible cartoons?!! - Bill Tidy did fantastic stuff in those days that reflected the times and people that were around then. Just look at those faces. Where's your sense of humour?
😂
uk state (owned by us all)made electric was much better than this mainly foreign owned capatalist eu governments its smells and its eratic and the profts not spent here and prob pays no tax bit like state owned but at least was all ours maggie and the tories would have sold the queen back too the germans instead like idiots we bought the shares but we already owned it nationalise it all again with mickey mouse utility bonds see how them continetalists like that truth is maggie made us mini capalists and our pension pots are invested in them