the last thing you want to happen when you're on holiday is electrocute your family burn down the
hotel room or even worse stop your wife's hair dryer from working but that's exactly what can
happen if the hotel you're staying in has universal socket outlets so to understand
more about these sockets and the safety issues I thought I'd best buy some which meant I had
to head down to the local market where amongst the fruit the vegetables loads of quantities of shirts
and general holiday knickknacks I strayed across the hardware store and on this stall we can find
a fascinating selection of electrical items from those ever popular multi plugs through
to socket outlets USB leads and even a Nike hat sadly they didn't have the soccer outlets I was
looking for and actually looking around it seems like they didn't even care about using sockets and
plugs at all so I had to head off down to the DIY store inside all good DIY stores there's always a
fascinating range of MCBs and consumer units for the DIY professional and eventually alongside
an extension of a range of wiring accessories I found that Universal socket outlets I was looking
for well from the state of those Bermuda shorts it doesn't look as if you took the family to Scratby
for their summer holiday so where would I find the universal socket outlet so that was the island of
Mauritius Gary which is an interesting place if you look back in history it used to be a French
colony and then the British relieved them of our obligations and became part of the British Empire
and heavily influenced by India so now you bring these three cultures together what could possibly
go wrong when you take a French socket outlet an English socket outlet and yeah decide that
you want to follow your plow your own thorough should we say and you know hotels it's a big
tourist destination I've obviously decided when you're welcoming people from all over the world
you know travel adapters are a bit of a nightmare aren't they really so let's just get rid of the
travel actors make life easy for everyone go for the universal socket and we tried
something similar in Europe didn't we where we tried to standardize the socket outlet and we
know that the British three pin one should have been the socket outlet of choice I think that
was the main reason we exited the European Union wasn't it not a lot of people realized that the
thought was all this immigration and freedom and movement it was going no we didn't want to adopt
the British socket which is fantastic really well engineered lots of great safety features in there
apart from one thing if you ever stand on one of those plugs in the middle of the night it is an
excruciatingly painful process and it's because it's the only one that will lay pins up compared
to maybe it's European and American counterparts yeah so Universal socket outlets have been around
for a while actually and you'll you'll see that as first saw them in China probably going back
20 years ago it was you know the Chinese quite enterprising they always like to to solve problems
um however your problems occur when you try and adopt different electrical safety standards and
put them in because every country's socket has its own safety features but when you start mixing
together that creates the problem my first issue is the prevention of electric shock how are they
going to do that well so we've got to say the problem first so you take a French plug or a gym
but they're normally used to sort of going into a hole in the wall like their sockets are slightly
recessed but when you're trying to introduce them into what essentially is a modified British socket
you can have those exposed pins so if we pick a small child's finger which I've replicated here
with with a pencil and and plug-in and Appliance you can see it's possible to keep the appliance
completely powered and working and still have room to fit in a pencil or what could be a
small child's finger okay that's obviously not acceptable but it is with the universal socket
outlet in order that we can receive that electric shock and that would pace through again for the
American one wouldn't it it would yeah I mean yeah obviously we know American plugs are made
like chewing gum but but in this case the hot the hair dryer supplied by the hotel had The
French plug on it wow so they introduced the risk of electric shock by handing you the appliance
anyhow by handing you the appliance and obviously when you're going to be using that appliance when
you've got wet air so if you've got wet air you may have wet hands wet hands okay so with that
in mind then let's think about that Earth pin okay and whether it is needed or not how's that going
to work maybe with a French style one where we haven't got that connection to Earth maybe it's
got a class one equipment you know me Gary I go on holiday I like the tech have a look at
the local electrics I'm always armed with the Swiss army knife and uh so take the hotel iron
for instance now I did not realize until go on holiday that Black and Decker were so big in the
uh ironing department I didn't realize you could get a Black and Decker iron but apparently you
can I don't know if it's an original or not but can't see on this appliance whether it's class
one or class two can't see that double insulated symbol um so I thought I'd best take the plug off
okay and when you did reveal the plug there was a connection to our that connection to Earth wasn't
replicated by the universal socket coming through was it yeah so that again is the problem now if
you look at a French a French plug their Earth pin sticks out from the socket and goes into the
plug where the German plug has uh has the little the schuko plug has the little tabs on the side
um French and German clocks tend to work together and then so you'll always get an
earth connection however when you're trying to put that into the universal socket there's no way of
getting the Earth connection and that's not a problem that's going to be initially there is
it because obviously it's powered up you've got your Black and Decker working okay even if it is
an iron and it's only when there is a fault that obviously to the casing that we may discover the
fact that the Earth connection hasn't made its way from the universal socket to the actual appliance
itself yeah and that's yeah you become the fault path which is uh what was it was an interesting
situation again you're on holiday you're probably going to be uh you're in the hotel room next to
the bathroom you probably might not have anything on your feet you can form a pretty effective
path to Earth you'd certainly know wouldn't you you would know about it and and yeah and again
that's a problem you have these universal sockets people can buy appliances from all over the world
and unless you're aware of these things that we all get obsessed about you wouldn't know
until it's too late you also suggested you nearly burnt the hotel down how did you manage that well
not once going nearly twice because you come out and they said it's that smell it's it's a melting
plug and I think that's that with the contacts in these sockets which is why I thought I best popped
out of the local market to get them and a big thanks to Alex my new dive buddy uh in Mauritius
because he tipped me off that these Legrand ones were available at the uh the DIY store okay let's
let's address it now because I'm sure you spotted it like I've just spotted it when you're at the
market I saw a Unilite socket out there why didn't we buy that a brand we're very familiar with in
the UK big big brand there breaking news Unilite move into sockets now I did ask if they were on
sale and apparently the lady down at the store there says no absolutely not which is an ABS
another first I've never known a Unilite product not be on sale did you not push the old R Davis
25 to try and get a little bit of discount on them without having that either you've been teasing it
long enough let's take a look at one of these universal socket outlets okay so I picked up
two down at the DIY so the Legrand one is exactly same one that was in the hotel but we'll put that
to one side because that's that was that was the more expensive of the two what I really found was
this well-known brand Keffy that we've we've all heard of just going on the on the thing here so it
confirms to the uh relevant British standard okay so wow that's got a British standard all right
well there isn't one okay I mean you cannot buy these in Europe because it's impossible to uh CE
mark them or UKCA mark them uh it's stylish and modern well okay we'll take a view on that one
easy installation okay so easy and so I've got Wago connectors on the back no they've got the
screws and they're all in different directions so possibly not as easy as it should be a high
technology perhaps that means the neon indicator and then we've got best quality safety design
well okay and we've got down here superior series which somehow suggests to do it less than superior
series and it's a noble choice so the interesting thing it actually comes with a 14 year guarantee
oh yeah that number that we always round up to with guarantees and at fortunately precise so a
quick flip on the back here uh safety instruction in close I can't see one uh this product should
only be installed by an electrically competent person that's not the debate on competency let's
get it open but I'd suggested if you were competent you probably wouldn't be fitting
one of these because you'd appreciate the problems so let's have a little look
so there's the device there getting close there so these ones actually you do find them even this has
got safety shutters which you do need two pins to go in to open them up you'd find versions
that have actually no shutter but again there's no standard so there's nobody setting about how
they should operate so when trying to do this Big Clive starters you recently appeared well
you're headlight did for your Tesla on his channel didn't it Gordon yeah I was good of
Clive to do that let's have a little look here so I've asked Ricky's just drilled off the the
rivets that hold the the Earth bar onto the fixing screws uh interesting is it 16 amps
a 250 volts AC or is it 13 amps okay well it definitely is BS1363 not that's labeled on the
back of that so with these screws out then and prevent uh obviously burning or cutting your
fingers and all those lovely words that Clive says when he's unassembling stuff this could be
like I actually like the coiled spring in here you never know what you're going to get look out for
flying out objects I would suggest so here we go so we lift it off yeah so I'm gonna suggest
hold on there's a design for assembly there's a little clip there
there's another screw underneath ah a little secret screw wheel like a little secret screw
there so I guess the four oh I can hear I can hear something's already gone moving its way out yeah
oh there's the shutter gone so there we go not too bad that was the switch elements gone so
there's the safety shutter that's the first thing so so yeah interesting there's our neon indicator
and the switch has dropped out so it's only single pole okay
um it's least of its problems I would suggest yeah so here's the actual pins themselves and we're
probably more interested in these ones here so I've taken the pin out of our 13 amp plug just so
we can see what this contact looks like so you can see if you push it in there it is quite springy so
it does allow for different contacts but if we compare it to what we'd find in a regular 13 amp
only socket so I've taken this one here this MK base that we've looked at before and here's the
contact there so you can see there just look at the difference in the contact area massive yes
lots of surface area connecting against that pin compared to the universal one yeah and the spring
sort of pushing it against that flat contact so hopefully we've got a reasonable contact there
to be fair I did also look at the Legrand one which actually had a spring inside it to keep a
sort of slightly higher force however before I took the cover off it also managed to break it
some I managed to double over one of the contacts there and it was up with a 13 amp British plug-in
was it could have been putting anything in here but again even even when I've done that it's
still possible to insert various plugs into it oh wow was it even broken yeah with it broken so
you know that could happen if you you guess here people could be putting anything in there you ping
the spring bend the contact over but yeah I think that's the problem here over time these uh with uh
you know different diameter pins and shapes of pins it forces the contacts off on this design
and you get a bad contact and then when you're using with a high current appliance create a load
of heat and it melts the outer obviously looks like increase the resistance and yeah that's
our sleeve pin melted absolutely shocked three reasons why that socket could be an absolute
disaster the other thing that shocking are those legs and I'd suggest you move on to this
video about AFDDs and why there could be a great idea in hotel applications as quickly as you can