today we're looking at a new range of wiring accessories from MK it's the base range
it's all about MK Base MK Base no treble
no talent when it comes to your singing Gary but uh moving swiftly on
why have MK decided to launch this budget range of wiring accessories contractors probably fall into
two camps uh one contractor that uses the MK range probably loves that MK logic range but of course
they're getting squeezed on price and therefore the base range is there for them and ones that
have never used them before and now this base range opens up for options for them all right yeah
yes MK deep heritage in wiring accessories Gary can even remember when wiring accessories were
colored brown well MK had been going 100 years and you had a ticket for the opening day of the
event that they launched on well as we bicker about our age possibly we should take a deeper
look at this range and this in this video we're going to look at just the double socket because
that's where a lot of contractors base their pricing decisions everyone knows the price of
milk and bread in a supermarket and we think it's the same for sockets everyone knows what they pay
and we're probably going to compare and contrast that with some other budget choices out there
so should we have a closer look at what we've got in front of us Gary here's our MK
base double socket what i would say first off Gary it doesn't actually look like
a budget socket does it no it doesn't a quick glance you'd probably think that was the MK
logic one wouldn't you yeah so it's a very uh rounded design that's popular and very
positive action on the rocker switches themselves which i like that i'll just do compare that with
yeah possibly something that i would say it does look like a budget socket yeah a little bit square
that one is isn't it yeah square and if i go into the rockers yeah you can see we've got uh
rocky rockers and i'd say that just just feels a little bit flimsy and that was reflected even when
i took this uh MK base one to bits we'd like to do that at eFIXX great to see it didn't actually
just fall apart as soon as you take the screws out everything stayed where it should be and again we
can see that positive action on the rocker there double pole switch you can see in this version
it has a great feel to it those big terminals i'm sure you like yeah i do so when you drop
this one over you can see we've got our backed out screws i do love to double my terminations
over into a socket outlet and i do love the fact that we've got two CPC connections so i can split
those as well plenty of room already backed out in order to get my terminations into that
socket outlet yeah and a sensible layout as well they're not quite fully in line
but they're all at the top of the socket they're all you can imagine that's quite easy to wire
into regardless of where you're coming in from a wiring position and then compare that with its uh
yeah alternative here you can see the terminals are all over the place yeah i do not like the
position of the neutral always find them tricky to get our conductors in and get them tight and
we have only one CPC connection so no chance of splitting it either yeah so subtle differences
for me that's not so subtle those backed out screws i think make a big difference Gordon
well he may be right Gary well we know we like erase on eFIXX and uh it's all right Gary i'll
help you out on this one i've already won because these are backed out but uh i'll press the start
button for you get your screwdriver at the ready right okay this is right within my comfort zone
this is a screws and a big screwdriver well i don't want to slip out those screw heads i
reckon about 12 seconds i'll have this done well we're getting on well i don't know the ones at the
bottom creaking away there let's see 12 seconds gone you're halfway through not quite and it's a
little bit more tricky than you think can it have to get slower as the day goes on or faster i tend
to get a little bit slower so i slipped off that one i'm nearly there now how does that work and
this is you racing 23 seconds i surprised myself there on how long it took me to do that yeah while
you were doing that at a leisurely pace Gary i worked out the cost implications of that if you're
charging out of 25 pounds an hour that's costing you 40 pence in labor for every three sockets
you fit that is surprising and what's really nice about this range is the majority of the range is
already backed off and they're all captive because we've had that other problem and we we undo a
screw that isn't captive a little bit too far it pops out and then we're scrambling around we'll
put that one back no need for a calculation on that one yeah i think you just replaced the socket
yeah because it's gone under the floor and you've lost it uh another great feature about this range
now we're just looking at sockets at the moment i will put a link to the rest of the range we've
looked at in another video and also this dimmer switch which has one fantastic feature that we
haven't seen on any other dimmer switch that we've looked at on the channel before so check out that
video but we talked about how far this faceplate stick out on a socket Gary the first thing
obviously fits comfortably in a 25 millimetre back box okay yeah but then when you use it with
other items from the range fuse spurs even all the way up to your 45 amp double pole switch
that projection is constant across the range and that's usually noticeable in the kitchen isn't it
when you start looking at electrical accessories in there and from all to finish exactly the same
place nice touch yeah well and then one other thing you will notice on here is screw caps now
that is a bit of a bit of a love hate relationships a lot of electricians have
with screw caps but bare with me on this one when we start to think about another advantage of this
range and its antibacterial properties okay antibacterial explain a little bit more for me
okay so the sockets are made out of urea right yep and have been for a long time like the rest of
them in the logic plus range as well urea itself is has antibacterial antiviral all in itself so if
you if this is insane healthcare or an education environment or somewhere where there's possibly
vulnerable people all these challenging times are in as well yeah that naturally the product
will sort of disinfect or kill bacteria and you're thinking all those scary ones you always
mentioned the E. coli that uh obviously the challenging times we're living in at the moment
yeah in a in a short space of time you know 99.99 or 99.98 depending on the particular
nasty you're looking at will be killed by the socket and that comes back to the screw caps
then so by putting those screw caps in we haven't got that little indent that be a weaker point for
these viruses yeah or something or it's a bit a little bit difficult you know other
things could build up in the gap where the screw caps are um so say urea it's not new in terms of
socket sockets have been made out of them for years and MK have been making sockets for years
however MK have extensively tested these a lot of people are sort of piggybacking off um off their
longevity in these markets particularly healthcare education things like that so that is another
reason to use these screw caps to come back to that there is an easy way to get them off
Gary isn't there there is there's a couple of ways we've done the video before we use blue
tac in order to pull them off and that works a treat and also duct tape that nice sticky duct
tape just give it a roll and they're off and if you think about rental properties maybe
having those screw caps on may be giving you an indication whether maybe the person the tenants
had a little dibble inside that electrical accessory as well yeah unless they've seen
this video and obviously picked up that top tip on how to remove them but yeah personally it was me
i like the screw caps i think they give cleaner looking lines in a property um we've touched on
the base double socket obviously in the range as well we can have ones with neon indicators
as well which again we'll come back to our now next video where we go deeper into the range
but we couldn't leave without the other populates almost as popular
as the base double socket now is the USB socket now what i do like about this is the way
it's sort of manufactured to fit in with the range you can see where the USB element fits in on there
it's just yeah just drops in yeah so they're using the same frame for both of those socket outlets i
like that nice little touch yeah so this is 5 volt 2.4 amps shared across the outlets so obviously
that depends on the type of device they're using in terms of the charge rate to get but
again a great addition for what is a budget range yeah and if we now go for those screw terminations
because i know myself i'm a little bit aggressive when i like to do my terminations i've broke a few
heads in my time let's put it to a little bit of a talk test and see the budget one versus the base
one and see what happens then so i've set my Wiha torque screwdriver to 2.6 newton meters of torque
okay just for a frame of reference that's similar to what you'd find on a lot of main switch
terminals within a consumer unit so pretty tight yeah it is tight so let's watch what happens
to the termination in the back of this economy socket as it's trying to get to 2.6 newton meters
oh it's gone yeah it's gotten a twist yeah it's getting there it does get there but obviously
it's now no longer seated nicely in its position that originally was in okay well let's uh just
see what happens when we repeat that process with the MK base so same torque setting yeah
and it sits lovely the screwdriver head on here it clicks straight through but watch the termination
and see if it actually moves at all so there we go as we tighten it down is that moving to you
the MK base socket there really impressed me ate 2.6 newton meters of torque it's
lesser counterpart over here we saw the terminal twisting and in a couple of practice attempts i
lost the head on the screw as well yeah that's always the excuse that Gary comes up with but i
think actually what we're saying there is that that echoes the quality that we see across this
range that look and feel all those are the features and benefits but let's not forget
MK's heritage 100 years making sockets they back this with a 20 yeah guarantee and let's remember
a lot of people who make sockets haven't been making them for 20 years so just to get
the level of confidence in there and i think this is a great opportunity for contractors to
step up to MK if you're not familiar with the brand and you haven't used it before
check out our next video where we'll look at the depth of range and some of the other great
features you can offer to customers in your electrical installations but as always we're
interested in your comments and your feedback are you currently using the MK base range and
you want to mention a gem within that range for the community were you not aware of this range and
you're going to go away and start investigating your electrical wholesaler to see if you can start
installing it please leave all your comments below and we'll get back to as many as we can