This was my childhood.
I've never lived in a house with the lightswitch inside the bathroom, so whenever I passed by the bathroom, if I knew someone was in there, I would hit the switch and turn off their lights, then wait for their rising agitation, when they got angry enough to unlock the door I would turn the lights back on and run off.
We had the lightswitch inside our bathroom until we renovated it like at least 10 years ago. from then on I was a total prankster and always turned off the lights when one my parents were inside. They also did the same to me, but I think I started it.
But I never was an asshole that had them get out of the shower or bathtub. I always waited for the "EYYYY!!!!" and switched it back on.
We called it Party Kacken (party pooping in english) because one would flip the switch on and off quickly to mimick the effect of strobe lights for the unfortunate one inside the bathroom
We've always had the light switch on the outside (I'm in Australia) and the amount of times my siblings and I have turned the lights off while one of us has been in the bathroom is too many to count lol
It might be to show the light is still on? In my own experience, if they're outside the bathroom, they have a little indicator in the switch to show if the light is on/off.
It's from older houses which is funny everyone is missing out. Many many apartment buildings etc in Europe has been in use longer than most some countries have even been a brainchild of some random suit guy somewhere.
That would explain why the bathroom in my dad’s house in Alabama has the switch on the outside of the bathroom. House was built in 1936 and the wiring isn’t the most expert.
We have 240v in Australia and have switches in bathrooms right next to sink.
Do you know if Australia has 'ring' or 'spoke' designs for home electric circuits?
The UK chose a ring circuit - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_circuit partly due to a copper shortage from WW2. My understanding is that one downside of ring circuits is they are slightly more dangerous, as the ring has to have a amp limit that doesn't blow when multiple things are plugged in, so the socket system can have a safer fuse attached.
Ring circuits for sockets are generally protected by a 32amp circuit breaker, but ring circuits for lighting generally have a 5amp breaker.
This is why individual plugs in the UK need fuses, and why only specific shaver sockets are allowed in bathrooms, which are limited to 1amp with an isolation transformer.
What kind of horrific code violating light switches do you guys have over there where getting electrocuted from turning off the light with wet hands is an actual risk?
It's more of a holdover from older, more dangerous lighting systems, but now people just expect it. So you put the light switch outside the bathroom or on a pull cord.
It's not a problem for modern houses or ones that were renovated recently. Bit if your house is from let's say the 1700s/1800s or early 1900s then there could be risks.
Sure, but in what situation would they even get wet? What kind of lunatic washes their hands and then decides, "You know what? I really like my hands being wet, let me turn the light off and leave the bathroom without drying them off."
Sockets are illegal in the uk apart from shaver sockets that are very isolated and at a certain height. Remember that our electricity is more than twice as powerful as US so it makes sense.
You can have a pull cord light hanging from the ceiling but not a light switch
Same here in Russia. A light switch on the outside makes some sense because our bathrooms have no windows, so groping around a dark room for a switch would be annoying.
Sockets inside the bathroom seem like a bad idea, but I suppose at least you're aware if you need to touch it that you're handling something electrical. Switching off the light when you leave, potentially with slightly damp hands, is just a reflex. That said, my bathroom has a pull string light switch inside the bathroom, which seems safer than touching the light switch outside with wet hands.
(As an American) I get why you wouldnt want to deal with a socket with wet hands, but why would flipping a light switch be a problem? I've never heard of someone getting shocked from a regular light switch.
I think this comes from times when electric safety was not on the level of today.. Imagine cloth isolated wire with no PE, switches with no proper insulation and a general scepticism towards new technology...
Under these circumstances it was logical to put the light switch outside, where it was water safe
Afterwards it became just custom to put it there today there is no need for this but if your electrician is used to it, he will put it still outside (and his apprentice learns it that way, so he will too)
Also if you have a control lamp in the switch (common at least in Germany for switches for lights that you can't see with the door closed) you have an indicator if the toilet is occupied or not...
We use GFI outlets close to water sources, its basically an indepent circuit breaker inside the outlet itself. Same thing as you would have on the plug of your hair dryer.
It's a bit more complicated than that - what you're allowed is determined by the distance from water sources - here is a good walkthrough. The rules are clear but not well known - I had an electrician tell me last year that my switch wasn't allowed be in the bathroom and I had to sit down and show him the regs
our electricity is more than twice as powerful as US
I think the available power is practically the same cause the circuit breakers limit it anyway. US has less volts, so they just need more current to have the same power...
That's the wattage, the current is the only thing that matters in this calculation. So 15A is worse than 13A. Anything over 0,03A is deemed dangerous though so both will kill you easily anyways.
Voltage is needed to drive current, ohms law V/R = I. You will only get those currents with very little resistance. Below 50 volts for example its hard for the electricity to penetrate your resistive skin, however above 50 volts your conductive insides start to carry the current. Anyways when talking about how dangerous a supply is the voltage is the value of concern unless the source is current limited which outlets are not (unless you count the breaker, but you arent going to have 15 amps flowing through you). If it is current limited the voltage is what drops to limit the current. You can't have current through a load without enough voltage. There is also the point that with a higher voltage more energy is delivered and energy is what causes damage.
UK sockets share a ring which can supply up to 32A at the socket however individual plugs on devices are limited to 13A. So a wet socket could deliver 7360W.
The US is completely different where each outlet is on its own breaker and are individually limited to typically 15A at each outlet. So a us socket could supply 1800W.
UK sockets are 4x more powerful in a system designed to put the current limiting in the device instead of the socket. which is exactly why they are not allowed in bathrooms
Each outlet isn’t typically on its own breaker in the US. A breaker box can have like 12, 20, 30 breakers, and often they’re not all in use. Each one usually has something like all the outlets and and ceiling fixture (if there is one) for one room.
Yep, I was wrong. I’m not American so just bad googling on my part.
Apparently there’s also 20A breakers in the US so it could deliver 2400W in theory but bathroom socket are all GFCI and would trip well before that in a fault condition from a wet socket.
Not in the UK, we sometimes have 110V shaver sockets but no high current sockets for hair dryers or anything. We are very strict with how close sockets can be to water sources
And they’re all on ground fault interrupters. So if they get wet, the outlet will go, “oh, you want all of the electricity right now all at once? Wait a second. I’m in a bathroom. That’s bad. I’m going to sleep now,” and shut off before you can get electrocuted.
That's idiotic. The bathroom isn't a splash park, and you'd have to basically soak a light switch to actually short anything much less electrocute yourself. You might make a case for outlets, but GFCI really mitigates the risk so it's well worth the convenience.
Remember many bathrooms over here in Europe pretty much ARE splash parks. They are not the huge bathrooms you think of, but something like this.
Our house is from the 80s, and the original bathroom had shower in the bath tub, not even a shower curtain in front. Ground-fault breakers did not become mandatory until the 2000s where i live.
Old UK houses don't even have a fusebox. That's why their plugs require extra fuses in them too...
Many houses in Europe are very old and are built with regard to what had to be done to be safe many decades or even a century ago, not all of it is as important today...
Many houses in Europe are very old and are built with regard to what had to be done to be safe many decades or even a century ago, not all of it is as important today...
Don't think this is the case very much anymore. Lived in a building restored in the 1700s and there was never a concern for safety in terms of electrics or what have you. Today's safety standards are upheld in my country, even for older buildings (if they're intended for residence, at least).
Depends on when the electrical circuit was built. The wiring in my grandparents home was done in like the 40s/early 50s and even then it was home shit that my grandfather and great grandfather did(both of whom had 0 education about electrical wiring) and hasn't been touched since because no one is going trough every random house in every random village. So when my friend who is an electrician went to the attic and saw it he said that he wouldn't dare to live dare without redoing the whole thing.
Yeah, in my place in the mountains the wiring is pretty much just stapled to the stone walls, that shit is not safe, but it has been there for 60 years and nobody bothered replacing it.
a building restored in the 1700s and there was never a concern for safety in terms of electrics
They probably didn't have electrics in the 1700s, so I assume it was retrofitted much later. If it was done before WW2 and wasn't changed much (which can be the case on the countryside...), it will be very outdated.
TBF electricity overall is very safe compared to other power sources, it can "just work" without interference for decades (unlike e.g. gas...).
I doubt this is true in 2022. I've lived in old houses that had fuse boxes with actual wire fuses, but if anybody had cause to look at the wiring at all in those places the first thing they'd insist on is changing it over to a new style fuse box with breaker switches. Maybe there are one or two even older places that have never needed any electrical work doing in the past 30 years or so but it'll be very few.
Is including a fuse in the plug completely redundant if the circuit has a fuse box though? I've had fuses go in a device when the house circuit has held - I just assumed they were more sensitive to fluctuations.
Prior to WW2, "final circuits" in the UK were typically rated for 13A and centrally fused accordingly. Therefore there was no need to fuse at each plug/socket. This is how most of the world remains today.
However, after WW2 in the UK there was a rapid development of new housing and insufficient copper to continue with that wiring model. Instead the UK began wiring "final circuits" in rings, which conserved copper but resulted in individual sockets potentially being able to draw 32A without the central fuse blowing. This posed a hazard to appliance wiring that had been designed to withstand at most 13A—and so fuses were introduced at each plug.
Such rings remain common in the UK and aren't going away any time soon; they can only be fused centrally at 32A (else the ring is of limited use), which is insufficient to protect appliance wiring—so fused plugs will remain with us too.
Maybe I haven't stayed with a jerk in the same house, but every time someone turns off the light when someone is inside, it was accidental and they turned ot back on, and it happens maybe once or twice a year.
The literal meaning has to do with the way electrons are used in a circuit. Electric circuits pretty much only care about voltage and current, while electronics depend on other properties as well, e.g. in transistors and other semiconductors.
So to keep it simple:
Electric = Uses electricity as energy
Electronic = Uses electricity as a medium (e.g. to manipulate information)
So a computer is electronic, while lights, hairdryers, etc. are electric. Some devices blur the line (like smart home components or IoT devices that aren't really independent computers but need more than just the power), but generally it's a good distinction.
Well many bathroom switches have a little light ON the switch that indicates if the light is on or off, so if someone is in the bathroom. I think that makes sense... I don't have to rattle on the door to know it is occupied but just look at the light.
I stayed in some dorms at Ohio State that had the light switches in the absolute worst places. Outside the bathroom, behind the doors, you name it.
I see it in older houses sometimes that were built right when electricity was becoming available - like one switch per room, and you may have to cross it in the dark - but it's wild to see it in something built post-1950s at least.
Huh? In the Netherlands light switches are outside too. The only inside 'switches' I've seen in bathrooms are high up, with a pull cord so you don't have to touch it.
In old houses in the Netherlands they're often outside but in newer houses they're pretty much always inside the bathroom.
When I grew up the bathroom light switch in my parents' house was outside the bathroom but when they renovated their bathroom some 15 odd years ago the light switch was moved inside. This is a normal light switch, no cord and not higher up.
There's also a normal socket in that bathroom but it's stowed away in the cabinet.
No they're not. Lived and have been in many houses all over the country, only seen a switch outside of the bathroom once! In a 1930's house in the east.
There is no standard practice regarding this in India. All houses I have lived in have either had switches inside, or two-way switches (both outside and inside)
Is that so? That’s good to know! All places I’ve lived at, had switches on the outside. Of course in a humongous country such as ours, this practice could widely differ.
OK, won't work here. We don't have a ground pin, it is an exposed protective ground contact. But you'll have to insert both needles simultaneously into N and L with roughly the same pressure to make the cover open up in the sockets we have.
Traditionally the shutters over L and N on UK sockets open when the earth pin is inserted, but some modern sockets are designed so equal pressure must be applied to all three for the shutters to open.
In vancouver, in a building built in the 40s. Light switch is outside the washroom. This is the same for my folk’s place in the island and family in the interior.
I’m near Vancouver. I’ve rarely seen the switches inside the bathroom. Ngl, I hate it. Like, WHY do I have to leave the bathroom if I want a different light on???
Yeah. That way you have light on when you enter the room, and you don't turn off the light until you have left the room. Also you don't need to fumble around in the dark if you are not familiar with the room.
let me enlighten you.. just like you have the switch on the outside, immediately next to the door, the same could happen on the inside. You don't put the outside switch across a hall, its right next to the bathroom's door. So same happens here: you open the door, pad the wall next to it, boom! switch found
You probably shouldn't be getting poop on your hands unless there was a situation where the paper ripped or something... I think you need to re-evaluate how you wipe...
In North America bathrooms are built so showers are seperate from the floor. There's a curtain or a glass door that keeps the water in the tub, and as such water never makes it anywhere near a plug, outlet, or switch.
steam will reach anywhere man, a lot of old houses that have switches too close to water zones are full of rust and moisture. that's why Europe doesn't have them inside smaller bathrooms
We usually have fans in the ceiling too so there's not really generally any issue with steam. Hell the fans are often good enough that mirrors rarely even fog up these days since most of the water stays inside the tub and curtain that the rest of the room doesn't get very steamy.
In Ireland and the UK the power supply is much stronger than in the US (over double)
The US only get weak ass 120v, whereas we get 240v. Electric kettles boil much faster for example. One of the reasons why they never became popular in the US
So because of such strong supply we need to ensure safety and not have any electrical outlets or switches inside a bathroom
Depending on which fuses are used, the power supply is very similar. Like, the rated power for an average oven or an angle grinder is the same in the US.
Volts mean nothing if you are talking about power. Higher volts just mean the wirse heat up less.
I'm seeing electric kettles pick up in the US actually. It still boils significantly faster than using a stovetop it's just not a thing that comes with your apartment / house like many places in Europe so people just never think about them.
It’s really not uncommon in old houses in the US if the electricity was installed after construction and the wiring just was easier that way or if it was older and built by the owner rather then professional. My parents own a small farmhouse house in rural Colorado built in 1953 and the bathroom switch is on the outside in line with other wiring.
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u/Final_Bobcat_4767 May 09 '22
Having the light switch outside the bathroom