[retrotecchie]

@WizzyWigg @geoffers @JoeSoap

All this talk about 'old geezers'...🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

If I recall correctly, the first advert shown on commercial television in the UK was for Gibbs SR toothpaste.

[WizzyWigg]

Originally Posted by retrotecchie

@WizzyWigg @geoffers @JoeSoap

All this talk about 'old geezers'...🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

If I recall correctly, the first advert shown on commercial television in the UK was for Gibbs SR toothpaste.

You youngster 🤣🤣🤣

[meldrewreborn]

We had BBC only until colour TV (from British Relay!) came in and then we jumped to 3, then 4 then 5 channels.

My parents were bombed out in 1945 by a V2 and then lived in 3 rooms plus kitchen landing on the top floor of a terrace house. in their war damage claim (about£350!) there was not one single electrical item. Circa 1960 we moved to a post war council flat which had two fireplaces, and a gas fired copper for washing clothes. My brother had a gas water heater fitted in the kitchen. We upgraded to a twin tub, then an automatic washing machine but the first electrical item was a fridge - bought on the never never. Heating came from two paraffin heaters which did produce a huge amount of water vapour . Our bedrooms were cold but I found that a hose from mum's hair dryer routed into the bed with books on their edges making a tent like space for the heated air to circulate worked fine. One for @retrotechie: we had 3 pin plugs / sockets where each plug pin was round and the fuse was screwed into to make the live pin.

Eventually the Council fitted gas central heating around 1980, although I'd left home by then. The flats were demolished around 2000 as it was cheaper to do that and rebuild than refurbish them to modern standards. Although long promised, the upgrade of the Crittall metal windows to double glazing never happened.

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by meldrewreborn

: we had 3 pin plugs / sockets where each plug pin was round and the fuse was screwed into to make the live pin.

ours were the Bakelite "Wylex" plugs - the 13amp ones were "D" shaped with a socket in the back, so you could plug multiple plugs into each other, terminated by a 5amp one which was circular

https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Wylex1.html

[retrotecchie]

@geoffers

Happy days! They wouldn't pass muster under modern regs but they were rather convenient!

I ripped out some old style theatre lighting in a firing range a few years ago. A whole rack of six-channel Strand dimmers controlled 48 600W halogen lights, each one fed by an individual cable and terminated with a 15 round pin socket on each lighting bar and each individual light wired with a round pin plug. With all lights fully on, the setup pulled almost 30kW from a three phase distribution board..

Each light now replaced with an LED multicolour fitting running at 20W and daisy-chained off of a single 13A socket drawing a total of 1kW. I still have 48 of the plugs and sockets, plus the MK steel pattress boxes in my shed. You never know when they might come in handy!

And I pulled out over 5km of high temperature 15A rated flex between the dimmer rack and the light fittings too. Replaced with 300m of 6A standard 3 core flex! And a single 13A plug on the end.

The worst thing about the old theatre lighting was that even with all the lights apparently 'off', the dimmers used to keep the filaments barely glowing, but warm, so that they didn't suffer from shock when suddenly bringing them up to full brightness from cold. Around 5W per filament, 24/7/365 works out at 2.1 megawatt hours per year just in standby. That's about nine times my household consumption. Just to stop the bulbs blowing.

LED saves a bit of energy in a domestic setting, but on an industrial scale it really adds up. I've reduced their electricity bill by around 15% but the trade-off is that they do need a little bit more gas for the heating!

[meldrewreborn]

@retrotecchieThe problem with our plugs was the fuse as each one had one end with a special fitting on it to carry the screw thread. The local hardware shop had a captive market in these as other more distant shops didn't stock them. And they were naturally more expensive than standard fuses.

[retrotecchie]

@meldrewreborn

I remember the plugs. Me Grandad knew a fella at his local electricity board shop who did model engineering as a hobby. He turned up a bunch of solid brass 'unblowable' fuses. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I once owned a 1965 Series IIa Land Rover. The fuse box in the engine bay only had four fuses, but I'm pretty sure that was two more than Grandad's installation in his house!

Every light fixture had at least two of these...

[Beki]

Thank you all so much for your input on this thread and I love the nostalgia (you lot are really good at that, aren't you?!). @geoffers My Nanny used to call it a wireless, and in her Kilkenny accent too, it was the cutest thing.

So I've spoken to the husband and we've decided that we're going to get a log burner, but that won't be for some time yet. So we took the fireplace off the wall and had a look at what was behind. It was all set up for a gas fire (I think) behind; a copper pipe and then an electric cable on the other side and it's already got a nice shape to it with the slight arch. Hopefully, this will be an okay size for the eventual log burner.

We then bolstered out the awful brick work, and dropped the fireplace down to floor level after we'd tiled it. It's looking a lot better and the candle makes me feel like I have a fire on. I've boarded up the front, grate and top so that we don't get much draught. #WinterIsComing