History of Domestic Electrics

In the second half of the 1940s and the whole of the 1950s there was a huge program of house building in the United kingdom particularly in those areas where the luftwaffe had undertaken demolition contracts awarded by the German government of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Electricity was supplied to each of those new dwellings, as well as electricity supplies being extended to the great majority of the housing stock that existed at that time, however the number of household appliances that utilised electricity at that time was minimal. At the start of this period a typical household would have a gas or electric cooker, an immersion heater, a kettle which may have been electric, a radio, an electric fire and interior lighting by incandescent lamps. At the end of the period households would have in addition a television, refrigerator and washing machine. The maximum demand of a dwelling at that time was approximately 4kVA.

The means of electricity distribution within a house also saw new methods, the most important of these was the ring main, however the consumer unit had not been developed, so each circuit within a house had it's own fused switch or switch fuse. The ring main was a revolutionary development at that time and therefore deserves a full description.

Early power distribution within domestic dwellings was for a limited number of socket outlets, normally one or two in each living room and kitchen with none or very few for the bedrooms. With the advent of the ring main it enabled an unlimited number of sockets to be installed providing the area served was no more than 1000 square feet (92.9 square metres), the ring main also saw the introduction of fused plugs, this allowed the ring main to be fused at 30A with the plugs being fused (13A, 10A, 5A or 3A) to suit the appliance served. The cable for the ring main was run from the supply fused switch or switch fuse to each socket in turn and then back to the fused switch or switch fuse, the cable size used for the ring main was 7/029 which was a standard imperial size cable (number of wire strands and strand diameter in inches), it equates approximately to the modern 2.5mm² cable.