Herbert,

On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 13:59:29 -0500, Herbert Graf wrote:

> On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 17:13 +0000, Howard Winter wrote:
> > > 
> > > Interesting, where would you plug in a hair dryer?
> > 
> > In the bedroom!  My girlfriend (who is from New York) finds it annoying that she can't dry her hair in the bathroom, but it's the way we do it here.
> 
> Wow, that sucks, especially the noise factor affecting other people. At
> least in the bathroom you can close the door.

Well our bedrooms have doors too!  :-)  
 
> > When you think of it, having a heating element that is effectively exposed, with a live connection at one end, in a room that has one or more 
> > open-topped containers of water, perhaps with a person in them, really is an accident waiting to happen!  :-)
> 
> But, that's what GFCIs are for. They are VERY effective and pretty much
> eliminate this issue.

But it's an active device, which can fail - I have one which completely fails to trip when tested with its own test button, or with an external tester.  
And how often do people use the test button?  And would they stop using the socket if it failed to trip?  Human nature rather tends not to accept an 
inconvenience in a situation like this.

> I have a feeling that this "no real outlet in the bathroom" thing
> doesn't really save many people because it just results in people
> running extension cords, or putting "illegal" (and probably improperly
> installed) outlets in the bathroom.

Well no, they don't do this, they just use the bedroom, where there is often a mirror over a dressing-table, it's warm and dry.  What's so special about 
drying your hair in the bathroom?  There's nowhere to sit, it's damp, any you're stopping anyone else from using the room.  What's wrong with using 
the bedroom?
 
> And what about other places with water? No more outlets in the kitchen
> because of the water? What about outdoor outlets?

People don't often climb into the sink in a kitchen, and aren't standing there dripping wet...  but there are special rules about doing work on the 
electrics in kitchens these days (brought about when someone was killed by touching a metal rack which had been mounted with a screw going 
through a buried cable, at the same time as touching a dishwasher).  And outside sockets have a number of safeguards specified, although these are 
reasonably recent, so a lot of them don't have these safeguards in place - a former colleague of mine was killed while working on a pond, when he 
accidentally cut through a fountain-pump cable.
 
> It certainly isn't code in all of Europe, in Austria an outlet in the
> bathroom is normal fair. Of the ones I've seen, they don't have a GFCI
> per circuit, but they do have a "whole house" GFCI that covers every
> outlet inside and outside the house.

Oh, each country has its own rules (Scotland is different from England and Wales, for a start!).  Our rules aren't hard-and-fast - they tend to be of 
the "best practice" variety.  The "Wiring Regulations" say what is considered to be the right way to do things, so by complying with them you are on 
the safe side of things, but if you can show that what you have done is equally safe, you have complied with the law.  There isn't actually a ban on 
using ordinary light switches in bathrooms, but electricians don't do it because if there was a problem and they don't want to be responsible for killing 
someone, and then find every other electrician saying they wouldn't have done it that way!

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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