safe + sound wrote:The cable used with these plugs is also rubbish. Though marked 0.75mm2 csa, when opened up 2 were 0.5mm2 and one was 0.1mm2!!!!!!!!!!!. The latter also had non standard inner core insulation colours.
I have seen a few of these el-cheapo IEC leads recently, they come with cheap PC cases from China. I have outlawed their use in the company (I am the IT Administrator, I have the power. I'm also the in-house PAT man).
In our company it's mostly circular podiums or desks pushed together with the cables tidied away on wire racks between (which are powder coated, thankfully). Nice and tidy, except when they want to play musical chairs (which happens a lot at the main office) or when we need to perform maintenance. The amount of dust and scraps of paper that falls down the middle of the podiums is rather bad, I spend half of my time just cleaning up for fear of a spontaneous dust explosion. The wiring is not too bad, it's just low power IT equipment and there are plenty of sockets, but having to work around people's working hours and in the hot area inside the middle of the podiums is not great, not to mention wearing out the knees of my nice trousers. We have three offices with between 40 - 100 computer stations each - so that's computer, monitor, 2x IEC leads, half of which seem to have 10A fuses in so they are being changed for 5A. I think I am the first PAT tester to touch most of this equipment, and all of the cables for sure.
I am doing this along side my IT Administrator job, too, so it may take some time to complete! At least it's not a kitchen I suppose.