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Q: Unplug everything or
not? Ever noticed how Chinese folks like to unplug just about everything when they are not actively using it at that moment? I can't ever remember doing that in the States. I've found myself doing it a little bit more and more in my apartment now too. Like unplugging the tooth-brush charger, unplugging my back massager, unplugging the phone charger, etc.
So, what I was wondering is kinda a three-part question -
1. Do you unplug things too?
2. Have you seen it as common practice in other countries?
3. Why do it ?
I can't say I've seen it anywhere else but when you think of the state of the wiring in some buildings and the quality of some appliances it's probably not a terrible idea.
I've had a few appliances start smoking and melting and woke up (luckily - it could have been bad)with my bedroom full of smoke once,
I'm surprised house fires aren't more common. Maybe it's due to the fact that everyone unplugs stuff.
diverdude1:
yeah, I figured the main reasoning behind it was to prevent electrical fires. That's the only reason I did it too. And now after reading your comment it looks like I will be doing it even more.
dom87:
the main reason why fires are not very common in china is, because they have little burnable material in the house.
Their furnishing is usually very little and the walls are pure concrete with some poisonous paint that can't burn.
In the west it is usually the decoration that catching and spreading the fires
I can't say I've seen it anywhere else but when you think of the state of the wiring in some buildings and the quality of some appliances it's probably not a terrible idea.
I've had a few appliances start smoking and melting and woke up (luckily - it could have been bad)with my bedroom full of smoke once,
I'm surprised house fires aren't more common. Maybe it's due to the fact that everyone unplugs stuff.
diverdude1:
yeah, I figured the main reasoning behind it was to prevent electrical fires. That's the only reason I did it too. And now after reading your comment it looks like I will be doing it even more.
dom87:
the main reason why fires are not very common in china is, because they have little burnable material in the house.
Their furnishing is usually very little and the walls are pure concrete with some poisonous paint that can't burn.
In the west it is usually the decoration that catching and spreading the fires
There are savings to be made on the power bill . However from personal experience i found that appliances that have a stand by mode don't live as long.
And so while I still yell at the kids to turn the lights off in rooms that they leave i gave up on shutting down everything at bed time.
NOTE
Phone chargers can catch fire more than any other appliance
diverdude1:
re: phone charger - do you think pressing the little on/off button on the power strip counts?
I don't reckon it's a safety issue. When have you known a Chinese person to consider safety or consequences over convenience?
It's economic. Devices left in standby or even simply plugged in. It's about saving a few mao.
With my wife's OCD....a place for everything and everything in its place...everything except the major appliances is packed in its place, taken out for use and returned. It's like magic.
earthizen:
Yup, it is about saving a few maos (cents). Same thing with many Indians who even dilute dishwashing detergent to 0.000000nth at home while cheating and scaming you 99999999X fabricated lies.
1 & 2, both negative.
Unplugging devices is an old habit deeply ingrained in prc, having a TV is once considered a status symbol but also a dangerous thing because jealous neighbors will for sure spin a dozen of accusations up to frame your entire family for anything from being materialistic, capitalistic, vane, to a worshiper of western imperialists and evil laowai ......oh, perverted creativity they have plenty, all the time, never dies.
There are two primary reasons for unplugging your precious, also evil, western goodies.
1. Save a few maos of electricity.
2. Unstable power supply, not just voltage, no, but blackouts almost everyday. If you leave it on, the power surge when the electricity is back on can fry the circuits of that evil western radio, that gift from your unfortunate cousin who is born and live in the evil West, who smuggled it into prc.
Very healthy mass consciousness / psyche, isn't it? Wanna taste it real life? Go live in North Korea, the heaven on earth according to three generations of Fat Kims. Same deal. LOL.
i just had an incident returning from London at my Chinese apartment. the hot water heater flipped the breaker on the fuse box and would not reset., the maintenance staff said the wires get lose from heat and he tighten all the screws and changed a switch and everything was fine on my 4 year old home.
Except, I have never had a switch go bad or wires become lose on a fuse box in any home i have ever lived in for my entire life.
I have installed fuse boxes without a qualified electricians license in rental properties that i have owned and never had a problem for 20 years on some property.
I dont know the answer but something stinks about quality for anything in China.
hope you folks did not miss me too badly, had some bangers and mash on world gin day in lymie town. back to hell on earth again.
ambivalentmace:
my biggest complaint would be hardly any outlets in a new home.
i actually visited a new home construction site that had one plug outlet for the living rooms, yes one plug for your tv and power strips for lamps and everything else you might want in your living room. if the kids trip over the wires, well they can eat noodles off the floor that they spill. no problem.
2 outlets for the kitchen should be enough, yeah right.
so you get no outlets and barely enough power output for the fuses to use them after you overload the limited outlets with power strips for what you really need to use. Gee, i wonder why there is a problem with wiring.
dom87:
my living room has about 16 !!!! light switches for 8 different kinds of lights they installed, but ohne 2 sockets areas. Of course one of them is behind the tv (hardly accessible and the other one is behind the couch (same problem) lol
@ambi Hi, glad to hear from you. I use extension cable and power bars to solve that problem, not perfect obviously but better than done. Another gadget I have used for decades is a clean power supply, definitely worth the money. Huge improvements in TV picture quality (from 2D to 3D, that kind of leap), I plug all my sensitive electrical gadgets into it. They even have a landline phone jacket which I plug my landline into, result is everyone thinks I use a B & O phone when it is a cheapo panasonic (made in japan though). lol
Peace of mind. Thunderstorms? No big deal. There is also a trick I use, if the bar runs out of sockets, buy an ordinary bar and plug it into the Monster. No salesman of theirs would tell you that, needless to say. Here is the link. http://www.monsterproducts.com/collections/power
dom87:
while it is a nice approach to plug 500 devices into a power bar which is just connected to 1 socket, you might not want to do that.
What normaly can go wrong is that the fuse will trigger fast, but then again you are in china and it is more likely that your power bar will start to burn or your fuse box
earthizen:
True, I only plug in low power consumption gadgets, like TV, computer, mobile chargers....etc into the those bars. No way I would plug a heater or hairdryer into that, no need anyway because there really is nothing to gain.
I do it to lower the risk of house fires.
I don't trust the quality of craftsmanship here. Especially since my "new" apartment in Beijing was losing power every day for the first 2 months I lived there simply because we turned on the blender and the tv at the same time.
Turns out they had 4 apartments on the same crappy fuse.
After watching that fire yesterday in London, my wife and bought all new electrical cords and adapters to replace our 5 year old ones and yes we think its best to unplug given the heat here in Shenzhen and the danger which is very clear now.
All the electrical equipment is China made. That should answer your question.
