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Re:Museum of Plugs and Sockets by tremon on Thursday November 25, 2021 @08:13AM (#29341067)
It isn't that trivial, as a device that should be earthed is not allowed to be sold with a Euro plug, they must have a Schuko plug. And likewise, an extension cord featuring Schuko sockets must have a Schuko plug, so there is officially no way to connect a Schuko device through a Euro plug.

The real problem is with classic sockets as shown in [1]: these are two-pin (unearthed) sockets that can accept a Schuko plug nonetheless, and are widely used even in residential newbuilds, at least in NL. I think the building code has been updated now, but it's very common here to have entire rooms where the sockets don't even have a third wire in the wall box.

[1] https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/ContEUR_part2.html

Re:Museum of Plugs and Sockets by jacquesm on Thursday November 25, 2021 @11:53AM (#29342849)
Correct, new installations are required to carry ground to all sockets, but old systems are grandfathered in with the exception that if you upgrade one of the sockets in a room to grounded you have to do it for all of them.

To get really pedantic: you are allowed to put a device that normally requires a safety ground into a non-grounded ('old style') outlet but then that circuit should have ground fault protection installed and conversely, if you have a circuit (such as for instance an oven) that does not have a ground fault protector you must use the ground.

This covers a very large percentage of all normally occurring situations, though of course there will always be tricky ones due to rare combinations of devices and installation details.

If you can play it safe: put ground fault protectors on all of your circuits except where leakage current is too high as a result of the consumers design and limit those to one consumer per circuit (dedicated circuit).

This goes double for 'wet' spaces such as bathrooms, kitchens and so on, ground really is mandatory there from a safety perspective even if the code says it isn't, so if you still have ungrounded sockets in bathroom or kitchen add a ground if there is any reasonable way of doing so.

In bathrooms the ground point can frequently be found behind the bathroom mirror over the sink. And don't be tempted to use the waterline, those are frequently made of plastic nowadays and no longer count as safety ground.

Re:Museum of Plugs and Sockets by OJFord on Thursday November 25, 2021 @08:27AM (#29341177)
Thanks for the correction, think I'm confusing [1] (memories of France ~20 years ago, and old houses then) with Schuko.