As long time readers may recall, we prefer American plugs to British ones. One thing I am less sure about is the relationship between power sockets and what I think of as light switches. I know they don’t need to exclusively be used to turn lights on, but they are most frequently used for this.
Several of ours seem to turn power sockets on and off. British sockets can be turned off, but the part to turn them off is right on the socket fitting itself, so it’s very obvious which switch turns it off.
We actually still have several switches that we don’t know what they do. We noticed this in a few other places on our travels as well, so I wondered if this was a more general American thing I happened to not grow up with. As a result, I’m also not 100% sure what the point is. There may be a great one, but mostly I have just found it a bit annoying as I keep turning things I’ve plugged in off when I don’t want them off.
Check out the video to see if you can resolve my questions:
I think the purpose of wiring it like that is so that you can plug table lamps into the sockets and control them using the light switch. Then you can avoid walking across the room in the dark when you go to bed.
It is occasionally done like that in British wiring too, except that usually a particular kind of socket is fitted that’s normally used only for lighting. (Specifically, either the 2 or 5 amp variant of BS 546.) This is both an advantage and a disadvantage over using a normal plug!
It is unusual to see such an arrangement in British homes, but it’s sometimes seen in hotels and restaurants if there are lots of table lamps that all need to be turned on and off at the same time.