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Proper switch possission
- Thread starter chris
- Start date
Ken Ellis
Donation Time
Your father is correct. Up is on, down is off. Just look at the wall switches in your house. Look at the switch on your tablesaw. The National Electrical Code, and every quality piece of electrical equipment has the switches oriented to where up is -- oh, wait a minute. Lucas. Sorry. Up is off. Sometimes down is off, too, but it's supposed to be on.
Ken
Ken
Quoting directly from the SV owners manual :
"Combined Side and Headlamp Switch:
The switch is pressed down to the halfway position to switch on the side and tail lamps, and fully down to switch on the headlamps"
Yes, this is backwards from normal US convention. I am 99% sure that house light switches in the UK are similarly "upsde down" compared to US convention. I think I read once that it was done as a safety concept: that even if someone fell down - maybe due to an electrical fault- they could more likely turn the switch OFF if they needed only to push it UP and thus OFF. YOu could use a stick or shoe or some such aid and get the switch turned off. Much harder to push the switch down while somewhat disabled.
Not sure how valid this concept is , but I am 100% sure about Alpine panel switces.
Tom
"Combined Side and Headlamp Switch:
The switch is pressed down to the halfway position to switch on the side and tail lamps, and fully down to switch on the headlamps"
Yes, this is backwards from normal US convention. I am 99% sure that house light switches in the UK are similarly "upsde down" compared to US convention. I think I read once that it was done as a safety concept: that even if someone fell down - maybe due to an electrical fault- they could more likely turn the switch OFF if they needed only to push it UP and thus OFF. YOu could use a stick or shoe or some such aid and get the switch turned off. Much harder to push the switch down while somewhat disabled.
Not sure how valid this concept is , but I am 100% sure about Alpine panel switces.
Tom
chris
Donation Time
Thanks guys. My Dad is a retried electrician. I'm sure he thinks cars are wired like houses.
If Lucas took anything from the National Electrical Code it would explains a lot about their systems. At least Lucas doesn't tell you to see page 1118, table 17, graph 6G.257 to tell you that you are looking for a red wire.
sunbeammadd
Donation Time
In Australian houses up is off and down is on. I can't recall ever being confused by UK light switches so I'd say Tom is probably correct in thinking UK houses are the same.
Nickodell
Donation Time
When we immigrated to the USA in 1969 it took us close to 6 months to "unlearn" 32 years of habit, and get used to the North America convention of up for on. We bought our first house in 1972 from an English couple who were returning to the UK. You guessed it - they had carefully inverted all the switches in the house to make them the same "hup for hoff, dahn for hon" they were used to. So I had the tedious job of re-inverting them all again.