DP has just broke my dryer

Personally, I'd see whether you can get a replacement moulded plug flex fitted to the dryer by an electrician.

The tumble dryer takes one of the biggest electricity loads of any appliance. I would not want that power going through a plug I'd wired myself, in the moist environment of laundry drying.

Perhaps ask your insurer whether electrical fires or accidents are covered if you replaced the plug yourself.

Just to confirm, there is no regulation that plugs have to be of the moulded type, they can be "normal" rewireable plugs too, so long as they have been fitted to the goods before they go on sale (AKA "factory fitted"). I have noticed in recent years that most plugs are moulded now, but up until very recently it was just as common to find a rewireable plug on a new appliance as it was a moulded type.

I took this image straight off a search on Google for Argos lawn mowers 1986. An appliance with a flex supplied was a selling feature! All the garden appliances they were selling stated IF they were supplied with a flex, and usually how long it was.

Surely the whole idea of moulded plugs on new appliances being legally compulsory - not just ones that somebody at the factory had wired in by hand, as you did often see before the law changed - was precisely intended to deter people from touching plugs themselves?

It put a definite barrier there such that, if you do know what you're doing and are confident, it's no big deal to grab a pair of strong scissors and fit a new one yourself; but if you don't know what you're doing, it gives out a clear message not to dabble with it and to ask a qualified/competent person to do it for you.

Looking at mine, it has a thickened cord at the plug. I wouldn't call an electrician but I wouldn't do it myself, DH is fortunately very practical.

I didn't say it wasn't fiddly. Just that it's not difficult. In terms of the fiddliness, that part is just trial and error and keeping on going until you've mastered it.

Stripping the wire isn't difficult either.

Of course, no one knows how to do anything before they've done it. It doesn't mean those things are difficult. Just that you haven't done them before.

I managed to read the labels. My dad taught me how to do it as a child but it's not something I've had to do very often so always refer back to the label to check the correct wiring.

To be fair to the people who are incredulous about the OP's ignorance about changing a plug, she says in her second post she thought it was safe to change a wall socket but not a plug. That defies logic, one is connected to the mains supply and the other has no electricity running through it when unplugged.

Wow, thanks for the info - I don't remember that actually being the case!

Stupid, isn't it? If you're selling an appliance, sell an appliance; not 90% of an appliance.

Try and push a 3 month olds fingers into a UK socket, they won't fit!

Actually, don't try this...!!

Always.

@Topseyt123 I am tagging you in this, because in my quoted message I addressed some of the questions you raised.

Has it? I’m 54, it wasn’t taught at my school. You tube was my answer.

Why not sell them without any cable either, so buyers 'just' have to buy cable and a plug and fit it ready for use themselves?

They did! During the late 1970s and 1980s, not all lawnmowers, hedge trimmers, and strimmers came with flexes, let alone a plug. Black & Decker were leaders in this concept, supplying their garden tools with less than 30cm of flex, which was terminated into a 2-pin plug, and supplied with a 2-pin socket to couple-up to that plug. The consumer had to wire onto the 2-pin socket their own flex as well as a plug, before it could be used.

It will come as no surprise I'm sure, that Black & Decker also used to supply a long flex with a 3-pin plug at one end, 2-pin socket on the other, and stored on a handy frame that could be reused for the life of the ensemble...at additional cost.

30 years!!

OP, with respect, because it's a terribly wasteful thing to contemplate - to junk a perfectly functioning large white goods item because the flex has pulled out of the plug, or because the plug somehow got damaged. If you weren't taught to change plugs at school you're probably quite a bit younger than a lot of the posters who've responded (I was, AND at Brownies, and I'm almost 52). But surely you know that such a thing can be done and is a vastly cheaper option than taking it to the tip and buying new? And does your DH have an opinion on this or did he also think a new one would have to be bought?

Look, if you're nervous (I'll admit to being ever so slightly hesitant if I change a plug or fuse and have to look it up even though I'm fairly sure I can remember!) then just book in an electrician. He or she will be nice about it. They'll charge an hour's call out but you never know, if you make it clear you think this is all that's needed, they might fit you in on the way to somewhere else and not even charge for what's essentially a 5 minute job. And that's including the time taken to drink half a mug of tea.

If you know that plugs are actually user-serviceable, yes.

If all you've ever known are moulded plugs, why would it even occur to you that you you could safely and practically cut off the plug and replace it yourself? Hardly anywhere even sells separate plug nowadays, at any rate.

30 years old and never learned in school or brownies, crocodile clips were as intense as we got

I also had no idea that appliances hadn't always come with plugs!

We're not exactly encouraged to mess around with anything electrical, so it's hardly strange that op wasn't aware you could change a plug without a professional

To all those saying that this was in your physics GCSE, plenty of people never did physics to GCSE level (it was still O Levels when I was at school).

Physics was an option when I was at school. I didn't take it because it was going to clash with other things that I was good at and would be taking on to A Level and university. So whether it would have been taught at O Level or not I couldn't say for sure, but it would have bypassed many of us completely by then. NOT everyone learned this in school at all.

I learned to wire a plug from observing my Dad. He was the Mr. Fixit of our household, and a real Mr. Practical too. Not everyone even has that possibility either though so just stop sticking the boot in to someone who has never done this before!

It only became mandatory in the early nineties I believe that electrical appliances were to be sold with plugs already fitted. I think it was an EU directive which we adopted, and not before time too.

I did always wonder what the hell the point was of selling electrical appliances without plugs on, just with the two wires sticking out at the end of the cable (three if earth was required, as it is for very powerful machines like dryers and washing machines). They always seemed incomplete to me and I thought that they should have been sold completely ready for use. However, prior to the nineties that was how they were sold. Ridiculous in my opinion, but there you have it. It was the accepted norm. Thankfully, that is no longer the case and hasn't been for a long time now.

Me and my siblings are all early to mid 30's and none of us were taught it at school and none of us have ever had to change one (I read this thread and asked them) or would know how to.

Some of the judgemental attitudes on here are ridiculous. Not everyone knows everything and I'm sure there's plenty of things that others do that seem basic and a life skill and you wouldn't know how to do.

The OP came on here to ask a question and belittling her isn't helping anyone. That's how people don't learn - they don't want to ask questions because others can be so judgemental about not knowing something.

I'm not convinced all those sneering at the OP would actually be happy changing a modern moulded plug - no screws, so you have to cut the plug off, strip back the outer cable insulation, cut the internal wires to the right lengths and then strip them too?
Stripping wires is really bloody fiddly as well and you need an appropriate tool

I take your point; but if you've only ever grown up in a time of moulded plugs on all appliances, how would you even know that it was user-serviceable in the first place?

It's mad, really, to think that, for so long after standardisation, so many appliances were sold randomly incomplete and not ready for use. Why not sell them without any cable either, so buyers 'just' have to buy cable and a plug and fit it ready for use themselves? Why just the plug? Why spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar?

It was a bit like if, day, you bought a new car and they sold them without windscreens - so that, when you take delivery, you 'just' have to pop down to Autoglass first thing. Crazy.

I’m thinking that Armageddon honestly can’t come soon enough now…

That tiny diagram is about as much use as tits on a fish.

Often puckered to fuck and doesn't describe how to strip the wires etc etc etc

Changing a plug is a fiddly and quite complicated job even for the experienced like me.

Because you’re keeping those little bits of paper?!? 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

I wondered this because OP said they thought it was OK to change a socket but not a plug. Actually it’s the other way around. You really should have an electrician to install a new socket, but a plug is easy to change yourself.