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I’ve often wondered is this down to people using very short cycles or bad detergent? I’ve always had a dishwasher in the house, going back to when I was a kid in the 80s and they never smelled bad. My parents had a some kind of Ariston machine in the 80s, then Bosch and later AEG. My...

I just spotted this article in the Irish Independent, quoting an insurance company talking about risks of tumble dryer fires. They’re claiming that clothes have spontaneously combusted several hours after being dried due to the presence of flammable oils that aren’t being adequately removed in...

If the don’t adequately regulate it, rural customers will end up being cut off. I don’t know why politicians seem to imagine commercial operators are going to provide loss making services. Either you regulate it ensure it happens and the costs get spread, or you subsidise it. If you do...

DAB was a total commercial failure here in Ireland. The main public service broadcaster, RTE launched a network and none of the commercial stations came on board. It ended up just being a simulcast of RTE’s national FM services: Radio 1 (main public service radio) 2FM (commercial music...

RDS was developed though EBU (European Broadcasting Union) projects that kicked off in the 1970s. So it became a fairly standard feature of FM radio here certainly by the 1990s, mostly because it was (and still is) extremely useful for car radios. If you’re listening to a large station or a...

Effectively AM in Europe is almost dead. There’s hardly anything on either of the AM bands anymore, There are two bands used in Europe: Medium Wave (MW) 531–1,602 kHz which has 9 kHz channel spacing, which is fairly similar to AM in the U.S. and Canada. It’s allocated as 119 channels. Long...

Last AM ‘Medium Wave’ Broadcast from Ireland in 2008 This was the closedown of RTE Radio 1 on 567kHz Medium Wave (AM) - clip is very much giving vibe of old style warm Irish radio. It had a certain tone but also AM itself had a magical warmth that will never really be replicated by high...

Beetie Bellmann (BT) - London Area Code Change Snobbery I'm sure she's featured on this thread before, but this is Beatrice (Beetie) Bellman, a fictional character played by Maureen Lipman, who represented BT (British Telecom) in the 1980s and 90s.   She's accompanied by the one and only...

It all just comes down to personal preferences. There are slight variations in the formulations of detergents in different EU (and non-EU European) markets.   All I could suggest is sniff around!   Just as an example, to cover the two main TOL brands here:   Ariel as sold here for example...

For a high end brand like Miele, the margins are pretty huge at least by the industry standard, but it probably makes a lot more sense for them to manufacture closer to the market they're supplying.   None of Miele's EU manufacturing bases are low cost. They're probably more expensive than...

They’re used here in Ireland too. Different to US power tools though. it’s specifically 110V 50Hz, split phase at 180° with no neutral, from a centre tapped transformer, giving you roughly 55V to ground. It’s basically like a U.S. 240V supply, at half the voltage. Also the plugs used are the...

TV Pick Up - There are surges in depend that coincide with the TV schedule, particularly Coronation Street apparently, but they are blips on a graph, not brownouts. There was a lot of tabloid nonsense about them, but there's no issue with brownouts in the UK or here, rather it just means that...

3kW electric kettles absolutely do not cause power outages. They’re extremely common appliances here, as are irons up to 3kW, you’ll also commonly find fan heaters, convection heaters and portable oil radiators that can go up to 3kW 1970s Argos catalogue featured plenty of them...

Yeah, those are used from time to time, more so with the 2.5amp Europlug variety. They're EXTREMELY bulky with the full grounded Schuko version. Although I have actually seen Fisher and Paykel fridges fitted with them here! See what I mean ...

Shockingly, that only came into force in UK in 1994! There was a slightly ridiculous notion that people needed the flexibility to fit different plugs, despite the plethora of different plugs and sockets in the U.K. having had been standardised by the 1970s. In other EU countries it was...

There wouldn’t be much logic in anywhere with an established system changing to another system. It make some sense for completely outliers, like countries using absolutely unique outlets or voltages other than 120V 60Hz or 230V 50Hz At the end of the day, an outlet as long as it’s fairly safely...

Ireland has a slightly odd history on this. We are probably the only country in Europe to have moved away from ‘Schuko’ the 16 amp plug/socket system, with the sliding ground contacts that’s used in most of Europe. When we began standardising things in the 1920s there was no real international...

What was that old disinfectant that used to cause the signature “hospital smell”? It’s something I remember as a kid and was so strong you could even tell if someone had visited a hospital, but present day hospitals seem to have no such odour. I’m not taking way way back in the 1950s or...

+1 on the vacuum approach. Also when I’ve had a tissue in pocket disaster in the washing machine I’ve always found a few mins in the dryer and clean the filter and then continue works extremely well. I’ve generally never found the Miele washing machine I have has major issues with cleaning...

One way to have a dryer fire! If alcohol soaked clothes end up in a hot dryer it’s really not a great outcome.