Is there any reason for not putting an electrical socket in the loft of a house and instead stripping the plug off a device and hard wiring it into an appliance switch ?

The device is a little signal amp for TV antenna.

I am just trying to understand to what extent the professional aerial fitters cocked things up.

There is already the following signal path…

Main TV:

Antenna -> Un-powered splitter -> amplifier -> TV

2 other TVs:

Antenna -> un-powered splitter -> TV

Have they connected into a lighting circuit?

Depends on the loft… how old is the house?

Chances are it was installed a while ago. The mother in law just has an unpowered splitter in the loft too – it’s rubbish and is on my to-do list.

Its was an optional extra to have a loft socket in my house.  A home made one may well be wired into the lighting circuit as in modern houses thats probably the only wiring up there.

Is there any reason for not putting an electrical socket in the loft of a house and instead stripping the plug off a device and hard wiring it into an appliance switch ?

Probably was just a bit cheaper. I’ve hard wired an appliance in our attic, just because I was being lazy and didn’t have a socket to hand.

I’m no electrician but I cant help thinking this  a bad idea. By removing the plug you are removing the fuse. If its hard wired into a lighting circuit that’s even worse isn’t it?

Not a problem if connected through an FCU (fused connection unit) with the correctly rated fuse installed.

In STW tradition of answering a question other than the one you asked,

IME, powered aerial boosters are a waste of time.  You’re amplifying the signal but also amplifying the interference, and you can’t magically add signal data that isn’t there.  I’ve had a couple and neither made a jot of difference to the signal quality.  Internal splitters aren’t great either (the only reason I can think of for an amplifier is to use it as a spltter rather than instead of one).

If you’ve got poor reception, what you need there is a better aerial.

Thanks all, the appliance switch would have been put in about 6 years ago.

All wired up and working now, with better signal strength and therefore, hopefully, no freezing from the two TVs that weren’t going through the amp previously.

If you need me, I’ll be in the garden with one of these:

Phew, all set in time to watch the wedding tomorrow 🙂

IME, powered aerial boosters are a waste of time

IME all 3 of my kids bedrooms can’t get a usable signal from the aerial unless a booster is plugged in.

It’s like magic.

Experience is an oddly personal thing innit!

IME, powered aerial boosters are a waste of time.  You’re amplifying the signal but also amplifying the interference, and you can’t magically add signal data that isn’t there.  I’ve had a couple and neither made a jot of difference to the signal quality.  Internal splitters aren’t great either (the only reason I can think of for an amplifier is to use it as a spltter rather than instead of one).

Your theory certainly makes sense in terms of amplification immediately before the TV (although potentially if amplification has some filters on it – it COULD clean up some messy signals in some circumstances, although there is no reason for a TV not to have similar capability inside, except cost).  However your assumption is that all the noise that arrives at the TV was present at the aerial in the same ratio.  Is that really true?  There must be noise introduced over the length of the cable.  There is a loss every time there is a junction in the cable/connector etc.  There is a loss when there is a splitter.    Now you might be able to achieve the same quality of signal at the TV just by using better cables, better connectors etc, but that is not quite the same as saying they are a waste of time – depending how hard it is to rip out the cables/fittings a booster might be much quicker and easier to fit!

By removing the plug you are removing the fuse. If its hard wired into a lighting circuit that’s even worse isn’t it?

What does the fuse protect?  Presumably only the wiring after the fuse.  If the appliance (which probably draws 100mA at most) is supplied with a 13A fuse, and you connect it to a lighting circuit which can only provide 5A (with a suitable fuse/CB) what does the 13A fuse do? when can it blow?  Its certainly unconventional to wire anything except lights and fans to lighting circuits but is it actually more dangerous?

Phew, all set in time to watch the wedding tomorrow

Errr, is it too late to say that I a big fan of the foofball ?

Your theory certainly makes sense in terms of amplification immediately before the TV

Nope, amplification needs to be as close to the antenna as possible. You can’t recover the signal once it has attenuated into the thermal noise floor, so putting the amplification after the 20m of lossy cable does bugger all, which is why they don’t put them in TVs (it wouldn’t work).

 big fan of the foofball

Is that the one with the thai ladies and the ping pong balls?

I added a double socket to the lighting circuit via an FCU thinking that I might want to add a network switch or something up there at one point. Think I used a 5A fuse and put a sticker over the fuse holder pointing out that it dangled off the lighting circuit to warn future owners.

Pragmatism. You might find it difficult to hard wire a modern aerial amplifier in anyway and you have no options if you need to replace it with something that has the power supply in the plug.

Is that the one with the thai ladies and the ping pong balls?

I thought that was the more adult version of beer pong.

hardwiring stops some plonker unplugging it to use the socket for a power drill/space heater/orgasmotron…..

Its all dodgy ground according to the paperwork, but a switched/fused spur makes sense for that.