How many devices can one socket take?

The arithmetic every household should own: UK sockets and plugs are rated at 13 amps, roughly 3kW at mains voltage. Electronics sip, phone chargers at 20W, laptops at 60W, TVs at 100W, so the desk strip full of gadgets totals a few hundred watts and is fine. Heat-making appliances gulp: kettles at 3kW, fan heaters at 2 to 3kW, tumble driers similar. One of those is a socket's whole capacity.

The failure pattern is therefore predictable: not the twelve chargers but the four-way strip hosting a heater and an iron, or the extension feeding another extension into the Christmas corner. Adaptors and strips share one 13A plug's allowance across everything they host; the maths does not care how many outlets the strip offers.

Circuit-level limits sit above socket-level ones: a ring circuit typically carries 32 amps across all its sockets, which is why a winter evening of multiple heaters trips breakers even with every heater on its own socket. Houses relying on plug-in heating are usually announcing an undersized heating system and an under-socketed installation at once.

Rules of thumb to keep: one heat-making appliance per socket, no strip-into-strip ever, count to 3,000 when in doubt, and if daily life needs more outlets than the room has, add sockets rather than adaptors; the fixed version costs about £110 and ends the question.

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