Posted By Yossarian Didn't hear it myself, but I thought taps already came with colour coded signage and a "H" or "C" as standard? The fact that people ignore this and so extra signage is considered necessary says a lot about the problem of too many signs IMO.

Posted By Colin Reeves Jeremy Vine actually passed on an anecdote about the BBC building that he works in. For some reason one hot tap gave out significantly hotter water than all the others. As a result a "careful this water is hot" sign was put on this one hot tap and nobody scalded themselves. Then someone thought "what a good idea" and put signs on all taps. Result - someone got scalded again. OK - best answer would have been to do something physical to reduce the water temperature in that one tap, but in this case too much signage caused the problem. I hate all signs unless absolutely necessary as they are frequently counter productive. I often find that I do not even look at signs any more because I have been "educated" into the belief that they will be trivial. Colin

Posted By martinw I remember when on holiday in France once burning my hand, as the taps in the place where I was at were quite worn down due to amount of use. Like an idiot, I went to get the cold water so I chose the C which I could just see - didn't even think about it. No colour coding. C for Chaud or HOT in English. Know better now. Know French better now. Moral - sign would not have helped.

Posted By Fred Pratley I feel signs should only be used where appropriate and careful consideration of the wording can have a lasting impression - For example, many years ago I used to go to a public boating lake that was clearly shallow, and so there was a constant temptation to pay your money, jump in and paddle off. On prominent display was a sign stating "You may climb into boats without assistance if you wish, but please be aware that water is very wet!" It certainly made the point to me.......

Posted By Al.. Mr J Vine, Mr Q Letts and Mrs J Hackitt can be heard at http://www.hse.gov.uk/pr...rd/bbc-radio2-230709.htm Maybe Mr Vine was surprised to find he had Mr Letts and Mrs Hackitt agreeing with each other that all this signage is OTT. You cannot whine if both of your guests are agreeing with each other! Mr Letts tried to introduce an edge to things by suggesting that the HSE had done nothing like enough to discourage practices like this and that it needed to make a lot more noise about the matter. It then got rather anodyne and petered out with J Vine concluding that it was amazing that these signs were everywhere, including the BBC toilets, but they were not, we were assured, in the ladies toilets at HSE HQ. Blame was then laid at the door of health and safety consultants and the like. Probably rightly!

Posted By Peter F. Crim, what would you use a 'hot water boiler' on a site for? Making tea? so why a sign? Unless they were making iced tea, then a different sign would be required. On these threads we often talk about ' a common sense approach' , but do we really expect people to use it? We and I don't just mean H&S persons, I mean everyone puts signs up for almost everything. Risk assessments more often than not just state the bleeding obvious i.e. Task Working at Height, hazard Falling from height, death, broken bones, brain damage etc. etc. At present I am dealing with a claim for a slip, The person states even in the solicitors letter that they knew it was slippy as it had been snowing, they could see the snow on the floor, they noticed cars had slid in the car park, they opened the door realised that the car park had not been gritted so needed to be careful, got out of the car and fell I sent off the policy etc, etc and got a letter back asking @did you have a sign to warn people it was possibly slippy' I have produced a sign for the car park that states 'maybe slippy if snow falls or it is very cold, wet if it rains, dry if it is sunny and on all other occasions be careful just in case'