Group: alt.2eggs.sausage.beans.tomatoes.2toast.largetea.cheerslove · Group Profile
Author: Ben newsamBen newsam Date: Aug 16, 2008 00:19
On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 23:40:32 -0400, "zol" ne.rr.beepbeep.com>
wrote:
>"Flash Gordon" wrote in message
>news:j73hn5x3da.ln2@news.flash-gordon.me.uk...
>> Hello all, a bit off-topic, but I have a question about power in the
>> USA...
>>
>> On of my brothers is moving to Silicon Valley (he has a 3 year work visa
>> and his new company will sponsor him for a permanent work visa) and has a
>> lot of expensive 220-240V Hi-Fi & AV equipment. One of his mates has said
>> that houses often have 240V in the garage and kitchen. So what we want to
>> know is whether the power is coming in to the house at 240V and then being
>> stepped down so he would be OK running a 240V circuit to the lounge or
>> whether it is stepped up for the garage making this a bad idea.
>>
>i'm not an electrician, so the technical stull i will defer to muddycat, as
>i beleive he is an electrician. i do know that electric stoves and clothes
>dryers run on 220/240 v, everything else runs at 110/120 v. i do have a
>friend that has his garage wired with a couple of 240v outlets for his
>welding equipment, but all the other power tools he has run on the same
>110/120v lines.
AIUI, the electrical supply in the US is single phase only, but two
wires at 120v are provided, in such a manner that thay are 240v wrt
each other. Presumably one of them is "Minus 110v". In the UK (again
only AIUI and IANAL etc.) three phases of (I think, cos it's been
changing over the years) 220 v each are available. In most households,
only one phase is piped into the house.
In a house I lived in as a child, I remember clearly that all three
phases arrived via huge switches and fuses to an enormous board in the
downstairs cloakroom. It was all horribly dangerous because there were
bare wires (the rubber insulation having perished), fuses on both live
*and* neutral wires on every single light and socket in the house,
there were separate 5 and 15 amp circuits, and nothing was labelled.
There were 30 amp fuses on each phase as it arrived into the house,
and also the electricity board 60 amp fuses were in a box on the wall.
My father used to play with the system sometimes, and wired up a three
phase motor that pumped water from our well to the tank in the roof.
Again, AIUI, three phase electricity is lethal stuff, and mistakes
tend to be pretty fatal because very large voltages can be involved.
My knowledge stops there.
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