Electricity in U.S.A. households (and not only there)

[kf4rca]

You CAN add breakers to a panel that appears to be filled up using a tandem breaker. Its basically two breakers built into the space of a single breaker.
I've seen them in the field but personally I would not use one.
I understand there are homes in Appalachia like the island home in my previous post. But they didn't have a front door view of the Atlantic.
After that summer job with SCE&G, I realized I wanted an air conditioned job like a TV station control room. The summers are HOT in SC!!!

[MIPS]

If the household does have electric heating for water and in the same time it using an electric cooking machine, it dosen't need 2 phases or 3 phases?
In Romania for one phase you can use no more then 6-7 Ampers on one phase and we have 230 Volts... at 120 Volts you need more Amps.

That's the split-phase.
Breaker panels are setup with a common neutral and when you plug a breaker in you are either tapping into one half of the phase or the other. Going from that one half to neutral (basically earth ground but by code it can only terminate in the breaker panel) it's 120v, but if you take one half the phase and connect it with the other half the phase you get 240v
There is some variance on the voltage, hence you will see North americans show a line voltage anywhere between 110 and 120v, but when you combine the halves it's always that voltage, but doubled.

For people with electric water heaters that will almost always live on a 30A breaker. Same goes for the stove and dryer. I've seen electric heat furnaces use that, and higher like 40A or even 50A single phase. In most places around here electric heat makes no practical sense because gas and propane are so cheap compared to electricity. Even oil burning heaters are rare.
The last electric heat system I removed though was three-phase on a 30A breaker

[Telecolor 3007]

But in areas where it can get cold in the winter there are gas networks everywhere or a lot of people have a propane tank near the house?
Oh, my bad, I screwed it. I meant 6-7 kilo Watts per phase, not Ampers... I think you can get 16-20 Amp. per phase in Romania.

[Colly0410]

Here in Britain every home is supplied with 240 volts at 40 to 100 amps, my house is 100 amps. Our supply cable is underground, there are 3 transformers about equidistant from my house & I have no clue which one is my feed. Most powerful thing is my electric shower at 9.6 Kw's & has a dedicated feed & circuit breaker, next is the oven at 2.9 Kw's & also a dedicated feed. Then an electric fire at 2.6 Kw's, then a washing machine & dishwasher at 2 Kw's, then a George Forman grill & an air fryer thing at about a 1Kw each, these are all plugged into a 13 amps socket/outlet. We also have 3 fan heaters of 2 Kw's each that we use now & then when main heating is off, plus loads of things like TV's, 2 laptops, mobile phones, even got electric reclining chairs. (How lazy is that? lol) We have gas central heating with radiators for main heating & a gas hob... Not happy at moment as the gas/electric combined direct debit is going up from 99 pounds to 163 pounds a month at beginning of April.... BTW we don't have air conditioning, we open windows wide & turn on a fan on the few hot humid days we get in our summers...

[MadMan]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

Maybe that 1936-1937 Romanian magazine exagerated with the accesibility of refrigerators in U.S.A. in those years. But I do think that more people could afford them comparing to Germany, France, U.K.

I will say that more Americans were early adopters of major appliances such as refrigerators, water heaters, central heating plants, and washing machines compared to England, France, Germany, etc. Whether that was due to availability, affordability, I don't know. But I did find it interesting how it was even mentioned in a book from 1914 that the English were resistant to adopt electric washing machines. Even that far back. It's probably more of a cultural thing, if you ask me.

Originally Posted by Colly0410

BTW we don't have air conditioning, we open windows wide & turn on a fan on the few hot humid days we get in our summers...

Reminds me of that time y'all were having a marathon in summer, and runners were collapsing from heat stroke, because it was a sizzling 32C. As an American, I had to convert that to Fahrenheit to be sure, it was like 85F. That's hot for you guys, I guess. Many places in America regularly have summer days in the 100s(F), or 40s(C). And I'm not just talking about desert places. Chicago, for example, has freezing cold winters and hot summers. Air conditioning is not necessarily an extravagance. Opening the windows doesn't always cut it.

[Telecolor 3007]

In Bucharest too it can get really cold and really hot. Usually not as cold as in Chicago, because there is no big lake here. I live in an apartaments (flasts) buylding with concrete wall, no thermo insulation, about 3/4 oriented to West (Sunrise). So in the summer it gets really hot... and we need even 2 a.c. units, because of it's L shape. This winter we had to consume a lot of electricity because the central heating didn't worked proprely... the hot water radiators where mearly worm. Hot water problems too.
20 years ago I was sleeping with the bathroom window (luckly I do have a window at the bathroom) a little bit open, because it was very hot. Not anymore.
Oh, central heating here... big power plant, hot water pumped for kilomiters/miles. The power plants are having problems, the pipes do need to be replaced. The scum of Sârma (The Wire), last mayor of Bucharest before the actual one didn't invested in it.
I hate her for a lot of reasons.

Brits didn't wanted electric washing machines. Lol. Germans and Americans did want them.

@ Colly0410 : but a transformer, how many houses it serves?

In U.S.A. the smaller proportion between incomes and product prices made products more avaible. In Romania, even in 1970 a refrigerator could cost 2-3 wages (sallaryes).

[Telecolor 3007]

Here are some intresting things about old refrigerators: http://edisontechcenter.org/Refrigerators.html
Some one haves 2 editions of a book about household refrigeration: http://musingsonentropy.com/2013/02/...ting-machines/
The 1927 edition can be read on-line!!! https://archive.org/details/househol...l&view=theater

[pgnl]

A bit late but while you’re talking about mains electricity.

What you may not know is that the UK mains is wired differently from most countries. Its why we have much larger plugs.

Basically the mains outlets in a house are wired using in a loop from and back to the breaker board using I think 20amp cable, so potentially each outlet could supply 40 amps. Normally one ring per floor. Certain spurs from the ring are allowed. Cookers and electric showers have a separate (I think 30 amp) circuit. Sounds unsafe? Well of course we have breakers on each circuit - but there is also a fuse (either 2 amp, 5 amp or 13 amp) in every plug, so if the device goes open circuit its cable wont melt and cause a fire. The idea was to reduce copper at a time of shortage - it has been used (i might add very safely) since 1947. Thats when the square pin fused plug was first used and also the reason why the EU abandoned plans for a standardised plug design, as our houses would need rewiring…

Prior to 1947, houses were wired the same way as everywhere else but had three different plug sizes. 2 amp, 5amp (like the current plug used in India) and 15 amp (like the old south african plug. Some were two pin some were three pin. My grandparents house had a variety of sockets. Usually the lighting was on different circuit because at some point before ww2 electricity was more expensive for lighting than for heating.

The UK 13 amp square pin plug may be large, but it was designed to be safe, all sockets are shuttered and normally switched. There is loads on the web about its safety features.

Normal 13 amp sockets werent allowed in the bathroom, but are now as long they are a certain distance away from a sink or bath/shower. There is a special two pin isolated bathroom socket permitted for electric toothbrushes etc. lighting switch is usually a pull cord or a switch outside the room. Sometimes I think they need to bring those requirements into the 21st century?

Hope you find this interesting…

Patrick
Ps I thought you might like to see my breaker board, much simpler than in other countries I think. Latest UK requirement is for the box to be metal, mine is plastic…

[Telecolor 3007]

In Romania we had all kind of voltages, types of electricity (a.c. and d.c.), two phaes current, even different frequncyes (42 and 50 Hz. (Cy.) ). But the sockets, I think they where common - German standard.
As for today's fuses, I think the case can be from plastic. I do like plastic more because is an better insulator. In the past, they used metal, but also wood and marble and plastic or P.V.C.
Who haves 3 phase current at home?