Mains Voltage

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well mine didn't.

[The Wanderer]

Ah, but that isn't what your original comment implied. Can't say I've ever come across a pole mounted transformer that didn't have tapping facilities, but that's not to say they don't exist.

[Julian]

It looks very old indeed. I would hazard a guess that it dates back to when mains electriciy first arrived in the sticks

The wire you see goes to the house next door (old farm house), The wire to our house (barn conversion) is buried underground and goes down the telegraph pole.

You

It just a DIY welder, it runs through a standard 13A plug, though at high settings it does tend to eat fuses - I've fixed that problem for good now!

Done, MANWEB couldn't have been more helpful, within a jiffy the girl started talking about safety (the world's gone safety barmy lately) and said it would be checked out very soon. I'll keep you posted.

Julian.

[Dave Liquorice]

Ours has two waht look like 25mm^2 earth (they were green once...) cables that disappear into the ground at the base of the pole. One connects to the iron work at the top of the pole supporting the insulators for the lines themselves. The other connects to one side of the transformer secondary, ie the neutral. The other side of the transformer secondary comes down the pole large ceramic housed 200A cutout then back up the pole and off to the house with the "neutral".

[Dave Liquorice]

Not surprised but the cut ends looked bright copper colour all through and the surface was smooth like a drawn wire. I didn't get a chance to get a real close look though.

Not me squire, our power is remarkable stable (3 miles of 11kV then 20+ miles of 33kV all overhead and rising to 2000' exposed to the atlantic storms). If the weather gets really nasty, as in the whole regional distribution is in trouble. there will be a few dips and flickers but otherwise it "just works".

We only *know* that it is these two houses on the same transformer that suffer we have no information about other customers on the same 11kV.

[Owain]

What, with a nail in the plug? ;-)

If you only use it in one place, wire up a 20A radial circuit to a 16A blue ceeform socket.

Owain