Are you saying that a plug and a socket that are stated as being rated at 15 A can't really be used for that current because of the risk of overheating? If they overheat, doesn't that mean (by definition) that they *aren't* rated at 15 A?
And in fact you were even concerned that passing *5* A through the plug and socket might cause overheating problems. So what *is* the maximum safe current that does not cause overheating? Even less than 5 A?
I think in fact the problem is that those thin pins, and the fairly small contact area between pin and socket, aren't *really* rated at 15 A even though it stated that they are. So it's the rating that is wrong.
Here in the UK, if the plug is rated for 13A, that means it is safe to run a
3-bar electric fire (3 kW, which is 12.5 A at 240 V) through that plug and socket without it overheating to dangerous levels (melting of insulation) no matter how long it is left running. Presumably there is an equivalent real-world figure for US 2- or 3-pin plugs - and it may well not be as high as the stated 15 A!
Since my heat is off here, and I'm heating electrically as a backup and have a heater per room, I'm currently drawing 8.8kW through a series of those flimsy plugs/sockets.
If you search through the dross at the hardware store, you can find slightly better outlets with nicer contact action. If an outlet is worn, you replace it. For example, I replaced my kitchen kettle one. And replaced the outdoor outlet for the electric mower.
The electric dryer is on 230V and has a four pin socket. The stove with oven, is on 230V and has a four pin socket. That socket is a nice design. And the insertion/removal force does not make it "intended as a convenience outlet". Those connectors are rated 230V 30A.
The breakers take multiple positions, and some are two breakers with a common handle, or even four breakers with a common handle. Single breakers for 115V 15A fill the rest of the circuits. We plug electric kettles or 115V electric lawnmowers into such outlets. Our kettles don't heat water as fast as yours do.
The only thing which is really dire, is the dalliance with aluminium wire. Surely the idea from hell. You need Al-Cu outlets for that. And I doubt that's even code any more, because it was a bad idea. But you can still buy Chinese motors wound with Al wire inside. It wasn't the Al itself which was bad, but the mixture of metals involved in connectorisation.
Pole (Can) Transformer ___________ half the panel off this phase || / || \ || / || \___________ use both phases for 230V loads || / || \ || / || \___________ half the panel off this phase
On a stove, the stove-top elements run from 115V, the oven element (bottom) or broiler element (top) run from 230V. The four pin 30A connector gives access to all three wires above, plus I presume the fourth pin is green safety ground.
Devices are randomly fused. ATX power supplies have a Slo-Blo in the casing. A kettle would not have a fuse, but has a thermal cutout. The breakers take time to respond, and on a slight overload on a branch circuit, might take five minutes to trip. On a gross overload (about 5x rated), the breaker will open with some speed.
Things that contribute to a bad reputation, are not using a panel properly for a job. The wiring is quite conservative, if you follow the code today. For example, in a properly wired kitchen, you could plug a kettle into *every* socket hole, as the outlets are split, and each hole gets its own wire. Other rooms in the house, run a two-hole outlet plate off a single cable. So only one kettle per two-hole plate. I could not run two electric heaters off a bedroom two-hole plate.
Some houses have two, or even three panels in them. Mine only needs the one panel, as it's relatively small. A McMansion would have more panels.
And there's a proliferation of leakage sensors in the panel now, but I don't have an ordered list to show you. I'm sure if I saw a code-compliant installation, I would probably freak out at the complexity and conservative-ness. We've run lekky with much less pompous code in the past. The code today is built like a brick shithouse. It's too bad that my (rural quality) distribution on the street was not built to the same lofty standard as the panel wiring plan you have to follow today, inside the house.
The house I was born in, which followed an older code, I could not electrically heat the house without blowing fuses, so I'd be pretty cold. In this house, I'm comfortable, and it's the usual temperature in here, at 8.8kW. I started out at 9.6kW, but that was slightly too much. The thermostats on the heater are not properly designed, so I'm just manually balancing temp as weather outside dictates. For a home built to R2000 standard, you wouldn't need nearly as much electricity for emergency heat.
It will cost me roughly $32 in local currency, to heat the house per day in this way. That's about 7X what the natural gas to do the same job, would cost.
But for outlet plugs, those are screwdown and reasonably secure.
Wire nuts work fine to. Even some appliances use them internally. There are problems if you mix materials that don't belong in them. Like say a home handyman slaps a solid wire and a stranded wire in, and tries to tighten it up. That doesn't end well.
As long as you assemble a wire nut, disassemble it and admire what you've done to the wire, then reassemble, you'll be fine. If it beats the wire to shit, or is obviously not compressing properly, then you have to ask yourself what sin you've committed. From that point of view, as long as you exhibit curiosity about how they work, you're likely to be fine. But I know not everyone is as inquisitive.
Despite the rating and the fact that they often work alright, it's not uncommon for UK socket/plug combinations to overheat with a long term load around 10-12 amps.
What power rating are these? Is that the right way around? the stove-top elements are usually higher powered than the ovens, so I'd have expected them to be on 230V.
Our stove-top (actually a separate induction hob) elements (4 elements) total a maximum of 9.7kW, so can pull 40A at 240V. Okay there is diversity, but not immediately if on the odd occasion that you power up all four at once and all are heating up.
Even using just the two largest elements (3.7kw and 2.8kw on boost - common when starting with two cold pans) can take 27A. And it would not be unusual to be boiling a pan of water on a third (2.8kw - unboosted) element.
On the North American 230/115V system, stove-top elements run at power levels of 750W or 1500W. The stove might have two large diameter Calrod elements as the 1500W ones, and two smaller Calrod elements as 750W. You can boil eggs in the morning on the small ones, and operate a pressure cooker on the 1500W ones.
I don't know off hand, what power the oven elements run at.
If everything is switched on, on the stove, including the drawer heater, it might have totaled around 11kW (I think there was a "name plate rating" in the fuse panel in the back). I'd had to work on that stove quite a few times, repairing wires to stove-top elements, until it got to the point the wire had run out of slack. I only took enough wire off each time to make the repair, and didn't waste the stuff, because I knew some day, I'd run out of wire. When the operator cleans under the element by flipping it up, that puts bending stress on the wire.
The oven elements were an ambitious design. The body of the connectors in the oven, was ceramic, and there were some generous contacts for the matching "fingers" on the stove elements. But eventually, something had had enough in there, and kinda burned up, and the electrician, rather than fitting new connectors, just found a way of wiring the element permanently. Since the element doesn't move, and you can sort of clean around it (when it cools off), the idea of removing the connector from the picture wasn't so bad.
A lot of people would replace old kit like that, at the drop of a hat, but when you're used to all the quirks, you stick with what you're familiar with. Just as you have recipes marked "30 minutes at gas mark 4", that stove is also calibrated and the settings recorded in the big recipe book. If you took out the hardware, all that calibration would be lost :-/
In local currency, $0.25 per kWH during "peak" and around $0.08 during the night. With the lekky running
24 hours at constant power level, you have to work out the "blend" of X hours at peak and Y hours at off-peak.
I have air conditioning here, but it was never intended for heating, and the price adder for the hardware would make dual-mode a prohibitive novelty. Ground source would make sense, whereas air source heat pumps, there'd be two narrow intervals where it could be used. Typically during these weeks of the year, an air source heat pump here would be switched off, and you'd be on your backup solution (natural gas). For the most part, it wouldn't work at the moment. Two days ago, the output from a heatpump would have been zero, if it was air source. As of this morning, there would be a dribble coming from an air source heat pump.
And there's paperwork if you do ground source. They're particularly picky about defacing rivers or streams to get your way. Digging a hole in the back yard would be OK.
When I run air conditioning here, I run the AC on off-peak only. And conditions in the house are particularly brutal around 5PM.
The plan wasn't to be running this way for very long, but until I get the part for the heat, I'm stuck with this solution for now. The part is covered under warranty, which is why it doesn't make sense for me to order one.
And on these furnaces, the air inducer always wears out. Why they can't stock these, remains a mystery. Good service means nothing to these people. You get better service from criminals making license plates.
That certainly indicates that more thought has gone into the problem than I've put into it. In my, rather limited, experience hot plugs have always been caused by loose connections between the wires and the pins. Whether they've worked loose or were never tightened up properly in the first place, screwing them down firmly has always fixed it for me.
Ah, a lot lower than I would have expected, roughly half of what our's has.
I can't find the information for the individual ovens on ours, but there is a bottom fan oven and a samller top oven/grill. Together they total 5.9kW
I know the type. My parents used to have similar flip-up elements on their cooker - I've only had gas rings up until recently, but we have now switched to an electric induction hob, as my wife has both osteo arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis and struggled with cleaning up if she was cooking. The induction hob just has wipe clean glass - not even any control knobs to get in the way, as it is touch control.
I think my parents one had a similar arrangement - something like large, fixed, spade connectors on the ring.
We've got used to where to set the hob powers quite quickly. The oven are marked in °C, whereas the old one was in Gas Mark, but that is no problem, as we also used to have a combination microwave that was in °C and I struggled to remember the Gas Mark settings anyway.
It is common. However, good quality plugs and sockets, with properly terminated wires don't overheat. I've been in the test labs (back in the '80s and '90s) and seen how they ran them in heated cabinets on high loads, for long periods of testing; while others were repeatedly inserted and removed, under (lower) loads, by air rams; switches operated on and off 100s of thousands of times.
The cheap and nasty stuff available now is another matter!
That makes sense, as they can't know the quality of socket that they are being placed into.
It will depend a lot on how well the pins are in good contact with the socket. US home wiring runs rather warm by our standards. They have a lot of house fires caused by trailing leads overheating by comparison.
The rating is sort of right for a nice new one with no oxidation and fresh clean spring contacts. It goes downhill quickly from there.
I have seen UK 13A sockets melted by the use of a 3kW fan heater load on a cold day when it never really got up to temperature at all. Nothing wrong inside the plug some corrosion from damp in the wall socket.
2.4kW aka 10A is now the recommended maximum load for UK nominally 13A plugs. They do run very hot just from the fuse alone at 13A.
US and continental plugs don't have the fuse self heating problem to contend with which gives them a bit more margin to dissipate waste heat from the connection between plug and socket.
Wire nuts, eh? Gosh, that's modern. The house I had (admittedly 35 years ago) was built in the '30s (supposedly by a property developer for his mistress) but was nice for a small house. It was all lathe and plaster, knob and tube. Been demolished now, and replaced by what looks like a glass factory.
Well, sometimes in a house, you'll find one of these boxes. That at least allows you to "decode" what the installer has done, within a room.
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As long as the operator "calibrates" the wire nut and the wire gauge, I don't have a problem with their usage. I've taken apart a bodge and spotted it was never going to work right, unless the materials were better matched. You can't be fitting a load of dissimilar things into one of those, because it won't compress all the items and give a gas-tight connection.
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The packaging for the wire nuts (Marettes) usually has a list of mixes of wire gauges that fit within a certain color.
Some of those web pages comment, that the alternative, putting two wires under a screw head, is not a good idea. So that's the alternative.
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