120 V or 240 V Mains - which voltage is better?

[EHocking]

Fortunately the rangehood was under warranty, so was replaced with an unit that could cope with 260+v

 

[Dabop]

I take it you are in WA then as it has for years been a slightly higher voltage thean the rest of the states (Actually right from the beginning, due to the manufacturer of their generators was the story I heard as an apprentice, their default was 255v against the rest of Oz's then 240
It caused a lot of problems in the 70's when a lot of 220v stuff from the UK was being imported into OZ (mostly TV's) as it really disliked the to it massive overvoltage, and was responsible for quite a few house fires back then, until many of the TV's were modified to suit the higher Oz voltages

 

[psionl0]

I take it you are in WA then as it has for years been a slightly higher voltage thean the rest of the states (Actually right from the beginning, due to the manufacturer of their generators was the story I heard as an apprentice, their default was 255v against the rest of Oz's then 240
It caused a lot of problems in the 70's when a lot of 220v stuff from the UK was being imported into OZ (mostly TV's) as it really disliked the to it massive overvoltage, and was responsible for quite a few house fires back then, until many of the TV's were modified to suit the higher Oz voltages

It was unlikely to have been TVs since the British TVs had 405 lines and Oz TVs had 625 lines. In any case, a well protected electronics industry ensured that most TVs in Australia were Australian made up until the 1970s.

Light bulbs were a problem though. I remember the WA standard being 250V 50Hz (apparently the standard a couple of decades earlier was 40 Hz). Although it was possible to get light bulbs rated at 260V (at a price) most bulbs on sale were the standard 240V variety and they didn't like the extra 10 volts. Tiring of having to buy new light bulbs every couple of weeks, I had actually planned to wire a 240:12V or 240:24V transformer as an autotransformer and insert it in the light circuit of my house. This became unnecessary when the SEC announced that it would lower mains voltages in line with the rest of the country.

 

[lomiller]

PsionIO and I were both putting forward
Anyone still want to disagree with that diagram? (glad you posted it Hellbound as I was actually drawing up pretty much an identical one)

psionl0 was actively arguing against the any 3-phase in the distributions system.

Eg note him taking issue with this:

3-pahse is part of every power distribution system in the world because it’s a more efficient way to deliver power. The only differences are how and where it’s converted into the single phase or split phase power that comes into your house.

 

[lomiller]

The link kindly provided by Hellbound also puts this idea to bed, as due to voltage drop issues, the maximum length of cabling between the transformer and the houses can apparently only be about 250ft...
Packing 25-30 houses into a circle so that all are less than 250ft away would be called a caravan park here (trailer park as the USAians call em), even the cheapest of housing estates would be struggling to have house blocks that small!

With 50 foot lot fronts you would easily have 50+ houses within 250 feet of a transformer. you'd have 40 houses just on 1 street and could be servicing adjacent streets as well.

 

[Hellbound]

That is what we have here, a green box for every five to six houses.

Okay, did a bit of looking. We do have on-ground transformers. Those cylindrical things are NOT them. They're green boxes, roughly 3' by 3':
.
And close to the frequency Modified reports, about one every 6 to 8 houses.

In any case, the original point was that it's not one transformer per house (we've wandered a bit far afield in this ), and that's pretty much the case. Exceptions would be rural areas (where houses are too far apart to share) or special circumstances (like someone who has a machine shop that needs higher power levels or something).

 

[psionl0]

psionl0 was actively arguing against the any 3-phase in the distributions system.

Not another strawman? Why don't you learn how to read?

 

[This is The End]

What happens when people in different countries with different standards and units have a discussion (argument)?

This thread.

I personally do hate American Wire Gauge.

Any system where the size gets bigger as the number gets smaller is boneheaded right off the bat.

Wire Gauge size should be two numbers, in millimeters. The thickness of the wire. The thickness of the insulation. (And possibly a third number, turns of wire per centimeter.)

 

[ceptimus]

Any system where the size gets bigger as the number gets smaller is boneheaded right off the bat.

This could perhaps justify its own thread, but I'll start it off here and see what others come up with.

• Wire gauge
• Camera aperture settings
• Star brightness (magnitude)
• Paper sizes (maybe not in America, but in Europe we have the 'A' series where A4 is half the area of A3, and A5 half the area of A4 and so on)
• UK knitting needle sizes

 

[This is The End]

Golf?

 

[Noztradamus]

Originally Posted by This is The End
Any system where the size gets bigger as the number gets smaller is boneheaded right off the bat.

This could perhaps justify its own thread, but I'll start it off here and see what others come up with.

• Wire gauge
• Camera aperture settings
• Star brightness (magnitude)
• Paper sizes (maybe not in America, but in Europe we have the 'A' series where A4 is half the area of A3, and A5 half the area of A4 and so on)
• UK knitting needle sizes

• Shotguns

 

[Modified]

This could perhaps justify its own thread, but I'll start it off here and see what others come up with.

• Wire gauge
• Camera aperture settings
• Star brightness (magnitude)
• Paper sizes (maybe not in America, but in Europe we have the 'A' series where A4 is half the area of A3, and A5 half the area of A4 and so on)
• UK knitting needle sizes

Fishing hooks (there is a zero point, with increasing numbers below and above, with the low side labeled 1,2, etc and the high side 1/0, 2/0, etc.

 

[Dabop]

Not another strawman? Why don't you learn how to read?

Strawman Inc...
I certainly can understand your posts, how he/she gets these 'understandings' I have no idea

 

[Dabop]

Okay, did a bit of looking. We do have on-ground transformers. Those cylindrical things are NOT them. They're green boxes, roughly 3' by 3':
.[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_6875996e9b8b1e51.jpg[/qimg]
And close to the frequency Modified reports, about one every 6 to 8 houses.

In any case, the original point was that it's not one transformer per house (we've wandered a bit far afield in this ), and that's pretty much the case. Exceptions would be rural areas (where houses are too far apart to share) or special circumstances (like someone who has a machine shop that needs higher power levels or something).

The OP was the origin of the 'one per house'- I suspect it may have been an older article as it also had a lower street voltage than appears to be the current practice
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/power7.htm

It still seems to be only a US based system of having that many street transformers, here we use a substation system where most of a suburb will have only one or two major substations feeding it

 

[Dabop]

It was unlikely to have been TVs since the British TVs had 405 lines and Oz TVs had 625 lines. In any case, a well protected electronics industry ensured that most TVs in Australia were Australian made up until the 1970s.

Light bulbs were a problem though. I remember the WA standard being 250V 50Hz (apparently the standard a couple of decades earlier was 40 Hz). Although it was possible to get light bulbs rated at 260V (at a price) most bulbs on sale were the standard 240V variety and they didn't like the extra 10 volts. Tiring of having to buy new light bulbs every couple of weeks, I had actually planned to wire a 240:12V or 240:24V transformer as an autotransformer and insert it in the light circuit of my house. This became unnecessary when the SEC announced that it would lower mains voltages in line with the rest of the country.

I am sure it was TV's, unfortunately I havent found anything online about it, it was talked about quite commonly in magazines like EA and the like- the UK/Euro tvs (and other electronics) had a 220v rating, and it was their caps that had the issues- I remember them having to pull the 'yellow' capacitors and fit capacitors with a higher rating as the yellow UK capacitors were usually discoloured and swollen from overheating on WA tv sets- It was almost certainly in the old 'The Serviceman' columns of Electronics Australia that this was a regular occurrence... (I read each issue religiously as it was put in our local library- 2 months after it went off the news stands- hey they cost big $$ for first a teenager and then an apprentice, when my first paycheque was under a hundred dollars as an apprentice elec fitter lol)

 

[psionl0]

Strawman Inc...
I certainly can understand your posts, how he/she gets these 'understandings' I have no idea

I suspect that the poster in question understands my posts much better than they let on but would rather persist with a strawman than deal with their own factual errors.

I am sure it was TV's, unfortunately I havent found anything online about it, it was talked about quite commonly in magazines like EA and the like- the UK/Euro tvs (and other electronics) had a 220v rating, and it was their caps that had the issues- I remember them having to pull the 'yellow' capacitors and fit capacitors with a higher rating as the yellow UK capacitors were usually discoloured and swollen from overheating on WA tv sets- It was almost certainly in the old 'The Serviceman' columns of Electronics Australia that this was a regular occurrence... (I read each issue religiously as it was put in our local library- 2 months after it went off the news stands- hey they cost big $$ for first a teenager and then an apprentice, when my first paycheque was under a hundred dollars as an apprentice elec fitter lol)

Did you realize that there is not a single period in that entire paragraph (other than the ellipsis)?

Perhaps you are thinking of those TVs that had a primary voltage that could be selected by turning a switch. I remember those. In fact, I had a cousin (who was a child at the time) who discovered that he could improve the raster in his family's TV by lowering the primary voltage. Thinking that you can't have too much of a good thing, he turned the primary voltage onto the 220V setting and ended up blowing out a chunk of the TV. It was quite an expensive repair bill.

TVs made for export would have needed such a primary voltage selector since mains standards tended to range from 220V to 250V depending on the country. I doubt that the British would have been able to compete with the Japanese at the time though.

 

[Peregrinus]

Any system where the size gets bigger as the number gets smaller is boneheaded right off the bat.

As an aside, shotgun loads use increasingly smaller numbers as the bore diameter increases. (Since it's based on the number of lead balls of a given diameter to equal one pound, it's straightforward and not "boneheaded.")

 

[Dabop]

No , it wasn't the multivoltage setup (AFAIK that never appeared on many tvs at all, mostly stereos etc had the 110/240v 'switch' on the back
This was a filter cap, I think- from memory was on live chassis tv's mostly, and were definitely either uk or euro origin- they were easy to check as the bad ones were yellow (220v) and you replaced them with the blue ones or used greencaps instead.... mind you this is all from from memory and many years ago, but it stood out to me at the time because of the fires they caused, I am sure it was the late 70's/early 80's Electronics Australia I saw it in- unfortunately I had to get rid of my own collection years ago when I started living in a caravan, before that I had every EA and ETI printed, plus Silicon Chip etc etc- my personal library was literally in the 10's of thousands of books... now I have to make do with Kindle....
I miss my old paper books :-(

eta

Sorry, I do tend to go 'stream of consciousness' writing when thinking and not concentrating on my writing style

Here's some spares, throw in as necessary.
.............................................................

;-)

 

[psionl0]

This was a filter cap, I think- from memory was on live chassis tv's mostly, and were definitely either uk or euro origin-

Yeah, caps sounds more likely than whole TVs. It seems stupid that they would use caps just barely rated at 220V - expecially since the peak voltage would have been 311 volts (354 for 250V rms). I guess there is nothing like saving money - or built in obsolescence.

 

[Dabop]

The whole idea of live chassis tv's these days would be enough to get lawyers salivating lol
They were responsible for many an electric shock- either from faulty caps on the antenna connections, or people wiring in their own headphones/ external speakers
And the passing of the eht required for cathode ray tube tv screens isnt missed either
(one finger/screwdriver on the wrong part of the pcb and you picked yourself up off the floor wondering what had just happened)
And this was a time when if the tv stopped working people would take the back off and give every connection inside a wriggle to see if it would work again... ugg