ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Ring circuits?Spur unit? RCD Device?

So BS1363 dates to the '40s? I thought it originated in 1962.

(Then again, I thought NEMA 5-15 originated in the mid-'60s. I now know it originated about 1950 or so, was made mandatory for all installations in 1962, but universal enforcement took perhaps another decade.)

And yes, I've seen US 60A devices with no more metal contact than a 15A BS546!

As to cookers/ranges:

Germany / Austria: 3phase+N 16A at 400V (=10,8 kW)
Switzerland (?)often: 3 phase (no N) at 400V (same power)

Germany: any device above 2kW needs its own radial circuit. Wiring here is either 1,5mm2 or 2,5mm2 depending on surrounding material.

Germany has been dedicated to the one pole B 16 A breaker, which is hard to fight, although often oversized according to IEC regs.

Usually the cookers can be wired to fit most European countries as wired Y internally.

Exception is Switzerland where Delta is reported to be used internally.

It might be worth noting that the cooking load is often split across 2 or more circuits thesedays.

i.e. the Hob (cooktop) on a 32A circuit

and the oven (2 ovens + grill) on a seperate 32A circuit.

Also, some ovens that have paricularly huge draws can be wired in various ways using multiple circuits drawing from the same phase. i.e. 32A + 16A or 2 X 32A. The circuits are completely seperate and each only powers parts of the oven.
This obviously creates some complications for isolation / switching.

The normal practice in Ireland, however, is to just use a single circuit or to have the oven and hob supplied seperately.

That's how it's done in our house as both appliances draw quite a lot of power when at peak consumption. The oven uses "pyrocleaning" (heats to >500C to self-clean) and induction hob can draw quite a lot of power if all zones are on simultaniously. Hence, seperate circuits makes sense.

That's the norm in most homes. There are a few slightly higher-power dryers on the market these days, up to 4kW or so. They come with warnings in the books and on the leaflets about the need to be wired on a dedicated 20A circuit.

When it comes to washing machines, unlike in the U.S. most models here incorporate a 2 to 3kW heating element. They often have both cold and hot fill, but then use the element to boost the temperature to whatever is required. It's not at all uncommon to plumb the washer for cold-fill only and rely on the integral heater entirely. (We often have smaller hot-water cylinders for the rest of the house here too!)

Now that is something which I feel is often overlooked when installing rings here. It seems to me that whoever plans the system just looks at the 100 sq. m. rule and/or just thinks one ring for upstairs and one for downstairs will be sufficient. To me, that is not making proper allowance for potential loading.

I've seen suggestions these days to the effect that with increased kitchen loads it might be wise to install a third ring circuit just to feed the kitchen. I don;t see that as being the proper answer either. As the heavy loads are all concentrated in and around the kitchen (washers and dryers are frequently located there in Britain), all that does is leave the two rings serving the rest of the house with minimal loading and you still have the one ring for the kitchen which gets all the high-popwer appliances on it.

Admittedly the heater in a washer runs only for 15 or 20 minutes to heat the water, ditto for a dishwasher. The dryer might run for two hours or more at a stretch though.

The reason for the heater in european washing machines isn't that we have smaller water heaters (the uk's an exception to that .. those victorians really believed that cold water was "more wholesome".... Nothing like a nice drafty home with luke warm water to calm the blood!)

European washing machines use a *FAR* smaller amount of water when filling for the wash part of the cycle than their US counterparts. The length of time the hot water supply would be open for wouldn't allow enough water to run to clear the cold water lag in the pipes ... i.e. no hot water would actually reach the machine by the time it was full. Older european machines filled much deeper and could actually use the hotwater supply quite effectively.

Also, european machines use the gentle heating profile of the water to activate enzymes in the detergent (likewise for dishwashers). When these are gradually heated they perform far more effectively.

And, finally, european consumers expect a machine to be capable of taking the wash up to 95C (near boiling) if selected. That's simply impossible in the typical US toploader which can only was at the max temp. of your hotwater supply circa 60C. Likewise, we expect dishwashers to be able to take the wash up to 85-90C ... european dishwashers in general use "residual heat drying" i.e. the dishes are heated up with the extremely hot water and they quite litterally dry themselves as they're extremely hot.

It's basically a simple and very effective way of completely sanitising dishes, cuttlery, bedlinen, towels etc...

A euro machine will quite happily tumble your clothes in boiling enzyme laced water for over an hour, then rinse them about 6 times, then spin them at 1800 rpm.

Nothing survives! That's why they're quite popular with US families where someone has a dust mite allergy ...




[This message has been edited by djk (edited 01-12-2006).]

Too small in some of them, as far as I can tell. I've seen some of the newer machines which barely seem to fill to the bottom of the drum on the wash cycle.


You learn something every day. So presumably European soap powders are formulated differently for this?

There are indeed reports that some washing powders are different. This can apparently lead to spectacular foaming... (I don't remember which way the problem goes)

I don't know about you, but we always have a bluddy good larf at the adverts trying to con the gullible into buying products they don't need, like washing powder:
Hot wash [60C plus], with perhaps a 'blueing' whitener is adequate & kills all bugs, including legionella and mites- ie basic supermarket own brands. Ads for leading brands? Some simpering female twit beaming happily as little Johnny runs full-tilt into a monster pile of filthy, steaming, oily crap with his best white shirt on!
Then there's Anti-wrinkle-creams and shampoos:
'Bollock-welloff', 'Aqua-sphericals', 'Hydro-molecules', proteins, extract of some horrid toxic weed and all the other quazi-scientific piffle, all advertised by a model in her early twenties. I mean, come on! Is it vanishingly likely that you can smear some jollop, made basically of lard, on your fizzog and look 18 years old again? Do you really want your hair to look like it's been T-Cut and Polished by Rolls Royce Motors?
It gets worse!
'Proctor and Gamble' bought out a NEW! bio-powder some years back; ['New Persil']. Trouble was, it really was 'new' and it 'bio-ed' your blinking skin off as well! Withdrawn from sale as the poor unfortunate users itched like coots!

Rantus terminum
Alan

Here too... but that's what it is - a recommendation.
The dedicated circuit for each load >1.5kW is merely a recommendation too _and_ only applies to new wiring. Single phase loads exceeding 3.6kW (16A) do have to have a separate permission by the PoCo in Austria though.

The typical range is 9 or 9.5 kW here. The cooktop has 2 burners on one phase each and the third phase is for the oven. That means the oven never draws more than 16A @ 230V. Occasionally such ranges are connected via 25A single phase circuits, but that's only done in very old apartments where 3ph is not available, but in such a location that would usually already exceed the main fuse of 20A. So not really a good idea. Not that I think connecting an appliance that is capable of drawing like 41A to a 25amp circuit with 4mm2 or even 2.5mm2 wire, only relying on the OC protection is a good idea anyway...

Separate cooktops and ovens are fairly common here too, usually the cooktop is 3ph, only using 2 phases and the oven single phase, even sometimes connected via Schuko.

Dryers and washers don't exceed 3600W here. Our washing machine runs on a 10A Diazed fuse, but only if there's nothing else on that circuit. The refrigerator already blows the fuse.

Hmmm.... Several places here are now selling big U.S.-style Maytag and Whirlpool top-loaders with 22 lb. capacity. I wonder if Britsh/European soap powders will foam excessively in those and the quantity used needs to be reduced?

These aren't really much different to old top-loaders which used to be found in laundromats all over Britain. They had machines which dispensed a cup full of soap powder, or a lot of people brought their own favorite brand in with them.

I do recall notices in many about not using too much powder. How much that was down to the formulation and how much because many of the laundromats used huge water softeners, I don't know.