On Monday, January 30, 2017 at 10:24:04 PM UTC-5, Uncle Monster wrote:
On Monday, January 30, 2017 at 7:35:29 PM UTC-6, wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jan 2017 23:51:09 -0000, "James Wilkinson Sword"
wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jan 2017 23:19:50 -0000, wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jan 2017 23:04:52 -0000, "James Wilkinson Sword"
wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jan 2017 20:43:06 -0000, Charles Bishop wrote:

Howdy,

Sis had me look at an electrical problem she had - it turned out to be a
loose wire. However, when I was poking around, I discovered a couple of
odd things and need to know what to tell her what to do.

There are two circuits I discovered that appear to have 120V outlets and
switches on a 30A breaker. I didn't know enough to tell her whether this
was allowed or not - I really suspect not but wanted to ask here first.
My first thought was if there was a problem with, say a drill motor on
this circuit, any problem with it wouldn't be enough to trip the breaker.

This most likely resulted from the previous owner hiring incompetent
workers and they did poor work, just to get electrical power to the
shed. I found a power cord used as electrical cable so they didn't have
to break into the wall - it ran from an (E) outlet (connected by
stripping the wires and connected to the screws on the outlet) along the
wall to a multiplug on its end so that power could be had at the other
side of the shed. I removed this of course. So, poor work in other
places wouldn't surprise me.

Then, what should she do? I thought getting the circuits tracked down
and then replacing the 30A breaker with two 15's or 20s, depending on
the wiring and what's on them. I'd like her to have some idea before she
has an electrician come out.

Also, for me - I used a voltage tester when looking around - it was the
kind that chirps and lights up when it's near wiring that has power. It
also chirps and lights up if you stick one end into an outlet.

However I found that there could also be transient chirps if I moved it
quickly past a piece of metal and when I was close to wiring rather than
very close to it. In one case, this made it difficult to tell which
outlet or switch had the power. Was I using it correctly?

Americans make things so complicated. In the UK, we have all our outlets (or half of them, on two circuits) on a 30A breaker. Each appliance has a fuse in the plug, dependant on what that appliance is.

I bet you don't have 4.8 KVA homes as the defacto standard with some
double that. We also have more required circuits. (2 in the kitchen,
one in the laundry and one in the bathroom as a minimum plus the
general lighting and appliance circuits.

No need for so many circuits. We typically have one (or two in larger homes) 30A 240V circuit(s) for outlets, one 30A 240V circuit for the cooker, one 15A 240V circuit for the water heater, and two 5A 240V circuits for lighting.

You folks just do not have as many electrical appliances I guess. To
start with I doubt air conditioning is that prevalent. In most of the
US it is standard equipment. Our "cookers" (ranges) are typically 40a
or maybe 50a. If you can't get natural gas, you will have electric
water heaters and maybe even electric heat. Add a swimming pool,
electric dryer, spa and perhaps a shop, then the loads add up fast.



What is your typical main breaker?

100A = 24KVA. You really run your whole home on just 4.8KVA?! I can exceed that by a factor of 2.5 with my cooker alone. The shower another factor of 2 over that.

Sorry I dropped a decimal place 48KVA.
24KVA is the minimum service you can have for anything, most are 48KVA
(200a) and a large home will have 400a (96KVA)

In US terms we would call your ring circuit a feeder and the branch
circuit is the cord beyond the plug. (last overcurrent device in the
circuit)

Would you guess it's less expensive to wire a home in the UK since they're using smaller wire(less copper) to get the same wattage at twice the voltage.

Not only that, they apparently put all the receptacles on one breaker,
all the lights on another. How many breakers, panel size, etc does
that save? Of course when one trips, you're in the dark, screwed,
left trying to isolate the fault within the whole house, etc. instead
of on a more limited circuit.

How about some of the DIY folks who come in here, with a 3 way switch
they took apart, mixed up wires, can't get it to work again?
Here, it's one circuit that's out. Over the pond, apparently you
have no lights in the whole place until it's fixed or you get an
electrician over. Or how about
when you want to work on the electric system at night? Here, I
can just plug a floor lamp or drop-light into another circuit.