In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 11 Nov 2018 22:02:23 -0000, "Stephen Watkin"
wrote:

On Sun, 11 Nov 2018 21:52:21 -0000, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 11/11/2018 3:57 PM, Stephen Watkin wrote:
On Sun, 11 Nov 2018 20:43:01 -0000, Rod Speed
wrote:

NY wrote
Rod Speed wrote

But they have 115 and 230V in the same house.
It's a centre tapped 230V. Bit of a ****ing mess,
but thy can get a decent voltage when needed.

Not practical to do electric showers that way.

That's also the reason they don't use electric jugs
either, not practical to run them on 230V.

Why not?

They don't in fact have 230V GPOs in the kitchen
you can plug the kettle into. What 230V appliances
they do have are mostly hard wired with stuff like
driers in the laundry etc.

Which is bloody stupid, not having 240V sockets around.

What's the difference between Europe's 220-240V
and and US 230V made up of two 115V supplies?

The lack of 230V GPOs in the kitchen to plug them into.

Easy enough to wire one up yourself surely?

Power-hungry devices like kettles, cookers, tumble driers
and showers can be plugged into (or hard-wired into) the
230V supply and a centre tap supplies the rest of the house.

Problem is the lack of 230V GPOs in places like the kitchen.

Do US house have two wires for 230V live and neutral,
with a centre tap transformer in the house for the rest,

Normally.

or do they have three wires (115V live, 230V live and neutral)

Not usually.

with the centre-tapping done at the
substation rather than at each house?

They don't use substations so much either.
Much more common to have transformers
on the power pole, usually called pole pigs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:P...se-closeup.jpg

One for every house, what a waste of money and extremely untidy. I've
got one huge transformer at the end of the street that powers 50 or 100
houses, through underground wires you cannot see.

No, one for many houses. Often one for a street.

No pole pigs anymore?

They still have transformers on poles but I don't think they ever had
one per house, except maybe if there was only one house in the area (I
don't know how big the area or distance has to be. one or two km?)

I live in a rowhouse with 8 houses in the same building, and there is a
transformer at the end of the building for all us. It burned out once,
but I've been here 35 years. And during electrical storms power goes
out once or twice a year**, usually for only a second, but one time in
the winter for 4 days. I was warm enough for 3.5 days but was just
starting to look for a friend to stay at when the power went back on.
My friends didn't have electricity either. **Here they have a very
aggressive policy of trimming trees next to the street to keep their
limbs 2 feet from power lines, and apparently that has lessened the
number of power failures. At least I hope so since it makes some of the
trees ugly.

Just last week they dropped off 5 bundles, about 20 each, of about 3
inch, 20 foot long black plastic piping. I guess that's 2000 feet, that
the delivery man said was to upgrade the electric. Built in 1978 we
already have underground wiring but the nearby old main street and some
side streets don't. Maybe their just storing the stuff here for use
there. Plus 4 or 5 2-meter square boxes, for underground something or
other.

They do have on-demand hot water, on 110V, but it's not used that much,
more for people who don't want to wait for the hot water to come a long
way from the water heater, and it's used at sinks only afa I've heard.
Maybe they can't put out enough for a shower, or maybe people don't get
impatient for the shower water to turn hot.

There are many designs of plugs but I think only 1 or 2 are allowed to
be used in residences, one for dryers and one for stoves, or maybe
they're the same. For some reason I think they're different.

There are hot water urns that hold a gallon or two of water and keep it
hot enough to make tea or coffee that run on 110, and I think you can
get a smaller one, a kettle?, in a few places that cater to immigrants,
but my mother always heated water for things with a kettle on the gas
stove, or electric stove but she liked gas better.) Now I think people
would sooner use a microwave than run 220 volts to the kitchen.

The stove and dryer never get unplugged and you can't even see the
outlets but an empty 220V socket would be dangerous for little chidren.
30 years ago or so they came out with plastic covers that stick in the
110volt outlets, but we didn't have those when I was little. I don't
remember ever sticking anything in an outlet, but of course I had my
bachelors in electrical engineering when I was 5 and my Ph.D. when I was
8. So I knew it was dangerous when I was 2.