Electrical problems.

[Gary D]

I think most of the high voltage cables on the pylons are aluminium, mainly to save weight. Aluminium house wiring may be copper plated.

[bastonjock]

6 hours ago, Gary D said:

I think most of the high voltage cables on the pylons are aluminium, mainly to save weight. Aluminium house wiring may be copper plated.

The cable used at my farm is aluminium with copper plating , the big problem with aluminium cable is that you cannot bend it too often or it breaks 

[Mike J]

15 hours ago, Dave Hounddriver said:

Are you sure?  How did you wire you 220V dryer or range?

I converted an older garage into my home shop.  Lots of 110 outlets, even some in the ceiling on four separate circuits.   The wiring for the 110 circuits used what is referred to as 12/2 with ground.  Three conductors, one hot at 110, one neutral, and one ground that is a bare wire.  In addition a separate 220 circuit in case I ever needed it.  It had its own 30 amp breaker, four conductors in the cable.  Two 110, one neutral, one ground.  I am not an electrician, but I think in the US the "neutral" is what the others posters here call the "return"?  

[Tommy T.]

1 hour ago, Mike J said:

the "neutral" is what the others posters here call the "return"? 

I am also not an electrician. However I am a bit educated about it - enough to be dangerous.

I would be positive that the "return" noted here must be the so-called "neutral" in USA. There must be a return of power or there won't be any power - or at least not efficient power. You might still get a nasty shock, however.

[Huggybearman]

17 hours ago, Tommy T. said:

I have to go to Wilcon soon anyway to pick floor tiles. I will check for GFI's while I am there.

Not sure if you followed a different thread about electricity a while back, but it mentioned AVR (automatic voltage regulators). I will have the sparky install one of those on the house for all circuit protection. If I remember correctly it will protect from lightning surges as well as low voltage. If not, then I will also get a whole house surge protector. I don't want fried laptop, TV and other appliances...no no no!

Thats interesting Tommy, re the whole house AVR's. What if the AVR gets fried due an over volt condition? Is it easy to get it back on line? If not then the whole house is without electricity, possibly for quite some time till it gets fixed or replaced, whereas individual AVR's can be replaced or re-fused easily. 

Just a thought.

Ken

[Huggybearman]

3 hours ago, Tommy T. said:

I am also not an electrician. However I am a bit educated about it - enough to be dangerous.

I would be positive that the "return" noted here must be the so-called "neutral" in USA. There must be a return of power or there won't be any power - or at least not efficient power. You might still get a nasty shock, however.

Thats correct. In the UK we have live, usually with brown insulation, neutral, which is the return, usually with blue insulation and the earth or ground which is yellow and green striped insulation. But then usually our appliance plugs are three pin which also incorporate the 'earth' as well. I have no idea how the earth works over here, (or the US for that matter) with only the live and neutral wires.

We are just starting on the detailed design of our house so I am at the beginning of a very steep learning curve with the way things are done over here. I just hope our electrical contractor knows what he is doing! I am following this thread VERY closely! 

Ken

[jimeve]

What I don't understand is a normal two pinned Ph plug, you can insert it in any way, but USA and UK plugs have a live and neutral or hot and return. 

[Gary D]

4 minutes ago, jimeve said:

What I don't understand is a normal two pinned Ph plug, you can insert it in any way, but USA and UK plugs have a live and neutral or hot and return. 

For most applications you can transpose the live and neutral. In the UK the plugs that fit the outlets are internally fused to the live pin so it's preferable not to.  I've mentioned this before, the neutral is the centre point of the three phases which is then gounded at the generation and various points during trans mission, this is considered a dirty earth as it is carrying all the return currents. The seperate safety earth is nominally the same potential. If you measure between the neutral and ground/ earth you will see a small voltage. The Philippines doesn't supply a neutral but instead supply a local ground which becomes you dirty ground so very similar to a neutral. If you want a safety ground you supply it yourself locally with a grounding rod driven into the ground, usually close to your distribution board.

Just a word of warning, don't expect your local electrician to understand any of this.

[Jack Peterson]

 Very Interesting to those that can understand these technical posts BUT I sit and wonder if they are  helping @jimeve cure his faulty Outlets here in the PI 

[Tommy T.]

4 hours ago, Huggybearman said:

Thats interesting Tommy, re the whole house AVR's. What if the AVR gets fried due an over volt condition? Is it easy to get it back on line? If not then the whole house is without electricity, possibly for quite some time till it gets fixed or replaced, whereas individual AVR's can be replaced or re-fused easily. 

Just a thought.

Ken

Well, that's a good thought, Ken. My limited understanding is that these AVR's for whole house are supposed to be fairly robust. I don't remember now who in the forum, but someone knew a lot about them. I guess the other thing to do is to get a super heavy duty surge protector for whole house to protect the AVR if it won't be up to the job? More research needed for me, I think...

I guess I don't want to have a bunch of little AVR's around the house. But the idea of the whole house going down is not a good scenario.