Why 240v ac

Keep in mind that this means the ampacity of the wiring as well as the breaker. And I hate having to trust breakers to keep my house from burning down, so why push them?

The second question involves the neutral wire. Since it has all four wires, a Type 14 can convert into a Type 6 of the same or lesser amperage see Figure 6. A Type 14 can convert into two V circuits, one from each of the hot legs combined with the neutral see Figure 8. A Type 6 cannot convert into V because it has no neutral to tie one of the hot legs to. You can purchase adapters to convert between various plugs and receptacles. If you have experience working with AC wiring, you can construct many of these yourself.

You may not need something this involved, but know that as long as you have the service, you can get your new gear up and running! Tim Deagan TimDeagan likes to make things. He casts, prints, screens, welds, brazes, bends, screws, glues, nails, and dreams in his Austin, Texas, shop. He's spent decades gathering tools based on the idea that one day he will come up with a project that has a special use for each and every one of them.

Tim likes to learn and try new things. A career troubleshooter, he designs, writes, and debugs code to pay the bills. He has worked as a stagehand, meat cutter, speechwriter, programmer, sales associate at Radio Shack, VJ, sandwich maker, computer tech support specialist, car washer, desk clerk, DBA, virtual CIO, and technical writer.

He's run archeology field labs, darkrooms, produce teams, video stores, ice cream shops, consulting teams, developers, and QA teams. Our websites use cookies to improve your browsing experience. Some of these are essential for the basic functionalities of our websites.

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Photography and diagrams by Tim Deagan Read articles from the magazine right here on Make:. Get one today. Figure 3: V receptacles use combinations of the same wires There are at least 20 types of 3- or 4-wire V connectors defined by NEMA. Figure 6: Type 14 to Type 6 converter The second question involves the neutral wire.

Figure 9: My custom-built adapter. By Tim Deagan. Tim Deagan. Related Stories from Make:. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Interviews Answers to Science Questions. Pages: [ 1 ] 2 Go Down. Why is mains electricity v AC? The company wanted to get rid of it and gave away AC fans for free.

The shock of DC is easier to handle than AC. Having been shocked many times in my life this can hurt us. To go to volts ac will kill us faster. I am surprized to learn they use this in the UK. As I read the daily teletype, people were sometimes getting killed chopping ice from their refrigerators with a knife or ice pick and hitting the wires.

Other people merely destroyed their freon in the process. Other people died by picking up series street lighting which could rise to volts when wires fell down.

Thus volt street lights can give you a volt shock. In Brooklyn Tech H. Well stupidly I did it and found no effect. But then I said "Your have to squeeze" and then I did and I got a shock but it was more funny than bad.

The street lights were not V but originally consisted of many arc lamps wired in series that is why such a high voltage was employed. Although domestic supply is rated at V many houses have a 2 phase supply giving V for higher power loads One of the problems with DC supplies is that arcs persist try taking a running lamp out of its socket!

One of the reasons for employing a series connection and a constant current supply was because arc lamps have a negative dynamic resistance and must be supplied from a constant current source as I found out at the age of ten when I shorted out the feed resistor! The UK was, of course, and still is, a member of the union that limited the consumption of domestic vacuum cleaners to W, allegedly "to save energy". Politics, not physics, rules the EU.

The giveaway is the proposed limit on hairdryers, kettles and lawnmowers to - you guessed it, W. The official reason is half honest: reduced power not energy!

It's bloody obvious that when it comes to heating or evaporating water, the energy requirement has little or nothing to do with power consumption: indeed a low power kettle will require slightly more energy to heat through a given temperature range because the surface loss rate at any given temperature is the same.

I apologise for bringing politics into a technological discussion and have removed my strongly held views on brexit. William McC Sr.