Wayne Venomous wrote:
MAN! You soooo couldn't do that in England. We have 240 volts AC and it's enough to send you off to that arcade in the sky very quickly!
I know an electrician that will wire a single-phase 240v outlet without turning off the power, but will not touch live 120v.
His explination was if he makes a mistake 120v will hold him and electocute him, 240v will knock him down. He won't work on a live circuit unless it is neccesary. He has been doing this for 20 years so he must be doing something right.
marshallh wrote:
Thirdly, copper is easy to mine in the US, so thick cables can be used,with consequently high amperages. But in Europe, copper is hard to come by and so the cables are thinner. They can't carry as much current. So they have to up the voltage.
Hope you learned something
Didn't you know copper wire was invented by two scotsmen fighting over a penny?
We got tonnes of copper here! Our pipes are copper, our phonelines are copper, our ADSL Broadband uses copper wires. Don't think that's the issue. We have 240 volts which is pretty much inline with the rest of Europe which mostly uses 220 volts but that doesn't affect it much.
Last edited by Wayne Venomous on Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:20 am, edited 2 times in total.
Wayne Venomous wrote:
MAN! You soooo couldn't do that in England. We have 240 volts AC and it's enough to send you off to that arcade in the sky very quickly!
I know an electrician that will wire a single-phase 240v outlet without turning off the power, but will not touch live 120v.
His explination was if he makes a mistake 120v will hold him and electocute him, 240v will knock him down. He won't work on a live circuit unless it is neccesary. He has been doing this for 20 years so he must be doing something right.
Electricians are psychos! My father in-law (a qualified Electrician) once jammed a screwdriver into a wall socket at my old house to short it out and trip the whole electric supply because "he couldn't be bothered to walk downstairs to switch off the supply". Scared the hell out of me because all I heard was a big bang and then the house plunging into darkness!
