Re: x10 over three phase

[Nigel Orr <nigel.orr@xxxxxxx>]

At 13:22 04/03/99 -0000, you wrote:

If this is going too off-topic for ukha, feel free to email!

>Right, the story is as follows:  I have installed an electric shower
>which wants something like 30 amps.

That's not much- 7kW?

>  My existing cable coming out of the
>floor into my fusebox/meter board is not heavy enough to carry the
extra
>load.  Therefore the Electricity board will have to dig up my path to
>lay a new cable.

OK, that sort of makes sense (you might like to post to the Usenet group
uk.d-i-y to make sure the electrician hasn't got his sums wrong though-
typical house supply is on a 60A or 100A fuse, and unless you've got
electric cooker and oven, electric heating, and a big house, I would have
thought that would suffice).  Have you been told this by the electricity
board, or was it just the electrician saying "you'll need a new supply
for
that"?  Can you see what size of supply fuse (right next to the meter)
is
fitted?

>>My electrician says the supply will be "balanced over two
phases."
>>New one on me- unless it's a '2 phase' supply- eg 115V in phase
115V
>>antiphase or 230V in phase 230V antiphase... or does it mean that 2
of
>the
>> 3 phases will be balanced?  Maybe someone else can fill a gap in
my
>> knowledge...
>
>My house power will all be 230v - how they do it I don't know.  My
>knowledge of phases is pretty sparse.  I think phases work like this:
>Rather than having one AC huge wave, the power is split between two
>moderate sized waves.  If this is wrong someone let me know!

That's correct- but in the UK power is usually supplied as single phase or
3-phase.  The 3 'waves' in 3-phase have 1/150th of a second time delay
between each of them.  Maybe they're supplying a separate phase for your
shower (which presumably doesn't need X-10), but I've not heard of it being
done like that before, and alot of people have 10.8kW showers (45A), and
electric cookers (30A) in their houses, as well as all the usual lighting
etc needs.  There may be some aspect of your installation which makes it
the exception though.

Nigel
--
Nigel Orr                  Research Associate   O   ______
Underwater Acoustics Group,              o / o    \_/(
Dept of Electrical and Electronic Engineering     (_   <   _ (
University of Newcastle Upon Tyne             \______/ \(

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