17-04-2017, 05:00 PM
I must admit, havng been Stateside a few times, I was unimpressed by the use of 110vac supplies and their blaise attitude to it.
You walk into a bathroom. No pull cord, just a standard light switch inside the door. The sink has a power socket next to it for your hair drier, if they could get away with a socket in the shower they would. The small kettle (and it is small) that is often supplied is of the lowest wattage it can be to boil water without cooking the power outlet. The same applies if you get an ironing board and iron, the lowest they can get away with. The plugs themselves are a bit of a joke with no slieved pins and the earth often an optional extra. it's all very much a bygone age when it comes to standards. Cabling is often double the thickness when compared to our standards but for a basic table lamps it's not unusual to find the cable from the power point to the lamp itself is warm to the touch.
Outside, not much better. In major cities it's all buried but get outside into the burbs and power posts abound with local transformers on posts, along with the odd juiced squirrel that got unlucky when jumping the excuse for an insulator. A cooked racoon or brown bear is not unusual either.
We are lucky in this country, we have a supergrid. The US system is still stuck back in the 50s and is often creaking at the seams.
No, I think our adoption of 240vac is an inspired choice, and our supergrid even more so.
You walk into a bathroom. No pull cord, just a standard light switch inside the door. The sink has a power socket next to it for your hair drier, if they could get away with a socket in the shower they would. The small kettle (and it is small) that is often supplied is of the lowest wattage it can be to boil water without cooking the power outlet. The same applies if you get an ironing board and iron, the lowest they can get away with. The plugs themselves are a bit of a joke with no slieved pins and the earth often an optional extra. it's all very much a bygone age when it comes to standards. Cabling is often double the thickness when compared to our standards but for a basic table lamps it's not unusual to find the cable from the power point to the lamp itself is warm to the touch.
Outside, not much better. In major cities it's all buried but get outside into the burbs and power posts abound with local transformers on posts, along with the odd juiced squirrel that got unlucky when jumping the excuse for an insulator. A cooked racoon or brown bear is not unusual either.
We are lucky in this country, we have a supergrid. The US system is still stuck back in the 50s and is often creaking at the seams.
No, I think our adoption of 240vac is an inspired choice, and our supergrid even more so.
