How are your appliances connected

[brisnat81]

We have a 6.8kw cool/8kw heat Reverse Cycle heat pump, that cools and heats an area of 4.5m by 8.5m.

Prior to Metrication, we used Imperial Units and even today, copper pipes and tap fittings are still referred to in Imperial units. Colloquially that is, scientifically they are converted to mm.

Washing machine taps etc are 1/2 inch (But a different thread to the US) large outside taps are 3/4 inch. Copper water pipes are usually 1/4 or 1/2 inch. Galvenised pipes are a minimum of 1/2 inch usually.

Waste pipes are measured in mm which are usually described as Mils in the same way we describe mL.

 

[mielabor]

Reply on post# 272482:

When moving to the Netherlands, having air-conditioning is not of primary concern as the outside temperature seldom rises over 30C (86F). I have a two-room apartment that is insolated on two sides (the other two sides are joining other apartments) so I have no windows that are in the shade. On sunny days in summer it can be hot inside and opening windows doesn't help much as hot air that rises up along the heated walls is the only refreshment I can get. I tried a portable airco with a capacity of 1500 watts of cooling power but I could only manage a temperature reduction from 35C to 32C and it made a lot of noise plus it used a lot of electricity. So I have abandoned it and just bear the heat. I think that the duration of the period that the temperature in my apartment is over 30C is about one month per year or so and usually split into several shorter periods.

So there you have it, there is not much information about air-conditioning available here in the Netherlands. I do not know of anyone who has it.

 

[mielabor]

..."But I can't picture a flue for a huge building (say two metres/yards wide) blowing out the side of a building."...

Neither can I. Here every apartment has it's own furnace. Apartment buildings with a central furnace were built in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s but that set-up has fallen out of favour. Later apartment buildings and renovated apartment buildings have individual furnaces for each apartment with flues through the wall.

 

[dj-gabriele]

The conversion from BTU to Watt/Hour is 1 Kwatt/hour = 3.412 btu

As an exampe again I can tell you that my house is fitted with split type reverse heat pump air conditioners that are really quiet (around 32 db at full power) and to cool a room of 3,5x3,5 metres (132 sqfeet) we needed to install a unit with a power of 2500Wh (it is 8500btu) and on really hot days (outside temp of 40°C) we can't get less than 26°C even after more than an hour of contiuous operation, shame on the double glass window that is 2,5x2,8 metres...

Also in Italy it was common (a bit less now) to name pipes according to their size in inches. Actually, if you ask for a 19 mm pipe you could see printed on the pipe the mark 3/4 inch too.
The same is for air conditioners, you see 3 marks: "frigorie", the same as calories but for cooling, BTU and KW hour.

The use of non S.I. units is illegal since the 1973 I think and before the wide adoption of the S.I. units there was the c.g.s. system (centimetre, gram, second) system that is called "the engeneering system" and used similar units to the S.I. system but had many interesting variaton like in the definition of an Ampere ond the force being expressed in KGF (Kilograms force) rather than Newtons.

We have the same conversion for gas as the one Theo pointed out, corrected for zone and gas type/density. This month we had a correction coefficent of 1,03. The LHV is of 38MJ/cubic metre so it's not real methane in the pipes (that would have been 49,98MJ/cubic metre) .

I called my water company today and I've asked them about the heating, well... I couldn't expect anything worse, I waited for something like 5 minutes and the girl at the phone didn't know a thing. Hopefully I was able to call the administrator for our condo and this is what he told me:
it turns out that the heater plant is on the building next to mine, at number 24, just under a sport suppiles retailer and the heating is via gas that derives from gassification of biomaterial (garbage I believe) but I think that the thing runs on "standard" gas like my hobs and it claims to use "greener energy sources" only because there is a "green certificates" campaign. Like when you buy the right to burn fossil fuel if somebody else generates energy in a enviromentally safe way for you and sells you the green certificate of clean energy production. I hope that it is clear, it's becoming a real mess in the energy generation field because of these "green certificates" market.

And again I hope my Italian-English is clear enough for you to undestand, there'll never be enough proof reading!

 

[mielabor]

Answer to post# 272493:

Neutrals are sometimes switched and sometimes not. Ordinary light switches are single pole and only the hot wire is switched. For special situations, like bathrooms switches are two pole and neutral is also switched. Main switches in the fuse box are always double pole and the neutral is switched there too.

The switches have not been changed after the introduction of the neutral wire. With the two hot wires only one wire was switched in ordinary light switches. The only change is that the new fuse box that was installed has switches. Previously one could only switch off the electric circuits by removing the fuses. Also the new fuse box only has fuses for the hot wires. The neutral is not fused. The previous fuse box had two fuses per circuit.

The two hot wires system was not in general use in the Netherlands. As far as I know it was only used in the centre part of Amsterdam. The only other place that I know of where this system was used is Brussels in Belgium. Maybe they still use it there.

The metric system was forced upon us by the French during the French occupation in the early years of the nineteenth century. There was much opposition against the new units and when the French left in 1815 it was uncertain whether the metric system would be continued. However, in 1816 the "Dutch Metric System" was introduced and made compulsory by law. It was similar to the previous metric system except that the unit names were derived from old units. E.g. a kilogram was called "Dutch pound" and a kilometre was a "Dutch mile". The "Dutch Metric System" was abolished in 1870 and from that time the international unit names were used. Note that many people still use "pound" and "ounce" for 500 grams and 100 grams respectively although the use of these names has been illegal since 1937. So "Dutch pound" is 1000 grams and "pound" is 500 grams.

Nowadays almost every country uses the metric units. The only exceptions are the USA, Myanmar (Birma) and Liberia still use the imperial units. An odd company indeed

It is indeed curious that we still use inch sizes for pipe fittings (in Dutch we say "gas thread" for these sizes). I have no information that this will be changed in the near future.

 

[toggleswitch]

Your English is fantastic, guys!

Better than mine!

Thanks everyone for all of your efforts and for going out of your way to get answers. What a truly magnificent group!

 

[toggleswitch]

~we can't get less than 26°C even after more than an hour of contiuous operation, shame on the double glass window that is 2,5x2,8 metres...

One hour is probably not enough time. In concrete buildings there is a tremedous amount of heat stored in the concrete.

Also air-condtioners must be properly sized. Too big, and they won't dehumidify. Too small and they won't cool enough.

In my own house I added central air-condtioning and purposely sized it a bit too small (dehumdification is most important here. Smaller units run nearly constantly and dehumidify better]. I left the through-the wall-units in [that the house came with] for quick cooling. Once the room is cooler, only the central system runs.

I understand that Europe as a whole has a more temperate and
reasonable climate, which of course varies county-by-country. But I also do remember that due to climactic changes there were a large number of deaths in France during a relatively recent heat-wave. Attributable, perhaps to lack of residential A/C.

Hey Louis *WAVES* don't you have air-conditioning?

My aunt (who has had central air-conditoing since before 1970) goes back to visit her native Greece. She was complaining bitterly that there are (were? )no window screens there and that the bugs ate her up! Open the wondows and die of noise from motorcycles, bugs and dust. Close them and die of heat. *LOL* she was also annoyed that the windows she saw open "INWARDS" making blinds and shades imposible. It's all what you get used to, I guess...... In all fairness she loved the wrap-around balconies (the size of a large room) and huge glass "French" doors.

Of course now there are split-sytem reverse-cycle units showing up!

 

[toggleswitch]

~These sockets are the norm around here and are used for the 80% of white appliances and 100% of brown appliances.

OK white-good is major appliances. What are brown-goods?

Grey-goods (to me) means semi- or completely illegal products used in the U.S. that are inteded for other markets!
Ever seen cleaning-product brands (known in America) with Russian or Hebrew labels? I have. LOL

 

[chestermikeuk]

Colours of Goods...!!!

White Goods - Washers, Dryers, Cooking & Refrigeration etc

Brown Goods - TV`s, Video, Hi-Fi, Audio etc

Pink Goods - Haircare, Razors, Beauty prods etc

Now off to photograph my utilities!!! very educational thread!!!

 

[dj-gabriele]

Brown goods

Brown appliances are DVD, VCR, TV... all the electronics, everything that used to be "brown" in colour and now is silver or black LOL

Hahhahaha

Don't worry, our air-con are all properly sized by the engeneer and my house has fiber-glass insulatinon in the double wall all around the external permimeter, when I tought about "more than an hour" I meant all morning or afternoon after a switch off (like when we are all out)... even if we usually start them in may and the off switch is hit again in september/october.
The first time we had them, it was 1999 or 2000 I think, I was amazed that in only a couple hours of operation the units dumped something like 5 litres of water! I understan what you say about humidity! My parents live in an area where 90% RH is the norm for 300 days a year, terrible! So a dehumidifier runs almost costantly, at times even during winter time when radiators are on.

 

[toggleswitch]

This thread is continued in thread #16408 (yellow section)

"How are your appliances connected #2"

 

[MrX]

There are different types of electricity supply used in different places it depends on a whole range of things including the local geology as that impacts on whether ground rods are effective or not! In some geological conditions there may be serious challenges.

There were also different approaches taken to supply in different eras and in different countries, they're basically all the same and the main thing is that if your system is built to a modern national code and done properly it's usually extremely safe.

In Ireland you basically have two types of supply used.

(3 phase grounded transformer provides this)

In most installations (this is the preferred supply type) we use TN-C-S grounding. Locally referred to as a "neutralised supply." Basically what this means is that an effective ground is achieved as follows:
The power company's neutral is connected to buried earth electrodes all along its route. These are typically at each 'minipilar' where customers are connected to (underground supply) or if it's overhead they're typically grounded regularly at the actual utility poles.

At your house you provide your own grounding system complete with buried earth electrodes too.

All of the ground connections in your house and all of your metal pipework is interconnected to a 'main earth' bar which is connected with a very heavy gauge cable which runs back to the meter cabinet along with your main neutral (blue) and live (brown) cables.

The power company connects the live and neutral to the meter and your ground is interconnected to their neutral at a special connection point before the meter. All this is sealed with anti-tamper seals.

It's more complicated than you'd think!

In general, this type of supply is considered to be extremely safe as the neutral is always ground referenced i.e. isn't floating and also because the supply neutral provides such a solid connection back to the transformer, any 'stray neutrals' caused by faults leaking to earth will be picked up and won't tend to jump along pipework or other metal in the ground.
It also causes any earth leakage to be fairly high current, which trips fuses/breakers quickly.

(3 phase grounded transformer provides this)
The alternative system used in Ireland is referred to as TT
This predominantly crops up in rural areas or where the local supply system is quite old and is not suitable for TN-C-S. Sometimes it's because the system is very reliant on long overhead runs or because the local geology does not permit good grounding everywhere along the network. Also, it was used in some urban areas in the past, but has been largely phased out since the 1960s.

In this case, the customer's grounding system is entirely independent from the network and their protective earth is only provided by local ground electrodes.
The power company supplies Live and Neutral only.

In this case the entire supply has to be fed through a master 2 pole RCD rated at 300mA this is located beside the meter. This is not designed to prevent electric shock, but rather to prevent a situation where a ground fault may not produce enough current to trip a breaker (unlikely but could happen). The consumer also provides RCD protection at 30mA or 10mA on their own final circuits as normal.

Finally there's an IT system.
The transformer does not have a connection to earth i.e. it's "Floating"
This is where the customer supply is isolated from the network completely e.g. supplied via a generator.
This is not normally used at all but occurs when you have your own generator e.g. at a camp site or perhaps at a festival or something.

Also, it is used in hospitals where they may need to avoid any flow back to ground e.g. where heart monitoring or other very sensitive equipment is being used or where there's a risk of introducing currents to the body accidently e.g. in an operating theatre situation.

Special regulations apply in hospitals for this reason.