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Hi Louis! *WAVES*

~When the washer draws a lot of power when it's heating it automatically shuts off the dryer until the heating is done. Then it lets the dryer to continue.

Can we then assume the dryer has mechanical (not electronic controls)and that there is no "push-to-start" button?

To me is is interesting to see the various safeguards used when ordianry line voltage is 220v!

~The wiring rules in this case would be similar to an electric shower or water heater i.e. local isolating double pole switch on a dedicated circuit with an RCD/MCB.

IIRC the neutral here in this country may not be switched or otherwise interrupted all the way to the load. Of course two-pole switches are desrable with our 220v which has two "hot" leads. Sometimes double-pole swithces are not used with 220v circuits here (Only ONe of two "hots" are switched; this poses the hazard of a potentially live circuit should there be a ground-fault even with the aplliance/load switched "off".

Thanks all, always a learning experience here
 
Neutral switching...

Toggleswitch:
Neutral is switched too because it is unsafe not to do so. Theoretically the voltage should be zero but that cannot be guaranteed. I live in a 1930s apartment and in my bathroom the light was double switched too. (Till the 1990s we had a 220V system with two hot wires and no neutral at all)

Louis:
Like Toggleswitch I was also wondering how electronic dryers react on switching on and off the power supply. I have this Asko washing machine and find it very frustrating that I cannot interrupt the program without starting again at the beginning of the cycle, something that was no problem with my mechanical Miele.
 
Waves back at the audience LOL

I read a warning somewhere too that electronic controlled dryers could give a problem on such an automatic box. My Miele dryer has electronic controls and a start button but it works on this box. You only have to restart the Miele when the door has been opened.

My Miele washer works in the same way. After a power failure it just will continue the cycle. This being an older Miele you can't open it when it's running but I can open the door with the extra mechanical door opener behind the lint trap door, add laundry and then close the door again. The Miele will continue from where it was stopped.

BTW, I don't think my set up would meet standard safety regulations, but it's not within reach from the shower.

Apologies to Ingemar for hijacking the thread! Is this interesting enough to start a new thread? For instance about electrical installations in Europe?
 
Louis,

I am sure that your set up is not according to the regulations. I remember seeing a picture of your bathroom with loose electrical cords all over the place!
 
Maybe we should start a thread about the various inventive and possibly a bit risky solutions to connect appliances to the power supply?
 
~Apologies to Ingemar for hijacking the thread!

I should be saying that! Thanks guys for indulging my silly questions!

If we are to start a new thread, I'd love to hear how the various countries in Europe converted from 110v to 220v. Sounds like it was a bitch-and-a half (difficult) to do!
 
~Maybe we should start a thread about the various inventive and possibly a bit risky solutions to connect appliances to the power supply?

Hmmmmmmmmmmm, sounds to me somebody wants to be slapped! LOL

Toggles,

No silly questions, I know you're intrigued by this kind of electrical stuff. I'm always intrigued by other systems as well. When I got online in 1997 it wasn't only appliances that had my interest but I also searched a lot on the American electrical system.
 
Louis,

I had no intention to offend you with my suggestion for a new thread, but your solution for connecting washers/dryers to the mains just reminded me of my own set up which is certainly not up to current regulations. I am about to open a new thread in the "Super" forum about this.
 
Toggleswitch:

Normal 230V in Europe is supplied as a 230V Live (Hot) and a nominally 0V neutral. It's the same as a 110V circuit in the USA.

However, it is never a good idea to assume that a neutral wire is 0V, in theory it should be but there are various conditions that could be present that could give you a shock.

Double pole switches are required where something needs to be fully isolated for maintenance purposes e.g. someone wants to service a washing machine. For safety reasons, it's desirable to fully disconnect the machine from the mains supply i.e. both hot and neutral.

Normal on/off switching is usually just single pole cutting the hot part of the circuit only as all you're doing is interrupting the flow.
 
Irish plugs and sockets

MRX's description of European plugs is great, and I thought it might be interesting to note that for many years, the antecdent of the modern Schuko 7/4 (Schutzkontakt) plug found in most of Europe was also common in Ireland. This was because of the involvement of Siemens-Schuckert in the construction of the Ardnacrusha hydro-electric power plant in the 1930s.

For many years, Irish homes had a wide range of socket outlets - two pin schuko-style (grounded and ungrounded sockets and plugs), three-pin round (BS 546, generally in 15 amp for the kitchen) , and eventually the modern BS 1363 13 amp UK fused plug and socket! Ireland moved to the latter system in the 60s because of close proximity with the UK and not wanting an incompatible system between UK parts of Northern Ireland and the Republic. Oddly enough, voltage differences took much longer to harmonise! Strange that the UK didn't harmonise to the Schuko system (or perhaps inevitable...)

I can just recall my maternal grandparents farmhouse in the 70s where the kitchen had some 13amp sockets and some 15 amp sockets (including one for the Speed Queen wringer-washer!), and the other rooms had a mix of grounded and un-grounded Schuko-style sockets! The other grandparents had Schuko-style throughout, grounded in the kitchen, ungrounded elsewhere...hard to believe that such a messy system persisted for years...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardnacrusha
 
Schuko was the preferred and official Irish standard for plugs and sockets for quite a long time. It's still referenced in the wiring standards and national electrical standards.

Basically what happened was that the ESB (Electricity Supply Board) adopted the original Schuko system in the 1920s as it fitted into the the 220V 50Hz system that they had standardised on by 1927.

The UK system was not considered as there was no single UK standard i.e. the old round pin UK system had at least 6 different types of incompatible plugs and there were various voltages in use in the UK before they finally settled on 240V 50Hz in the 1960s! Then moved to 230V 50Hz to harmonise with the rest of Europe.

Schuko and 220V was pretty much a mature and stable standard by the late 20s, so it made a lot of sense to adopt it. It was widely used in other European countries even by that stage.

During WWII it became impossible for Irish electricians to get their hands on Schuko fittings as they all came from Northern continental europe i.e. Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia etc.
Ireland's electrical market size possibly didn't make it worth anyone's while to manufacture electrical fittings locally, so UK fittings started to appear. So, you begin to see the UK 15A round pin plug and socket system appearing in homes in the 1940s and into the 50s.

Schuko came back again after WWII, but at that stage there was a mess with a mixture of old UK round pin and schuko sockets.

The UK was in the process of abolishing the use of the old round pin system which was very cumbersome and had a lot of problems i.e. umpteen different types of plugs etc and was moving to the current rectangular pin system used today.

BS1363 was specifically designed to be totally incompatible with its predecessors so that it would force a standardisation on a single safe system.

Ireland had a slightly different mixture of standards, but it made sense for us to do the same thing and get rid of the mix.

Both countries were in a similar position and wanted to get rid of a "system" that was poorly standardised and relied heavily on the use of adaptors in the home.

e.g. in the UK it was impossible to plug a 5amp plug into a 15amp socket without an adaptor, yet these fittings all co-existed in homes and offices! So, if you tried to plug your vacuum cleaner into the socket in the kitchen it might not have fitted.

Also, it made sense as we share a land border with the UK so, had we continued to use Schuko we would have had 2 different plug/socket systems on the Island of Ireland.

Today, IS401 (BS1363) plugs are required to be fitted to all appliances sold in the Republic of Ireland and the BS1363 socket system is the default standard in homes and offices. You won't really find anything else in use at this stage.

However, the Schuko system is still referenced in the modern wiring standards and can crop up in special uses e.g. if we need to connect something >13amps.

It's also still referenced in the official irish guides to how to wire a plug!

Ireland never moved away from German wiring practices though. We do not use ring circuits, rather we use 16 or 20amp radials to power socket outlets and the Siemens originated "diazed" or "neozed" cartridge fuse system was always used on our distribution panels rather than the UK system. This is the same as the fuse system found in most of Northern Europe (except France and the UK)

It's weird though, I think we're possibly the only country to have used Schuko and actually dumped the system. Most countries have standardised on it having moved away from older national standards.

http://www.esb.ie/main/energy_home/plug_safety.jsp
 
Diazed Fuses

Here's the old diazed fuses that you'll see in many houses in Ireland wired pre 1980s.

Fuses continued to be used here along side RCDs (GFCIs). Electricians considered them safer than breakers right up until the 1980s!
All Irish distribution boards still have a single "main fuse" of the neozed/diazed type. The idea is that if the whole board over loads / there is a fire the fuse will melt. They are still considered a little more fail safe than an electromechanical breaker.
 
Picture

That picture was the only one I could find to illustrate the old fuses and it actually shows a broken fuse carrier. :)
 

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