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We need a lot more electricians

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Re: We need a lot more electricians

#501

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

vel0city wrote: post #269
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She's right. Induction has the speed and response of a gas cooktop with the precision a resistance electric cooktop. This, and also easier cleanability than either of them (basically it doesn't need more cleaning than the rest of your kitchen counter) and much safer (won't heat anything non-metallic that you leave on top, won't heat the surface of the stovetop itself except indirectly via heat transmission from the…

I've got an electric radiant cooktop. It has a number of those features such as easy to clean (just a flat glass panel) and won't heat without detecting a pan and will turn off the element if the pan is removed for more than a couple of seconds. It does get hot itself instead of just heating the pan, but when cooking I don't know that would make much of a difference. You've still got a very hot pan sitting on the coo…

The fact that induction cooktops don't get hot themselves make them even easier to clean. I had a flat glass electric cooktop as well in the past, it was of course much easier to clean than older ones with protruding stoves, but still, some liquids and sauces got stuck to it due to being hot and I had to scrub with a scouring pad or, in the worst case, use a scraper blade. This doesn't happen with induction so 99% of the time, cleaning the induction cooktop just boils down to wiping with a wet microfiber cloth. The scouring pad is seldom needed and I think I've used the scraper once or twice in eight years of having induction. On the other hand, the fact that the surface is less hot also means that you have to wait less to clean it.

I had no idea that some non-induction cooktops could also detect pans, though. In my mind that feature has always been linked to induction. Good to know it's not necessarily like that.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#502

Post by sandos »

amluto wrote: post #234
londons_explore wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> likely have some non-compliance with the current electrical code. It frustrates me that every year quite a lot of people are killed due to old houses not having whole-building GFCI's. A GFCI costs only $20 and can be installed inside 10 minutes. So it seems crazy to be letting people die... Yet typically electrical regs require that if an electrician installs a GFCI, they bring the whole house up to modern standard…

Good luck finding an easy-to-install whole house GFCI in the US market. IMO there should be standardized trip curves so that outlet GFCIs can coordinate with branch breaker GFCIs, which can coordinate with whole-house or other larger GFCIs, etc. You really don’t want a 5mA GFCI on your house. You do want a 5mA GFCI somewhere involved for a regular outlet, though, especially if it’s anywhere damp or wet. (And you prob…

Ive never even heard of a 5mA GFCI. In Sweden afaik 30mA is the standard, and I assume much less likely to be tripped up by tiny faults.

Also, a GFCI install here is a simple and cheap affair. Does not require checking everything else or inspection or upgrading of fuse boxes or consumer unit.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#503

Post by Symbiote »

kennend3 wrote: post #438
Symbiote wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Americans quote large appliance current at 220V or 110V equivalent? From the EV it seems the former, but in that case I'm horrified at how power-hungry your appliances are. A typical new oven sold in Europe is 3.6kW, 16A @ 230V. A new tumble drier is 600W, so about 2.5A at 230V. There's such a range of hot tub and AC sizes I can't compare these.

> Do Americans quote large appliance current at 220V or 110V equivalent? Fist, North America is a 120/240V system, not 110/220. For the life of me i will never understand the confusion over why some people, including North Americans keep referencing 110 volts? The code is clear, 120 Volts +- 5 to 10 percent? Perhaps because the "allowed range" is 110 to 125? If i measure my house right now, it is 121 volts and this i…

(110V: I'm just copying/misremembering, I don't live there. There are places in the Caribbean that do use 110V.)

> Your dryer example seems like it is running on gas?

This is part of my horror. You can't imagine that an electric drier might only use 600W? Try [1]. From the EU site of all rated driers [2] (click "Models distribution") 23% of driers on sale are this efficient. A further 44% with A++ rating are around 900W. (Note the measurement is of the energy needed to dry a load of clothes to the required standard, the maximum power draw is related but not a criteria.) The worst one is still only 2300W!

From a 2013 news article "Europe's Clothes Dryers Consume Half As Much Energy As America's" [3]:

> The study, which was funded by the Super Efficient Dryer Initiative (SEDI), concluded that Europe's heat pump dryers can dry the same amount of clothes as North American conventional dryers using only about half as much energy. The catch is that European heat pump dryers also took about twice as long to dry a load of laundry as North American conventional dryers.

I'll add that American driers appear to be cheaper to buy.

> house sizes ... naturally our appliances are larger and more power hungry

That explains the AC -- though I can still criticise the waste of energy heating/cooling two, three or four times as much space per person -- but it doesn't explain the drier. Do you wear twice as many clothes as I do?

[1] https://www.siemens-home.bsh-group.com/uk/productlist/laundr...

[2] https://eprel.ec.europa.eu/screen/product/tumbledriers

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/06/11/euro...

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#504

Post by shawabawa3 »

atoav wrote: post #455
shawabawa3 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a GFCI installed in my 1930s built house the other week The circuit repeatedly tripped, so the electrician uninstalled it. To install the GFCI he would need to spend 1-2 days splitting circuits to find the leak(s) so instead of ~$40 + 1 hours labour it's potentially thousands of dollars

Yep, that means somewhere there is current flowing through some pipe, some wall, something. And that is bad. 30mA is not much of a threshold, but it has been chosen because currents above that (or currents that flow longer than the 0,03s it should take maximum to trip an RCD will kill people. Not to speak of fire hazards. So, somewhere you have a thing, that could kill you, a firend, a loved one or whomever. And you…

> And you decide to ignore it because money

Absolutely not. We will get it fixed, the electrician just didn't have the time at that point, he's coming back to find the leak

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#505

Post by BlueTemplar »

danans wrote: post #14
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

We are thinking of switching some gas appliances to electric in our old farmhouse but we probably need to rework our electrical panel completely to add high amperage services for an induction range (my wife won't accept an ordinary electric range) and an electric water heater. Fortunately our son is in training as a handyman and that means we can get him working on projects of all kinds around the farm. Of all the tr…

> my wife won't accept an ordinary electric range She's right. Induction has the speed and response of a gas cooktop with the precision a resistance electric cooktop. > and an electric water heater. Make sure it's a heat pump water heater if efficiency and operating cost matter to you.

Resistance does suck, but Halogen is pretty good IMHO.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#506

Post by hooper_ »

LesZedCB wrote: post #249
5544ffee wrote: post #242

I considered beginning an electrician apprenticeship because I just can't sit in a cubicle 40 hours a week anymore. I'm still young enough that the physical aspects aren't an issue, but the overall working conditions, pay and benefits sound terrible. I think I'd rather just learn to repair electronics.

same. if i could find something that's like 50/50 or some other ratio with a similarly scaled pay i think i could make the jump

I sort of went the other way. I started out as an Electrician, and over ~20 years have moved into Data Science (with many steps along the way).

I can't speak for the US, but for Australia, there are many hybrid roles. A few examples of systems include:

* Home Automation

* Industrial Systems (designing & programing factory control systems)

* Building Systems (designing and programing large building HAVC/Access Control systems)

My experiance has been that people who understand and design both physical and software systems can find well paying work. That said, the career path often convoluted and personal relationships with the right people are critical.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#507

Post by londons_explore »

pstoll wrote: post #486
londons_explore wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> likely have some non-compliance with the current electrical code. It frustrates me that every year quite a lot of people are killed due to old houses not having whole-building GFCI's. A GFCI costs only $20 and can be installed inside 10 minutes. So it seems crazy to be letting people die... Yet typically electrical regs require that if an electrician installs a GFCI, they bring the whole house up to modern standard…

How many people die each year from non-GFCI outlets? Data to back it up?

4 people per week in the USA [1]. GFCI devices would prevent almost all of those. There are a very small number of ways to electrocute yourself even with a GFCI installed, but you are unlikely to find one of those unless you have electrical expertise and are suicidal.

There are a few things that aren't practical to protect with a GFCI, such as high voltage grid power transmission cables. But people killed by those I wouldn't think are included in deaths 'at home'.

[1]: https://www.cullanlaw.com/blog/2015/may/may-is-national-elec...

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#509

Post by VLM »

frankus wrote: post #432
VLM wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, essentially "power over thicknet ethernet". Nobody liked that tech. "Worked in the lab, and whenever it breaks we can blame the user for improper abuse" was such a fiasco it resulted in the world being re-networked in twisted pair, which ironically is installed very much like legacy power outlets... Also the only way to replace the outlet would seem to be to rip out the entire wall and splice in new cables like a…

What I'm proposing is that the electrical box (the blue plastic thing that's essentially non-removable in current practice) would have the vampire connection to one or more cables passing into/through it, and the actual device (outlet, switch, light fixture) would plug into some conductors at the back of the box. So you could replace outlets more easily than you can today. The boxes would come in a few varieties base…

You might be in for a difficult discovery about how unreliable consumer-grade connectors have always been across all the history of EE-land, compared to professionally installed (or even amateur installed) wire nuts.

(edited, not to say its impossible; perhaps your innovation would in itself be the world first reliable connector...)

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#510

Post by amluto »

sandos wrote: post #502
amluto wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck finding an easy-to-install whole house GFCI in the US market. IMO there should be standardized trip curves so that outlet GFCIs can coordinate with branch breaker GFCIs, which can coordinate with whole-house or other larger GFCIs, etc. You really don’t want a 5mA GFCI on your house. You do want a 5mA GFCI somewhere involved for a regular outlet, though, especially if it’s anywhere damp or wet. (And you prob…

Ive never even heard of a 5mA GFCI. In Sweden afaik 30mA is the standard, and I assume much less likely to be tripped up by tiny faults. Also, a GFCI install here is a simple and cheap affair. Does not require checking everything else or inspection or upgrading of fuse boxes or consumer unit.

In the US, 5mA is nominally for protection of personnel and 30mA is for protection of equipment.

We don’t have the fancy GFCI classes and selectivity that Europe seems to use.

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