Another mains fuse hits the streets

Love this; you'd never know if that tingling feeling was water or electricity !

Agree about hairdryer etc. outlet in bathrooms (shaver socket not advisable) and I have sockets in my airing cupboard to facilitate this. Essential to have accessible power for htg appliances when boiler breaks down and for the hairdryer.

 

Nice picture above but those IEC plugs are way too small, with tiny contact areas. And they should be fused too
Let’s be serious, shall we?

 

Not much room for the loaf (or is it cheese?) .

 

Not using that one, was just using to test continuity. All the mains IEC going to kit are 1.5mm leads. However IEC plugs are only rated at 10a anyway. The hifi will never pull anywhere near that. I’ve always used 13a fuses in all my kit in the past.

Internal cabling is all silver plated 2.5mm cable, rated at 16A. External cable will be the same. The cable sheath is silicone also which has very good fire protection, it won’t even burn with a blowtorch!



The lights on my ceiling pull 400w, probably more than the hifi!

 

It was easier just to buy a bamboo chopping board for £8 rather than make something up.

 

Hmm, every house has a 63A or 80A or 100A fuses in the meter tails

 

This is connected to its very own circuit protected by a 16a circuit. If it shorts out it trips instantly.

 

With all this talk about electricity, perhaps a wind-up gramophone might be the way to go...

 

What are you doing in those houses with so high amperage?

 

Wind-up is definitely the theme of many posts here.

 

If anyone asks, my wife is a potter and she has a massive kiln.

 

It's quite normal, a thing EEs call diversity: deals with, say, cooker (up to 32A) + electric shower (9-10Kw, so 40A @240Vac) plus.. all the other little things everyday life we take for granted.

 

I hope that's not a euphemism

 

42A breaker on our A/C as well!

 

Ok, some mismatch had in my head, on older flat we have 16A on each line which is most common size. There are three lines incoming, so somewhere upstream has to be bigger one.

 

My point was that this magic fuse was inevitably in series with other fuses that you cannot change in your own house. These days a few MCBs and RCCBs as well

 

My daughter has a potter kiln too. She had a 64 A dedicated line installed. But no hi-fi at work, just a Bluetooth speaker job that works on batteries. No need for a magic fuse.

 

Exactly so. Even if you have some control inside your premises, the mains as supplied to the premises has its own impedance over which you have no control at all.

See for example http://www.acoustica.org.uk/other/mains_Z.html:

"One of the factors frequently overlooked by the hifi comics is that the electrical mains is not infinitely powerful; more specifically it can exhibit significant reluctance to supply enough electrons. Sometimes the impression is left that you could have the entire output of SIzewell B on tap if you buy a big enough power cord. In this year's colour, of course....
It ain't necessarily so; it ain't even close. "​

The impedance of the mains supply varies - there's no standard for what you get as a consumer - but is typically several times that of an equipment fuse. The technical argument that one fuse is the key bottleneck is not real. And the spurious "the fuse has impact because it's in the first metre of the power supply not the last" fails to understand electrical circuits.

If someone enjoys safely trying out various fuses that's fine. It's a hobby and enjoyment does not need justification. However the technical explanations around fuses that I have seen don't work under conventional physics/electronics.

 

Common sense. Fuses are necessary, not a necessary evil. They do nothing to electricity, they just blow when there’s a problem. Period.
Same with wires, by the way. Their job is to bring power to our equipment. They don’t add distortion or anything. But being an electrician I’m biased.

 

Yes but we need to know if you’re negatively or positively biased otherwise how will we know which way the current flows ?