31 Jan
2011
31 Jan
'11
7:28 a.m.
Brian Lanning wrote:
Because of this arrangement, sometimes appliances (I
believe, maybe
I'm wrong) will pull 110 from one of the legs to power electronics in
the appliance.
Our clothes dryer runs the drum motor from one leg and the heaters / timer
from the other - there's not really any
"electronics" (the timer's a simple
switch/cam thing driven by a
small motor) but it seems sensible that other
high-draw appliances might run different parts via different 110V legs, too.
But I think european 220 doesn't work this way.
Is one 220 leg
delivered to the house? And the electronics work off that 220 leg?
Or are two 110 lines delivered and every outlet gets the sum of those
two 110 lines?
In the UK it was typically three 220V [1] phases to the street, I believe -
but only one of those would then make it as far as the house (resulting in
certain faults causing just part of the street to go dead as a phase was lost :-)
[1] or 230V, or 240V... I can never remember exactly. Historically the UK was
on 240V, but they harmonised with the rest of Europe which, IIRC, is 230V.
If it's not two separate legs, I'm thinking
that it will be impossible
to wire an american 220 appliance to work with european 220. Is this
right?
As others said, a step-down would work - but the number of 220V US appliances
are relatively few IME, and those that are may not require the split-power
arrangement to function. One gotcha is that US power is 60Hz and Europe 50Hz,
which might have an effect on anything that relies on line frequency for timing.
cheers
Jules