30 Apr
2012
30 Apr
'12
12:05 p.m.
Cookers, water heaters, shwoer heaters, etc
normally have their own
dedicated circuits fused at 30A, 32A, 45A or even 60A. It is rare
for these devices ot be plugged in, it is possible [...]
In my - admittedly rather limited - experience, water heaters tend to
be wired in, with no explicit connector, whereas stoves[%] tend to be plugged in with a rather heavy and distinctive
four-conductor plug.
(Two mains phases, neutral, and ground.) Clothes dryers - which you
Sotves (what we call cookers) are normally hardwired. Obviously you can't
conenct one with a 13A plug. But AFAIK there is no reason why you can't
use a higher current connector if you want to.
didn't mention unless UK English is even stranger
to my eyes than I
CLothes driers are what we call 'Tumble driers' They just plug in on a
normal 13A plug. Typvically the heater elemets is rated a little under
3kW, allowing enough current to also run the drum motor and control unit.
thought - are like stoves in this regard. I'm not
sure what a "shower
heater" is; if it's for warming up the room before/during showering,
I'd expect that to be wired in unless it's a portable room heater which
just happens to get used for that room.
Now, a shower heater is an instantaneous water heater used to heat the
water for a shower bath. They would almost always be hard wired, the
regualtions prohibit any socket outlets in a 'room containing a fixed
bath or shower'.
Of course, not all stoves, nor clothes dryers nor water heaters, are
electric. I'm talking about just the electric ones here, the ones
where the principal energy source is electric mains.
Oer here, gas tuimble driers are _very_ uncommon.
[%] Are these "cooker"s? I'm talking about the thing that produces
heat for preparing food in a kitchen. Often bundled into the same
appliance as an oven; indeed, without an oven there's a tendency to
call them something other than stoves - `hotplate' is the word that
comes to mind, though IMO that usage is a bit of a misnomer.
Over here a 'cooker' tends to mean a device with an oven and some
hotplates (often 4). You can also get seprate ovens and hotplate units
(often called 'hobs' [1]). In general the separate units are designed to
be fixed into kitchen furniture ,the complte 'cookers' are free-standing
appliances. All are normally hardwired to the mains, but IMHO don't have
to be.
[1] A term which has a rather different menaing to me.
-tony