Copper pipe for water is often specified by code in commercial construction. I've heard this is due to lobbying by plumber's unions but not sure about that. Most residential construction will use CPVC or PEX these days.
If you have well water or water from anywhere other than a utility that controls the chemistry correctly, the water can dissolve your pipes. The rainwater from my roof makes copper instantly shiny, which is a bad sign for the copper.
PEX with compression fittings is the closest thing to copper in terms of durability, but exists because of labor savings. Appropriately installed copper is the most durable interior water service and will comfortably outlast the life of the structure.
We have a lot of problems in my county with copper pipes leaking. There are entire plumbing companies dedicated to finding the leaks and repairing them. There are still more companies dedicated to repiping.
I know of developments where they epoxy coated all the piping because they were getting so many leaks.
You can read about the huge class action lawsuits going on involving the local water utility (who is being blamed for water chemistry causing the issues. They point fingers elsewhere, obviously).
I’ve seen a copper pipe where in the middle of the pipe there is a pinhole leak on the top side of the pipe (too far for turbulence, can’t be cause by sediment).
If you want the most durable, I would think it would be either pex-a or perhaps 316 stainless steel (which is a valid code compliant option). But no one really knows, and it’s probably water chemistry dependent. It’s being argued in the courts now (for whatever that’s worth).
Stainless steel is awesome! Unfortunately the connections are not so easy. Stainless steel-to-brass threaded connections are probably safe under most circumstances but are dubious per the code. Push-to-connect fittings often use little stainless teeth to hold the tubing in, and this may work less well when the pipe is nearly as hard as the teeth. (John Guest makes special fittings for stainless steel tubing.) You can’t sweat stainless steel pipes.
Obviously everyone should plumb their houses with swagelok fittings! :)
MegaPress and ProPress are a couple of popular brands.
The also have an advantage that they avoid "hot work" in places where it leads to greater regulation / stringent safety precautions.
On the other hand, I lived in a rowhouse built during a brief window in which it was OK with the code to run PVC from the main into the house. Whatever PVC is good for, it doesn't handle shearing force well. Essentially all of the townhouses needed repairs (a copper "pigtail" through the wall).
Sadly, even today, most plumbers will show up to a job site with petroleum-based flux that most certainly does not meet B813. It can stay in pipes for years, slowly leaching chemicals that do their job: weakening the protective oxide layer in the pipe. Also it tastes and smells terrible.
Ripped it all out and replaced it with CPVC (this was before PEX was really widely available). Never had trouble after that.
We had a city in Illinois do whole city RO and advertise the cleanest water in the country. Well it was the cleanest water going into the pipes, but if you own a house in that city the water coming out of your tap is full of old pipe!
Funnily enough, this is technically true, but would only manifest in a warped reality.
In the acidic/caustic scale, regular water is just slightly on the caustic side of neutral. (pH 5.5 or thereabouts?) - It won't strip the pipes it runs in. But that's not the kind of water we're talking about here. That would be pure distilled water.
It's the near-universal cleaning agent. Because of the complete lack of impurities, distilled water has the ability to absorb fair amounts of almost anything it gets in contact with. It also tastes really bad. (The taste of "nothing" for regular water is our calibrated baseline with various minerals and other impurities. If you take all of that out, the perceptual difference between expected and experienced is quite stark.)
For what it's worth, cavitation and turbulence are much more likely culprits to eat the plumbing material. Also: shoddy quality will always cause problems, regardless of your choice of materials.
Only acidic water (and strongly so) will damage copper pipe.
Most copper pipe will easily last 50-100 years, if not more.
Flouride isn't added in any sort of concentration that would measurably change water Ph.
And more.
Your saturation index is what drives water’s interaction with the surfaces it touches, not just pH. If the index is too high it will deposit what it’s carrying (scale) and if it is too low it will pick up material from the pipe it’s flowing through (corrosive).
These are used in swimming pools, but originally the saturation index was developed by Langelier to protect city pipes from corrosion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water#Langelier_saturat...
IIRC most cities try to run a high saturation index to intentionally lay down scale that further protects the pipes from corrosion.
It may be true that fluoride isn’t in sufficient quantity to impact the saturation index, but that is distinct from pH.
2) There is theory, and there is practice in the field. What you’re referring to is the equivalent of ‘wet bulb temperature’ for temps. Which is a thing, but water conditions for a given area rarely vary like temperature will - and are in control of the local water treatment plant. What you’re referring to was specifically made to measure and help control these conditions.
If copper piping is allowed by local code, they’ll know - and keep it within these ranges. Areas with water that is not easy to keep within these ranges will also corrode galvanized pipe (commonly used for water in most areas), and will likely also corrode brass fittings and valves (including back flow valves) commonly used in many areas, leaching lead, copper, etc. among other things. Those areas prohibit them by code for that reason.
Copper piping will generally not corrode unless PH is < 6.5 or > 8.5, which is significantly outside what most would consider reasonable water quality.
I personally have a well in an off grid location with 6.2 PH, and use only CPVC for that reason. Where I live, I’ve done some retrofits and replaced 75 year old copper pipe that was good as new inside.
I think I’m misunderstanding you. Your original comment was “that’s bullshit” but this seems like it’s in rough agreement.
IIUC copper pipe will last for 50-100 years IFF you pass impure water through it. Pure water will eat the pipe. Same with galvanized steel and brass like you pointed out. So the city treated it with _something_ to keep the water from eating pipe (knowing copper pipe is code) and I’ve anecdotally heard that part of that “something” is fluoride.
pH = 7 (pure water)
TDS = 0 mg/L
Calcium = 0 mg/L (or ppm) as CaCO3
Alkalinity = 0 mg/L (or ppm) as CaCO3
Temperature = 21 celsius (room temp)
B = -13.12 x Log10 (Temp + 273) + 34.55 = -13.12 x Log10 (21 + 273) + 34.5 = 2.12
C = Log10 [Ca2+ as CaCO3] - 0.4 = Log10[0] - 0.4 = -Infinity
D = Log10[alkalinity as CaCO3] = Log10[0] = -Infinity
pHs = (9.3 + A + B) - (C + D) = 9.3 + A + B - C - D = 9.3 - Infinity + 2.12 + Infinity + Infinity = Infinity
LSI = pH - pHs = 7 - Infinity = -Infinity
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=7+-+%28%289.3+%2B+%28%2...
From my understanding a negative LSI means the water will try to "pick up" atoms/molecules from the container it is in (corrosive). A positive LSI indicates it will lay down atoms/molecules (scale build-up).
A value of negative infinity tells me that pure water is going to eat the pipes.
That being said, I don't know if the LSI scale is well behaved as these values trend towards 0! The values of water purity in the equation seem to dominate both pH and temperature as those values trend towards 0 - no big difference in results if pH is 7 vs. pH is 3 and no big difference if water is frozen or boiling. Temperature can have a big impact for _very cold_ and _very hot_ but then you're dealing with solid water or steam and that doesn't really make sense to me for this model. That probably suggests the equation is only well behaved for a certain range for each value, and I'd suspect 0 is outside the range these equations can model for TDS, Calcium, and Alkalinity. But I can't find anything that defines the ranges the LSI model applies to.
I wonder what you think the pH of steel wool is. I bet you could place steel in a copper pot and it won’t eat through it.
Your assertion is that 'pure water' will corrode copper pipe, so it needs to be 'impure' to not do so (using flouride of all things as an example?)
Yet, distilled water - which is as pure water as anyone will ever see outside a lab - doesn't do so to any meaningful extent. And you keep using various clearly inapplicable theory to try to prove a point that is clearly false in the real world.
This has nothing to do with steel wool, after all.
I haven’t been able to find a source since posting this. I may have my facts backwards! The closest I have is this CDC report saying it reduces corrosiveness: https://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/engineering/corrosion.htm
My understanding is that, if you take fluoride out of the water, you’ll need to replace it with something or the water will replace it itself (aka eat the pipe).
That obviously doesn’t mean fluoride was originally added for that reason though.
The only thing I could think of that might have corrosive issues would be desalination water that was overly purified like the sibling comment mentioned. But even then, they should be adding some kind of minerals back before distributing it to people's homes. Ultrapure water tastes horrible and likely isn't safe for drinking long term.
I’m totally open to being wrong. I’m eager to learn - which is generally why I share information. If I don’t readily share what I know to be true, like in this case, nobody will ever correct me and I’ll spend the rest of my life being incorrect.
On HN you generally start by telling someone why they’re wrong and supporting that in some way.
I.E. if you know/believe fluoride was added for another reason - that’s a good place to start.
Or if you know/believe purified water is not corrosive, that would be a good place to start.
Copper lasts 50-60 years. I believe that's type L which is used in the wall in homes in the US. The skill required to create a high quality copper joint takes time and a person may still make mistakes. A PEX compression fitting is basically just closing a tool. The probability of mistakes is lower.
I'm not familiar with the possibility of contamination in pex, is this due to the material?
The problem is there are no "L" fittings and the normal fittings used for L copper can be quite poor. For this reason and others, some people like ProPress fittings which are very high quality (and expensive).
> It’s tough to beat copper pipes for longevity, which on average last 50 to 70 years, compared to PEX, which has an expected lifespan of 30 to 50 years. PEX’s life expectancy can be shortened by the use of extremely hot household water (180 degrees Fahrenheit or higher) or if the water in the home contains high levels of chlorine.
> Copper’s life can be shortened by highly acidic water. When installed under typical conditions (i.e., your home is connected to a municipal water system), copper can be expected to outlast PEX by about 20 years. If you’re on a private well, have your water tested prior to retrofitting your water supply system. Local County Extension Offices can test well water to determine whether it’s high in acid or chlorine.
I’m a buy it for life sort of person, and will pay a premium for longevity. Future myself or others will thank me (buying or building something that will outlive me? Plant trees whose shade I’ll never sit in and all that jazz)
Fascinating stuff, thanks for the insight.
Wouldn't it be better to sequester the carbon in a landfill rather than return it to the atmosphere?
Option A: Con, landfill space.
Option B: Pro, energy generation to burn. Con, energy cost of capturing carbon. Con, storage space of captured carbon.
I learned that the hard way last year. Had PEX water lines hard freeze during the crazy February weather in Texas area last year. Thankfully no burst pipes!
It makes a ton of sense to switch to aluminum in housing though. For the same current capability the wire is significantly cheaper, lighter, and stronger.
With properly rated connectors, not a problem, but not all are, and not everyone knows it's a thing.
Copper pipe is much more durable as long as the local water isn't acidic, which is rare. CPVC has had a number of issues over the years (including leaching of chemicals and brittleness over time), and PEX is still relatively unproven. It's predecessor product had huge insurance claims due to failing connections after 10+ years.
Those were PB/Polybutylene pipes.
When? I live in Alberta.
(okay a bit tongue in cheek)
Just read an article in a local paper about banning gas connections in new housing. Had a direct quote from the union saying they aren't inherently opposed per se, but need ___ $$ to offset any job losses.
And then next graph mentioned that union was part of a lobbying pac thing fighting for the status quo
Actually, no you don't. Only wires from like 30 years ago need that. Modern aluminum wires do NOT need the coating. In fact in some places you will fail inspection if you add the coating.
Most people have not updated their knowledge on this, since they don't work in the industry.
But for big feeder wires, it’s a different story. Compare:
2 AWG XHHW-2 Al: 0.358 inches OD, 0.081 lbs per ft, $0.90/ft
4 AWG XHHW-2 Cu: 0.33 inches OD, 0.129 lbs per ft, $1.78/ft
I know which one I would pick under most circumstances. And insurance companies are just fine with the aluminum option.
Single strand solid aluminum conductors expand and contract due to heat changes from high draw, they can work themselves loose, and eventually create shorts and fires. They make special connectors so you can remedy this by attaching a small piece of copper wire (a pigtail) to the aluminum, and don't need to replace all the wiring in your house. This of course means that we could just legislate for better connectors throughout the building, as we should do anyways, and we could safely use single strand solid conductor aluminum wiring instead of copper virtually everywhere.
As is NOT required. This is old old info: antioxidant paste is not just not required, in some places you will fail inspection if add it, and other electricians might laugh at you for not keeping up to date.
> expand and contract due to heat changes from high draw, they can work themselves loose
Nope, this is also not true. It's simply that there is a new allow of aluminum used today (since 1975) which retains its strength under heating and this problem is solved.
> This of course means that we could just legislate for better connectors throughout the building
Connector rated for Cu/Al are widely available, and not hard to make. There's just no market for it for smaller wires since everyone got scared and no one wants to install aluminum anymore.
It doesn't have to be that way, the current alloy is 47 years old at this point. People just don't want to change.
Some of the problems with aluminum wiring and whether all problems are solved:
https://inspectapedia.com/aluminum/Aluminum_Wiring_Hazards.p...
Requirement for antioxidant paste whenever manufacturer requires it (most of the time).
https://www.howtolookatahouse.com/Blog/Entries/2022/1/is-ant...
> I don't agree with your conclusion that everything is now ok and it's just nerves.
What issues do you find? All you need is a connector rated Cu/AlR and that's it.
Eg I don't think there's a legislation that floorplans have to be useful (and how would you even define that in the abstract). Yet, most buildings have quite reasonable floorplans.
There's some transaction costs in that its hard for the eventually consumer of the building to express all their preference to the builder. As you say, for some aspects the price signals can be weak.
More competition can help.
See also how it's pretty easy to find restaurants that serve tasty food, despite taste not being legislated nor regulated.
But seriously though, since when did Laissez-faire economics and legislation ever lead to sufficient safety not to kill people or burn down their homes willy-nilly?
HN is the only place I visit that has such wild ideas as "safety regs are too burdensome, let the free market sort it out".
Contrast that to 250,000 deaths per year (in the USA) by medical mistakes or preventable adverse effects.
At some point, we have to decide where to put our efforts. Electrical safety is arguably oversolved - ie. we put too much effort into it compared to the safety gain of any extra effort, compared to medical accidents which is likely undersolved. Even simple things like requiring a doctor to not do more than an 8 hour shift, like we require of truck drivers, would probably save a lot of lives.
The idea of 'more safety is always better' needs to be broken.
I did not suggest throwing out any existing regulation, merely that we don't need more regulation.
Surely you can not argue that we need an infinite amount of more regulation? There must be some level that's enough?
> yet they see a lot of need for regulation
Of course they do, their ideology reaches for that solution by default. Look at this particular thread just to see how misguided the recommendation for regulation was in this case.
Yes and No. I have a lot of sympathies for that argument, but also for the view that individual votes don't matter.
See builders/landlords and insulation.
If buyer or renters are totally oblivious, why offer any features at all?
Some countries just prefer to ignore long term problems for short term "gains" though, in a tragic fractal way.
I don't think there's any law anywhere that prohibits a manufacturer from sticking the required information on their product and in their marketing.
As a customer, I can draw my own conclusions when a manufacturer doesn't provide the information: I'll assume that thing is a gas guzzler and will avoid it. (Unless I read trusted reviews to the contrary.)
In this case:
good guy installs insulation
bad guy doesn't
good guy publishes info on future savings
bad guy publishes fake info
good guy publishes trusted reviews
bad guy publishes fake reviews.
and so on.
The good guys want the legislation, not to force then to do the thing they wanted to do anyway, they want it to stop bad guys putting them out of business via scamming customers.
> bad guy publishes fake info
That's already illegal.
> bad guy publishes fake reviews.
That's already illegal.
The better analogy for the prisoners dilemma is a drug deal or a spy swap. How can you trust the other person to do the right thing with no legal system to enforce penalties if they don't? Without that, less deals are made than they would otherwise, a loss of efficiency.
Just the opposite. I am much more likely to purchase from a builder that has a reputation for transparency and after-market support.
It's very similar to the 'market for lemons' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
> The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism is a widely-cited[1] 1970 paper by economist George Akerlof which examines how the quality of goods traded in a market can degrade in the presence of information asymmetry between buyers and sellers, leaving only "lemons" behind. In American slang, a lemon is a car that is found to be defective after it has been bought.
The obvious-in-hindsight business solution to this problem didn't require legislation. It's just to build a used-car dealer that builds and safeguards a really solid reputation.
Well your past history of housing problems would suggest your optimism here is misplaced
> It's very similar to the 'market for lemons' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
People don't need lemons. They do need home. So often in free market economies you see companies virtually colluding to put themselves first in sectors where consumers are required to buy into that product or service. Because in those sectors, businesses have a captive audience with no other options and they don't need to worry about reputation.
Housing is one of those sectors. Often people need a home based around requirements other than the reputation of the builder like location to the school that their kids already attend, or family members, or work, bus or rail stations, etc. Cost to rent. Is parking available. etc
If you can pick a property based on the reputation of the builder than you're already in a class above most people.
I know you want to believe that a free market fixes all of life's problems but it's really not that simple. For starters even if your ideology worked in practice, you still require a bunch of customers to get burnt initially in order to generate that reputation. However there's also nothing stopping disreputable businesses restarting with a new company name and branding so the reputation model doesn't work in practice (you see this all the time with online sellers eg on Amazon). And that's on top of the former point about how some products are essentials that people don't have the luxury to shop around on.
We have much stricter regulations in Europe and it doesn't harm our commerce. So you absolutely can have a vibrant market and regulations to protect consumers.
Who is 'you' in that sentence? I can see that I have optimism, but what's my past history of housing problems?
And what makes you so sure that those past problems were caused by not enough regulation? (Instead of eg too much regulation, the wrong kind of regulation, or they might have nothing to do with regulation at all.)
> If you can pick a property based on the reputation of the builder than you're already in a class above most people.
Huh? It's always a trade-off. All else being equal, I'd grab a house from a builder (or landlord) with a great reputation before one without a reputation or even a bad reputation. I might even pay a bit extra for a great reputation.
Your argument would apply equally well to jobs: people need a job just as much as they need housing. Yet, employers with great reputation still find it easier to attract good applicants than those with lousy reputations.
> I know you want to believe that a free market fixes all of life's problems but it's really not that simple.
Who said that? Huh?
I suggested that in this specific case more regulation is not required.
The free market won't get you a girlfriend, for example. But neither would any sensible regulation.
> We have much stricter regulations in Europe and it doesn't harm our commerce. So you absolutely can have a vibrant market and regulations to protect consumers.
You know that European real GDP per capita is quite a lot lower than in the US? (You can pick almost any European country. Or pick the average etc.)
And the US is also still pretty overregulated.
I grew up in Germany, but put my money where my mouth is, and now live in rather more pro-market Singapore.
That all said, one part did stick out for me:
> Your argument would apply equally well to jobs: people need a job just as much as they need housing. Yet, employers with great reputation still find it easier to attract good applicants than those with lousy reputations.
I'd argue that disproves your point rather than proves it. The reason being, lousy jobs still exist because employers know that people need jobs. So there's no incentive for employers to change. Hence why we need employment laws.
In Singapore our legal minimum wage is 0. However good luck finding anyone working for 0 dollars.
I would suggest checking why jobs exceed the legal minimum, and how we can ensure more people can have better jobs.
(My view is perfectly compatible with there being some crappy jobs, and some people even taking those crappy jobs.)
Oversimplified: legally everyone is already a gig worker in Singapore.
Seems to work out fairly well.
This is also closer to how the system worked in eg the US until a few decades ago, when it was easier to get a job just by walking into the shop and asking and also work your way through college etc.
I remember, Slatestarcodex had an article about the dangers of outsourcing your social welfare to employers.
The reason America needs legislation is because American companies have a culture of abusing a free market.
What works for one country doesn't automatically work for another.
Connectors could be copper, the wire itself could be aluminium, completely sealed in pvc.
12- or 14- AWG wire is extremely easy to terminate correctly.
For service connections and large scale power distribution where trained professionals are already required and lack of maintenance is already a fire hazard, it isn't a problem.
For small branch circuits where work is often done by random Joe's and where any sort of preventative maintenance is few and far between, it is a failed experiment.
Either way, home and commercial construction is likely to crater (already starting in many areas) due to cost of $$ going up, so that should help tamp down demand quite a bit.
The aluminum wires of today are a different allow of that simply does not have the problem anymore. It's a solved issue. You don't even need anti-ox on the connection.
Not that you can buy small gauge aluminum wiring anyway.
We can discuss the theory behind changing it of course, it just isn’t material to the field until the rules change.
There are real reasons the benefits (right now) do not outweigh the known hazards (right now).
If you have new evidence to add that you believe does, then please do. But so far, not seeing it.
In addition, German Wikipedia mentions some extra paperwork and hassle German doctors have to jump through if they want to prescribe.
It already is better, this is VERY old news. Modern aluminum alloys do NOT have this problem, but it's too late, no one wants to think about aluminum wires.
But 50 Hz as a system frequency is just wrong. It results in oddities like running your railroad at 16-2/3 Hz.
(I guess you are talking about three-phase power in general, or is there anything special about railroads?)
In practice, just like everything in engineering, you don't run your grid at 50 Hz nor your railroad at 50/3 Hz. You run the grid at some frequency that varies slightly around 50Hz. There's always engineering tolerances.
So even if you don't like rational numbers, it doesn't really matter whether you run the railroads at 50/3 +-0.01 Hz, or at 16.66 +-0.01 Hz.
(I don't know how tight the tolerances are in practice here. It doesn't matter for the argument.)
> So even if you don't like rational numbers, it doesn't really matter whether you run the railroads at 50/3 +-0.01 Hz, or at 16.66 +-0.01 Hz.
In practice the nominal frequency was changed to 16.7 Hz anyway due to some weird edge case created when running motor-generators [1] for prolonged periods of time at exactly the nominal 3:1 frequency conversion ratio. (See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnstrom#16_2%E2%81%843_Hz_ge... and use an online translator at your own peril if necessary.)
[1] These days, newly built (or probably occasionally re-built) substations prefer to use solid-state frequency converters, which are immune to this particular problem, but there still are enough of the older motor-generator sets around, too. Wikipedia also claims that motor-generator sets are more tolerant against earth faults, which might or might not preclude against getting rid of all of them even long-term.
Also, 60 is a common base for several things (degrees, time), which interact with the grid in numerous ways.
It’s convenient to have them match.
(If you need more precision, go for nano-Hertz..)
50 Hz railway systems are probably more common than 50/3, at least in Europe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification_system...
25 kV AC 50 Hz (60 Hz in countries using such grid frequency) is the modern standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_kV_AC_railway_electrificati...
A classic commutated series-wound motor is a DC machine. The problem with DC power is that without power electronics, you can't really change the voltage (except downwards by wasteful resistors), so your transmission voltage is limited by your maximum motor voltage and you incur relatively high transmission losses and need frequent substations every few kilometres. (Mainline railways can cheat a bit by equipping all of their rolling stock with two (or occasionally more) motors permanently linked together in series, so each motor only gets a fraction of the voltage, but you can take that approach only so far…)
So you want to switch to AC power, which is more efficient because it can be easily transformed up and then down again, because transformers can actually be made small enough to fit into a locomotive.
Fortunately with some adaptations a series-wound motor can be made to work on AC, too, but there are some trade-offs depending on the required amount of power and the frequency. I.e. the motor still works better if your AC current is more "DC-like", i.e. doesn't have too high a frequency.
It turns out that for something more modest like a hoover or a domestic power drill, an AC series-wound motor ("universal motor") will work fine enough even at 50 or 60 Hz, but for railway purposes with their somewhat higher power demands things didn't work so well.
Because at that time power electronics didn't exist or were still in their infancy (e.g. mercury arc rectifiers), there was no possibility of doing anything useful on board of the locomotive, so instead it was decided to reduce the frequency of the railway's power supply system, because at 16 2/3 or perhaps even 25 Hz motors could still be made to work reasonably enough.
Also at that time changing the frequency meant using a motor-generator set, and presumably choosing some simple integer ratio for the two frequencies also simplified things.
By the time other countries started considering switching to AC electrification, usable rectifiers existed that could be used on locomotives, so those countries could electrify at the full 50 or 60 Hz and then rectify the current to DC on board of the locomotive, thereby sidestepping the problems of running a commutated series-wound motor with AC power.
Even later on we then got fully variable voltage and frequency inverters, which finally allowed serious usage of (usually asynchronous) three-phase induction motors.
(Some railways used three-phase drives even before that, but without modern electronics this was a somewhat more cumbersome prospect, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1lm%C3%A1n_Kand%C3%B3)
The 120V in the US is a 640kb ram should be enough situation. You were first, thought you build the spare capacity, were surprised by the explosive growth and how useful electricity really is.
With modern homes moving to 100% electricity even 240 is not enough. In my flat I have pizza oven (3kw),inducation burner x 2 (3kw each), normal oven, 12000 btu AC x 2, tumble dryer, some other appliances that chug sub 1k... throw in some car charging, electrical water heater... A modern home is using orders of magnitude more electricity. And it is going up.
As homes need more power, they are delivered more amps. The common for newer construction in the US is 240V at 200 amp or 400 amp for larger homes. Older homes will have anywhere from 80-150A depending on when they were built or remodeled enough to require replacing the main service panel.
Stove, HVAC, and dryer require their own dedicated 240V circuits.
In eu you don't have to think where to plug 2.5 kw space heater. Any outlet is good enough. In the US you have to. And with home appliances actually becoming bigger and more powerful I think that even the EU baseline will become too constraining eventually. Since usually there are limitation on the gauges that are ran from the main breaker to the sub-breakers (don't know english electric jargon)
Where I live I have a wire that can hold I think 40 amps in the wall from the main breaker to the board where the small breakers terminate the different home circuts. If I want to upgrade it is dig baby dig. 6 floors.
2 base 2 orders of magnitude perhaps, but not 100x more…
The heavy load stuff is 240V anyway.
The British plug is a pretty decent design from an electrical safety point of view. (However, they turn into caltrops in the dark.)
It's needlessly huge. I like type J (SN 441011, Swiss plug) and type N (IEC 60906-1, South Africa).
It's just that the American plugs are really the worst. See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_q-xnYRugQ for other badness.
208V (vs 220/230/240V) has minimal to do with it being a condo and everything to do with the type of incoming power. 208V is from taking two phases of a 120V three phase service. One phase to ground, 120V, phase to phase, 208V. For the alternative voltage (named 220/230/240V depending on context), the incoming power to the transfer is a single phase. The transformer then produces a split phase 220/230/240V where each phase is 180° opposite each other. The only reason you _might_ see it more frequently at a condo/apartment is due to there being a need or desire for 3 phase power.
Where it gets a little funny is that the Canadian standard for "industrial" power is 600V, not 480V, and that can make it hard to find replacements in some larger buildings with custom requirements.
Yeah, didn’t mean to imply it was unusual, just explaining for others that it’s not a quirk of condos/apartments specifically.
> Where it gets a little funny is that the Canadian standard for "industrial" power is 600V, not 480V
Speaking of 480V, you ever dealt with 277V much? That’s a real “fun” voltage to be around when something goes wrong. :(
My condo parking spot has a wonderful looking junction box above it labelled “600V”.
But I’ve heard some Canadian factories will still get spec’d with “US Voltage” (ie: 277 and 480) for “standardization”, but probably so they can move the plant to the US without having to find electricians that can speak Canadian.
Yeah, if you don’t have 480V, extremely unlikely you’ll have 277V. 347V has comparable issues to what I was referring to with 277. 480/600 aren’t voltage you’ll normally find wire nut’s in a jbox or behind say a light switch for example, but 277/347 you will. Unlike 120V though, if something were to cause it to arc (or worse, electrocute you), you’re going to have a very bad day! Not tagging off a circuit is always a bad idea, but especially when voltages are 250+.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMmUoZh3Hq4&ab_channel=Techn...
Basically, you'd express things in terms of speed of light, electron charge, planck length etc.
In this case, [Planck energy / electron charge] might be an appropriate unit.
(It would also be a pretty useless unit, because it's absurdly large compared to everyday voltages.)
Maybe you're already saying this: there was a period (maybe ~70s) where aluminum was used for household wiring because of the advantages you mention. Unfortunately it oxidizes resulting in higher resistance leading to heat and potentially fire at connections. Where I am, insurers ask you if you have aluminum wiring when you buy a house (and penalize you for it), and it is generally regarded as a failed experiment.