British Expatriate Network

okay I think there is something seriously wrong with my internal electrical system. When I arrived here 6 years ago, within 6 months the following broke down in our house.
TV, washing machine, dryer, stereo, toaster (don't ask), microwave oven, wife's camera

I thought that was a freak occurence and all would be well but 4 days ago my ipod mini gave up the ghost after 22 months of infrequent use and then this morning, the electric kettle that I bought 1 month to replace the other kettle I had for 6 months before it broke, was pissing water onto the worktop in the kitchen...

Is it me ?

Wow, sounds spooky, very strange shock

Is it just that some electricals don't seem to last as long here? In four years we've got through 2 toasters, 2 hairdryers, 3 vacuum cleaners and 2 toaster ovens.

Vacuum cleaners and irons here. Never make it to the 2 year mark in our house. evil

We're very good at batch disasters..... last month we managed two entirely different water leaks onto our new Pergo kitchen floor starting within 10 minutes of each other.

The good news is, when you do it with electrical appliances, you can often get the stores to knock an extra amount off for bulk purchase. And yes, they don't seem to last long. In 5 years we've managed at least 5 kettles (although we did drop one and smash it), two vacuums, three steam cleaners (hurrah for extended warranties), two vcr recorders..........

Maybe the power coming in?

US power seems to be of stupidly low voltage and "dirty", in the places I have lived at least.

Turn on the vacuum cleaner and your lights go dim.
The refrigerator comes on (and I even have a very low energy one) and the microwave power drops (light dims, rotation slows).
My laser printer used to dim the lights in my office when it printed until I had a new, dedicated circuit put in for computer equipment.
Monitor the power going to your TV, VCR, computer etc. and you can see brown-outs and varying voltages because your neighbour just turned an appliance on.

I just don't recall this with 240V AC in the UK.

I agree with Pilgrim. Recently we were oputting in the power outlest for our new addition and when I mentioned I wanted a couple of outlets in the closet for ironing or whatever, I was told it needed to be on a separate circuit so I would have to decide which outlet was for the iron shock

Sounds right, I know for my newly renovated basement there is a seperate circuit for the TV, PS2, XBox systems etc just because they require so much.

Apparently (according to my dad and a friend over here who both worked with electricity in the UK) the reason why we get light dimming is the way things are wired here. In the UK your lights are on a different circuit. Here, they start in one room and wire the whole room on the same circuit, then move onto the next room and the next until that circuit is full. then start another circuit. Or they start wiring in the most obscure place and link outlets and lights as they go along until they finish that particular circuit.

Also, a lot of homes were/are not built for the number of electrical items that people have these days. Our home is 30 years old when we bought it and we were informed that we needed a new electrical board. We only had 100amps (I think that is what it was) and we were recommended to go upto 200amps. A friend informed us that we actually didn't need to increase our board size at all just redistribute everything. the problem is, it was cheaper to go for the 200 board than have the house rewired! Since the change, we don't get the dimming of the lights quite as much, unless we add a lot of electrical stuff to one circuit. an extra circuit was placed in the basement because of the washer and dryerbut it was too expensive to do the same in the kitchen and family room so we still get dimming occassionally in the family room.

I wouldn't say we have lost a lot of electrical items. as monster says, things do seem to go in batches, but then the same used to happen in the UK too. Often it is because the items were all bought around the same time (marriage, moved house etc). One thing that I think does effect electrical stuff here is the weather. Very high humidity and extremely low humidity.

When we have the AC unit in our bedroom in the summer I can't use the hairdryer in our en-suite or it blows the fuse.

The vacuum makes the lights go dim.

You can't use the toaster, coffee maker and microwave at the same time.

Of course, Mike being a BEng means that I'll wait forever to get these little jobs seen to!!!! wink lol

Debs x smile

Y'all just have terrible electrics. I have no issues at all with brown-outs or dimming, I can run a washing machine, PC, PS2, TV, coffeemaker, lights and a/c with no trouble.

/Ha Ha! I live in a trailer and your houses suck.

Jesus...what a country..

Sickening when a ghetto rat like me has better electricity than a half-million dollar mansion in California.

/world's tiniest violin plays for EEB

Same for us with the fairy lights in the winter/hairdryer in Children's bathroom

the what?

computer, microwave, toaster and kettle here. haven't tried substituting coffee maker for kettle yet.....

Start fiddling with the fuse box yourself. It'll soon get sorted one way or another......

:twisted:

This much I know was true in my home in London and I think is generally the rule in the UK - the lights runs on separate circuits from the outlets.

Never gave it any thought but we have the same issue with the lights dimming when I do ironing. Also in the new place the computer keeps going offline for no reason - any guesses if this is a 'brown out'?

For those of us who were thrown out of physics for causing explosions all this talk of dirty electric is a bit confusing... :oops: