[AT] Shhhh! Quiet==electrical

[CEE VILL]

That is a familiar situation, Larry, but ours was not as severe.  As a kid, our house with seven large rooms had it's original 30 amp electrical service  (115v only)  that was pretty much intended for lights only in the 19 teens. As I recall there were only two circuits, each with a screw in 15A fuse (often operating with a penny behind each). When I was six, Dad had a wood/coal fired forced air furnace installed. Within a year or two, we also got our first TV set, a 12 inch black and white Philco combination with am/fm radio and a record changer.  For years, every time the blower motor in the furnace was in startup, the tv picture would go black, or dim down and flip flop in several directions. When I sold the house nearly 50 years later, it was still running thru that same 30A service along with a couple of add on circuits that I installed as an adult to reduce some of the load on the main box.  One of these fed the furnace so the TV was no longer starved.

Charlie in WNY





> Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:02:44 -0600
> From: rlgoss at insightbb.com
> To: at at lists.antique-tractor.com
> Subject: Re: [AT] Shhhh! Quiet==electrical
> 
> Low voltage is not uncommon around underground mines, Ed.  When I moved to West Virginia in 1971, it was not uncommon for the voltage to drop to the point that our TV set couldn't show a picture.  I put a recording voltmeter on the line for a couple of weeks to see what was happening.  The whole town was networked so there was a "220 volt" grid everywhere that houses tapped into whereever they wanted.  No one had individual step-down transformers.  When the mine machinery kicked in at the beginning of the morning shift, the voltage on the grid would drop and each leg would be below 90 volts.  It would slowly come back to nearly normal by quitting time every day.
> 
> My kids were in pre-school at the time.  The voltage drop kicked television viewing in the head and they routinely missed Sesame Street.  The house load was unbalanced, and I found I could get more reliable use of the television set by changing the load assignment in the breaker box.  Of course, when the miners returned home at night, the machinery was off, the voltage came back up, and everybody enjoyed prime-time viewing.
> 
> Such is life in the Kanawha valley.
> 
> Larry
>  
> 
> 
> 

 		 	   		  
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