[AT] Shhhh! Quiet==electrical

[Larry Goss]

Thirty Amp!  Wow!  You had power to spare.  My next door neighbor had 5 amp 110 volt service on their house when me moved there.  It got upgraded to 220 volt service and the power company left the old meter.  I "glommed" onto it and wired it up so I could check the power usage on some of the simple appliances.  Unfortunately, the meter was so small that you couldn't use it for something like a refrigerator or window air conditioner, so it wasn't as handy as it could have been.

I finally got tired of having it kick around in the garage and sold in in a garage sale.  The guy who bought it had a collection of electrical hardware, and he was bouncing off the walls because he was so happy to have found that meter.

Larry

----- Original Message -----
From: CEE VILL <cvee60 at hotmail.com>
Date: Thursday, December 31, 2009 6:46
Subject: Re: [AT] Shhhh! Quiet==electrical
To: new atislist <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>

> 
> 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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