Australia and US element wiring

[Yorg]

Hi,
Apologies if I should have been able to find this already.
I'm trying to design an electric brewery that will work both in the US and in Australia and Europe, so that I didn't have to build separate units for different coountries.
At the moment, here in Australia, I'm using a 240V 1900W element, with about an 8amp draw, and it's enough power for the system.
Now I'm thinking that if I wired two 950W 110V rated elements in series, that would be about 1900W of power too, and I could use this configuration in a 220-240V country.

So If I took the unit to the US, and if I put a voltage selector switch on the unit to switch these two elements via a dpdt switch into parallel, that would provide approx the same 1900W of power with 110V out of the wall, but at about 17.5 amps.
Now in Australia and Europe too as I understand, we have two live wires (active, neutral) single phase power and earth., but I'm not sure about the States.

So a few questions I hope you can help with:
1/
Do regular 110V sockets in the US allow 18amp draws without tripping?
2/
You also have 220V I understand, but are these very common - would most people be able to simply run a 220V unit anyway?
3/
Would the series wiring I described above work for your 220-240V? I seem to recall something about 2 phases being used to get greater than 110V, so is there a way of doing this?

Cheers.

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

Yes we have 220V in the house, however the access points for it are far and few. From memory, I can think of the following access points:

1) Clothes dryer
2) Stove
3) Heating/Air

That being said, those points are limited and usually cannot easily be tapped into for 220V due to their location. Some people have succesfully tapped into their stove or clothes dryer, but that's a dirty way to do it.

I do have 220V in my garage, but I had to have it installed (I have a MIG welder and a plasma cutter, both are 220V). This is uncommon.

18A from a single 110V is at the above the recommended limit, as most of the 110V outlets are rated to 15A. This doesn't mean that the circuit is 15A, but the outlet is.

MC

 

[dyqik]

20A 110V circuits are common enough, particularly in kitchens, so I think you could rely on one being available. These are Live-Neutral-Ground 3 conductor circuits. In kitchens there's a good chance they already have GFCI installed at the outlet as well.

220V sockets are usually just in laundry areas and where electric stoves are installed (buried behind the stove), unless the previous occupant had a massive airconditioner or some other requirement. They aren't likely to be anywhere useful, and may be 2-phase, 3 conductor (Live, -Live, Ground) with no neutral conductor. This is different to a European spec 230V socket, which is (Live, Neutral, Ground).

It is possible to buy fairly nice UL listed 115-230V AC step up/down transformers in the 2000W range (for about 100 USD), which would be an alternative option for making your system transportable. I've used one for a 1440W espresso machine (European spec Gaggia Classic) in the US.

Interestingly for your last question, the Gaggia Classic has two elements inside it on the boiler. For Europe they are connected in series, and in the US they are connected in parallel, changing the resistance by a factor of four, which counteracts the 4 fold drop in power on changing from 230 VAC to 115 VAC. Unfortunately the other components aren't as easy to reconfigure, hence me using a transformer.